Process Dashboard Changelog

What's new in Process Dashboard 2.6

Nov 7, 2020

A new "Add Link" option makes it easy to add items to the script menu. An 'edit' icon is also displayed on these custom links, making it easy to correct mistakes.
Fixes were provided for bugs:
357 In Git LOC Counter, commit list chooser becomes stale
358 Personal Workflow Analysis Report always empty for some workflows
359 Copy/Paste between WBS Editor windows sometimes loses node types

New in Process Dashboard 2.4 (Nov 6, 2017)

The Team Dashboard now includes a comprehensive framework for role-based access control:
A fine-grained permission hierarchy has been introduced. This includes permissions for editing particular items (for example, "who is allowed to modify milestones?") and for viewing sensitive data (for example, "who is allowed to view the team defect log?").
A user interface is provided for defining roles, and stating the permissions that each role should be granted.
Finally, a user interface is provided for listing users and assigning them roles. When users open the Team Dashboard or Work Breakdown Structure, their actions will be subject to the role-based permissions they have been granted.
The default, out-of-the-box behavior of the Team Dashboard remains unchanged. But if teams wish to lock down their Team Dashboard, these new controls make that possible.
The Team Dashboard now includes a feature to define groups of users. These can be used for many purposes: for example, to describe people from different parts of the organization, different project subteams, or different engineering disciplines. Once groups have been defined, reports can be filtered to show data from a particular group.
Several improvements have been made to the Work Breakdown Structure Editor:
The speed and responsiveness of several WBS editing operations (including insert, rename, move up/down, cut/copy/paste, and delete) have been significantly improved for large projects.
Since 1.14.7, the WBS Editor has provided a filtering function. That filtering function has been enhanced:
When a filter is in effect, columns sums now respect the filter. For example, when the "Time" column displays the total time for the project or for a particular subcomponent, the displayed totals will only include time from the visible children that matched the filter.
Many columns allow you to edit the total value on a parent component, and will automatically scale the values on children to satisfy your change. When a filter is in effect, this scaling operation will no longer affect rows that were hidden by the filter. (This effectively shields filtered components and tasks from most editing operations.)
If you have created custom columns in the WBS, you can now filter the WBS based on data entered into those columns.
Simpler, streamlined controls have been provided for hiding completed tasks, and for narrowing the view to tasks performed by particular individuals.
A new "Show Related Tasks" option makes it possible to display all of the tasks under components that matched the filter.
The Find operation in the WBS has been extended to search in any column (including custom columns), and a Replace feature has been added as well.
The WBS provides better autocompletion support for editing labels and custom column values.
Menus, labels, and messages in the WBS Editor can now be translated to other languages using the Localization Tool.
Several improvements have been made to team reports:
A "Time Log" section has been added to the Rollup Plan Summary Report in the Team Dashboard. This makes it possible to export the team time log to Excel, and to see views of the team time log that are filtered by label or group.
New teams will see this section right away. If existing teams have customized the Rollup Plan Summary (by clicking the "Edit this page" icon in the top-right corner of the report), their local customizations will override the addition of the "Time Log" section to the default report structure. Those teams will need to edit their customized report and add a "Time Log" element.
In the Gantt chart, you can now click the configuration icon (which appears on the top-right of the chart) and toggle the display of optional "Assigned To" and "Milestone" columns. These can be especially helpful when printing or taking a screen capture of the Gantt chart.
If you open a Gantt chart by clicking on a bar in the EV Milestones chart, the Gantt chart will display a line for the milestone commit date.
The configuration menu has historically been displayed as the single letter "C" to save space. Now, it uses the icon, an industry-standard representation for a menu of advanced and less-commonly-used functionality.
In the Team Dashboard, the "File → Alter Project" menu now includes an option to close a project. This can be helpful if work is ending on a given project, and it does not need to be relaunched for an additional cycle.
When more than one person is assigned to a task (such as an inspection), it is helpful for an individual to know which other people they are collaborating with. Now, this information is readily available from the task dependency indicator on the main dashboard toolbar. It is also displayed in the dependency column of the Task & Schedule window and the EV Report.
In the Time Card dialog, the columns depicting weekends now have a different background color. This assists with the process of reviewing time log data and correcting errors.
The Process Dashboard has been upgraded to be Java-9-ready.
When running in Java 9, the dashboard supports smooth scaling of the user interface for HiDPI/Retina displays.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Process Dashboard 2.3 (Dec 22, 2016)

The main dashboard toolbar now includes an "Add Task" button. This makes it easy to quickly add a task to your plan without opening the WBS Editor first
Powerful new features have been added for workflows:
The Workflow Process Analysis report has been enhanced significantly
The report now displays an extensive collection of charts that show various process metrics, and demonstrate how those metrics have changed over time
The report now displays information about the number of defects that were injected and removed in each phase of a workflow, along with advanced quality metrics such as phase yield and defect injection/removal rates
The report is now available in both the team and the personal dashboard, to enable data-driven process improvement at both the team and personal level
A powerful filtering feature has been added to the report, making it possible to adjust the list of components and tasks that should be included in the various charts and tables
A new editor makes it possible to configure process mappings between workflows. These mappings can be used to:
Document the evolution of a process when a team modifies the steps in their workflow
Combine data from several related workflows to produce consolidated process reports
Leverage historical data from old workflows for PROBE planning of new work
It is now possible to specify fixed times and minimum times for selected steps in a team workflow. To use this feature, click the icon that appears in the top-right corner of the Workflow Editor (just above the vertical scroll bar), and enable the "Min Time" column. Then enter minimum times as needed. (To specify a fixed time, enter a minimum for a task that was otherwise assigned zero percent of the overall workflow.)
Significant enhancements have been made to defect logging functionality:
When individuals log a defect within a team project, the "injected" and "removed" selectors will now allow them to choose phases from the team's defined workflows. (Previously, individuals were required to select a phase from the underlying metrics framework, such as TSP.)
The defect timer and the main timer now work more closely together to help you collect accurate data:
If you start timing a defect, the dashboard will start the main timer automatically. If the main timer is pointing at a different task, the dashboard will ask you if you'd like to switch to the task where this defect was logged.
If you are timing a defect and you change the main timer to log time to an unrelated task, the defect timer will pause automatically.
When you create or edit a defect, you can enter URLs to external websites in the defect description. These URLs can be used to link the defect to supporting references in a corporate defect tracker, a requirements management system, or any other web-based system. When such URLs are present, a hyperlink icon will appear over the "Description" pane, making it easy to quickly jump to the given URLs.
If a defect is logged to the wrong component/task, you can now use drag-and-drop in the Defect Log to move the defect to the correct location.
When defects are imported from ReviewBoard, the description will now include the filename and line number that each defect was logged against, as well as a hyperlink to the issue in ReviewBoard.
Several improvements have been made to dashboard charts and reports:
The Team Dashboard contains a new "Project Data Scanner" report, which analyzes team project data to look for common problems and highlight opportunities for improvement.
A monthly earned value status report is now available. This shows data in a format similar to the weekly report, but for an entire calendar month instead. It can be useful for tracking and communicating progress on a larger, longer term project.
The Tasks In Progress chart now offers a customization setting to color discs by assigned individual. Enabling this option makes it easier to see if a particular individual has a large number of problem tasks.
Since version 2.0.2, the Team Dashboard has provided automatic labels called "Completed_Tasks" and "Completed_Components". These labels make it simple to filter the team reports so they only show data for completed work. Now, these labels are available in the personal dashboard as well.
A mobile/smartphone application is available for use with the Process Dashboard. The mobile app works alongside the Process Dashboard, making it possible to perform a number of common tasks from an iPhone® or iPad® (AndroidTM support coming soon). (Note: the mobile app requires the use of the Process Dashboard Enterprise Server, version 3.6.0 or higher.)
The "Rate" column in the team workflow editor is only useful for very advanced teams (who have historical productivity data, and who are skilled enough to produce accurate size estimates during a launch). But even for those teams, its use is discouraged (since proxy estimation tables provide a significantly more robust way to produce size and time estimates). In recognition of these factors, the "Rate" column is now hidden on new projects by default. Teams that wish to use it can easily re-enable it by clicking the column selection button on the toolbar of the Workflow Editor window.
The WBS Editor now includes a "Collapse All" button on the toolbar.
The filter dialog in the WBS Editor now includes an option to show tasks that have not been assigned to any milestone.
The Relaunch Wizard now provides better handling for PSP tasks that are in-progress when a project is relaunched.
The embedded data warehouse now includes baseline dates and costs, project milestones, and task dependencies.
If the user starts the timer and then marks a task complete before a full minute has passed, the dashboard will now round the time log entry up to one minute if no time has ever been logged to that task in the past. This captures an individual's intent more accurately when a given project task requires a very short period of time.
The dashboard now provides improved support for individuals who work offline, or who experience intermittent connectivity to the team network data directory.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Process Dashboard 2.2 (Dec 3, 2015)

It is now possible to create custom data columns in the Work Breakdown Structure Editor. These can be used to tag WBS elements with team- or organization-specific attributes, such as priority, relevant subsystem, issue tracker ID, etc. The values entered can be used to filter team reports, and are also accessible to data warehouse queries.
The WBS Editor now includes a feature to create and edit proxy tables, which can be used to quickly estimate the size and time of WBS components.
The active task selector now dynamically moves older tasks into a "Completed Items" submenu. This reduces clutter and makes it easier to focus on active tasks. Users can configure the length of time that should pass before a completed task is moved into this menu.
The WBS Editor includes several powerful new features to make assigning and reassigning work easier:
The workflow editor includes a new "Performed By" column. You can enter generic role names like "author," "reviewer," "tester," etc. in this column; or if a specific person is always responsible for a certain task, you can enter their initials. When the workflow is applied to the WBS, team member initials result in automatic assignments, and role names are displayed as placeholders. You can click on a placeholder like «author» to assign an individual to all of the matching tasks.
In the past, the Assigned To column was only editable for leaf tasks. Now, it is editable for parent components as well. This makes it simple to reassign all of the tasks under a given component from one person to another.
Autocompletion support is provided in the Assigned To column as you type the initials of the assigned team members.
The WBS Editor include several powerful new features to assist with balancing and capacity planning:
In the WBS Editor, you can now choose a subset of the team and focus the colored balancing bar on those individuals. This makes it possible to see optimized balanced completion dates for a subgroup of people on a multidisciplinary team (for example, just the developers or just the testers). Subteams can be saved for use in future WBS editing sessions.
The WBS Editor has historically allowed the creation of "leaf" components, that have a time estimate but no subtasks; these are useful for many purposes such as capacity analysis and strategic planning. Now, it is also possible to assign such a component to one or more individuals, to model ownership and to perform rough capacity planning at the personal level.
It is now possible to highlight an individual milestone to assist with workload balancing: just click on a milestone segment in one of the colored balancing bars.
To visualize the workload balance of multiple milestones, you can now choose to recolor the balancing bars by milestone (rather than by individual).
The WBS Editor now includes an option to hide the horizontal and vertical bars that depict the balanced team duration.
Two new features make it easy to see how the Work Breakdown Structure has changed over time
In the WBS Editor, the "File" menu now includes an option to "Highlight and Review Changes." This option can flag all of the cells that have been modified since a certain date. Selecting a flagged cell then displays the history of how the value has changed over time, along with the name of the individual who made each change
A new report is available in the Team Dashboard that displays a chronological list of changes that have been made to the WBS of a project. The report displays information about tasks that have been added, deleted, and modified, and shows changes to the planned time for various WBS items
The WBS Editor now provides a "Reapply Workflow" menu option. This can find tasks in the WBS that were created by applying a workflow in the past, and update those tasks based on the current workflow definition, to include:
Inserting new workflow steps in the right order
Updating the names and types of workflow steps that have changed
Rearranging workflow steps if necessary
Deleting WBS tasks for workflow steps that have been deleted
Automatically assigning new tasks to individuals based on previously assigned workflow roles
Reallocating time across tasks based on updated workflow rates and/or percentages
A number of new charts have been added:
A chart showing the cumulative defect removal curve for a team project
A scatter chart showing the size and time estimating errors for all of the components in a team project
A trend chart showing how the CPI has changed over time
A variation on the Direct Time Trend chart which shows a line for each team member
A variation on the Earned Value Trend chart which shows a line for each team member
A two-dimensional trend chart displaying the evolution of actual/plan ratios for direct time and task cost
Several usability enhancements were made in the Task & Schedule window:
Right-clicking on a task displays a menu of useful shortcuts. You can open the time or defect log for the selected task, or copy task details to the clipboard for pasting into another program.
In the "Date" column, you can now use copy-and-paste to mark several tasks complete with the same completion date.
In the Chart dialog, you can now right-click on a chart and choose "Copy" to copy the image to the clipboard.
The Cumulative Earned Value and Cumulative Direct Time charts now include a "Replan" line.
When the Task & Schedule window opens, it will automatically select the row for the current week, and display it with a bold font.
The buttons on the main toolbar now have larger icons when the "large fonts" preference has been enabled, and the icon for the reports/scripts/tools button has been updated to better suggest its function.
By default, the dashboard will select the next task after you mark a task complete. If this behavior is undesired, it can now be disabled via the Preferences dialog.
In the personal dashboard, the Hierarchy Editor now allows individuals to move team projects to a different folder, by using the "Cut" and "Paste" buttons. Individuals can use this to move old project cycles to an "archive" folder.
It is now possible to export defect type standards to an XML file, then import them into another team or personal dashboard.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Process Dashboard 2.1.1 (Oct 31, 2014)

New in Process Dashboard 2.1 (Oct 3, 2014)

The Process Dashboard's internal web server has been enhanced to support Java servlets and JSPs. This makes it possible to develop custom reports using standard Java technologies, and run them against the project data in the Team Dashboard.
Significant new features have been added for Common Team Workflows:
In the WBS Editor, different icons are now used to visually distinguish tasks that were created by the application of a workflow. This makes it possible to track the process origin of a particular task in the plan.
In the Team Dashboard, a new "Workflow Process Analysis" report is provided on the script menu. This report shows the time spent in each step of the workflow, along with high-level metrics such as cost of quality and historical productivity rates.
When defining a workflow, teams can now add a special "Personal PROBE Planning" element. This element enables the assigned individual to use the Size Estimating Template and PROBE Wizard to generate size and time estimates for their work. It also provides a personal Project Plan Summary for the component, as well as a "To Date" report showing aggregate metrics for other components that the individual has produced using this workflow.
The Common Team Workflows window will now allow teams to prepopulate workflows with labels and notes. To do this, teams can click a button in the top-right corner of the workflows table to select the optional workflow columns they wish to edit.
The embedded database in the Team Dashboard now includes information about the workflows that were used to generate various tasks in a project plan.
A new Relaunch Wizard is provided to help teams prepare for team project relaunch meetings. This Relaunch Wizard:
Creates a new Team Project to hold the plan for the new iteration, and invites team members to join this new project iteration.
Copies the workflows, milestones, and team member schedules from the old plan to the new plan.
Copies incomplete components and tasks from the old plan to the new plan, and adjusts the planned times of in-progress tasks to account for work that has already been performed.
Marks the old project as closed, indicating that no additional work will be performed there. The next Sync WBS operation will help team members to close the remaining tasks on the old project.
Milestones receive significantly improved support within earned value schedules:
A new Milestones chart is available for earned value schedules in both the team and personal dashboard. This chart displays a horizontal bar for each milestone, comparing projected progress to the milestone commit dates. When the plan is not projected to satisfy a given milestone date, you can click on the corresponding bar and view a Gantt chart to determine which tasks are responsible for the slip.
The Task & Schedule window, EV report, and weekly report display a new Milestone column (rather than folding milestone data into the Labels column).
When a task is projected to miss a milestone commit date, the new Milestone column will visually flag an error and provide a tooltip with more information.
In Flat View, an individual can check a box to highlight all of the tasks associated with a particular milestone. When they do this, a dashed line is drawn over the list of tasks to illustrate the commit date when tasks must be completed. These features help the individual as they rearrange tasks to meet the deadline.
The enhanced charts are now available for all teams to use free of charge.
The Weekly EV Report has always displayed the total actual time logged against each completed and in-progress task. Now, it also displays the amount of time that was logged to each task during the week in question. This makes it possible to distinguish between active and idle tasks.
When filtering a report in the Team Dashboard, two new tokens are automatically available. "Completed_Tasks" filters the report to display the tasks that have been marked complete, and "Completed_Components" filters the report to show data from team project components that are 100% complete.
The active task selector has been redesigned to make better use of available space, and to better support complex projects with deep work breakdown structures. The main window now displays as much of the active task name as possible, and the portions that do not fit are displayed in an overflow menu.
It is now possible to move time log entries to a different task by dragging and dropping rows in the time log editor.
The Task & Schedule dialog now provides new options for working with multiple baselines:
You can now save multiple baselines for an EV schedule, providing a name and optional comment for each one.
You can view the list of baselines that have been saved for a schedule, edit their details, and delete them if necessary.
You can review the saved baselines for a schedule and select the one that should be "active" for the purposes of charts, reports, and calculations.
When individuals join a team project, they will experience a new streamlined joining process:
Instead of being presented with page after page of questions, they will see a single form that collects all the necessary information.
The new form provides reasonable default values whenever possible. Fields that need attention are visually highlighted so they stand out from the fields that already have a workable default value.
As they click on various fields, context-sensitive help is displayed to explain the data that is needed.
New performance tunings were added to improve the startup and shutdown time of large team and personal dashboards.
The "Find Task" functionality (available in the personal dashboard by typing Ctrl-F) has been improved for better usability. Completed tasks are indicated with a strikethrough, and past projects can be collapsed so they do not participate in the search operation.
A new option in the Team Member List makes it easy to move the start date of the entire team at once. This option is provided in the "Team Schedule Settings" window that appears when you click the date customization hyperlink.
The WBS Editor has traditionally displayed values with only one digit of precision after the decimal point. When numbers in a plan were smaller than 0.1, unusual rounding errors would sometimes occur. These problems have been corrected.
Additional keyboard shortcuts are now available for many actions in the WBS Editor.
A new user preference enables the main window's title bar to display timing information for the currently active task.
When an individual is participating in more than one team project simultaneously, they can create an EV Rollup in their personal dashboard to display a consolidated plan for their work. Now, the Task & Schedule window for that EV Rollup provides special support for balancing available task hours across the various projects. Clicking on the PT (planned time) column for a schedule row opens an interactive dialog for visually reallocating time and managing the total amount of time that has been committed across all of the projects.
If an individual leaves the timer running for several hours, the dashboard will now display a warning message asking if they did this intentionally. This can help individuals catch their mistake if they forget to stop the timer (for example, if they leave it running overnight).
The Task & Schedule dialog now has an "Expand All" option on the View menu.
Bug fixes:
Error when specifiying custom defect standard in the Team Dashboard
Error opening Team Dashboard
Calculation Error Encountered
EV Report Tree Expansion broken in IE 10
DB Error during WBS Editing
Adding a 3rd subproject to a master.
PSP Task time data excluded from label-filtered report

New in Process Dashboard 2.0 (Nov 8, 2013)

The Process Dashboard now includes a powerful new Data Warehouse component. This component stores team project data in a relational database, making it possible for external analysis and reporting tools to access project data via SQL queries.
The various reports, charts, and calculations in the Team Dashboard have been rewritten to take advantage of the Data Warehouse component. As a result, Team Dashboard reports are displayed 100 to 1000 times faster than before. Team Dashboard memory usage has also decreased significantly. Together, these improvements introduce a dramatic change in the scalability of the Team Dashboard for large and long-running project teams.
For over a decade, the Team Dashboard has reused the same graphical user interface as the "personal" Dashboard. With this release, the Team Dashboard now displays a redesigned user interface that focuses on the needs of coaches, team leaders, team role managers, and other users of consolidated team data. The new interface provides quick access to team tools and reports, improving productivity of existing teams, and reducing the learning curve for teams that are new to the Process Dashboard.
Historically, some teams have observed extremely long startup times for the Team Dashboard - especially when opening the data over a VPN, WAN, or other slow network. This version introduces a change to the storage strategy for team projects, enabling significantly faster startup times for the Team Dashboard.
When the Team Dashboard and Process Dashboard shut down, a task runs to export data for various team projects. Historically, as more team projects are added to a particular dashboard, this export step takes longer and longer. In this version, the export task has been streamlined significantly, allowing the dashboard to shut down much faster.
Significant improvements have been made to the efficiency of the earned value calculation logic, enabling earned value reports to display much faster than before.
The Defect Log Editor now includes an option to import defects from the Review Board code review tool.
A new REST API has been provided that makes it possible for external tools (running on the same computer as the personal Process Dashboard) to add entries to the Size Inventory Form for a Team Project.
The splash screen appears more quickly after clicking an icon to launch the Process Dashboard.
Fixes are included for a number of bugs.

New in Process Dashboard 1.15.0.1 (Jul 29, 2013)

New in Process Dashboard 1.15 (Jul 29, 2013)

It is now possible for multiple individuals to edit the Work Breakdown Structure at the same time:
When you save changes to the WBS, the application will check to see if other individuals have recently saved changes as well. If they have, the save operation will merge their changes into your view.
If you wish to merge other people's recently saved changes into your view without saving your own in-progress edits, a new "Refresh Data" option is available on the "File" menu for this purpose.
In either case, if the merge identifies editing conflicts (where you and another individual have made conflicting edits to the same value), warning messages will be displayed. These warnings include hyperlinks that help you to locate and recover from the editing conflict.
The Work Breakdown Structure Editor now includes a feature to save data to a ZIP file. This feature can be used to:
Create multiple alternative plans during a launch
Explore what-if replanning scenarios in the middle of a team project iteration
Save edits if the network server is temporarily unreachable
Copy components tasks, milestones, team members, and workflows into a new team project iteration
Many other significant changes were made to the Work Breakdown Structure Editor:
The WBS Editor now includes a filtering function. This makes it possible to focus in on the set of components and tasks that contain certain words in the name or notes, that are assigned to various people, that are complete/incomplete, or that have certain labels or milestones.
The WBS Editor now includes a search feature. This makes it possible to quickly find components or tasks whose name or notes contain particular words.
The colored balancing bars in the WBS Editor have been enhanced to calculate dates that align more closely to the "Replan" dates in the team earned value report.
The colored balancing bars can now display the typical number of hours per week each team member has in their schedule. A new menu option makes it possible to toggle this display on and off.
On the colored balancing bars, it is now possible to hide the colored diamonds and commit date lines for selected milestones. This can help reduce clutter when many intermediate milestones are present.
In the WBS Editor, the Task Details tab now contains a "Data Problems" column. When a coach, planning manager, quality manager, or other individual discovers a problem for a particular component or task, they can type a description of the problem in this field. Doing so will display a red highlight behind the component/task, making it easier to bring the item to the attention of another individual.
Move Up and Move Down buttons are now provided on the toolbar of the WBS Editor Milestones window.
The "Task Time" tab of the WBS Editor includes a column called "Task Size." When you create tasks underneath a component, the numbers in this column are automatically inherited from that component. Now, these numbers are editable as well, so you can override the size for a particular task.
The WBS Editor's memory footprint has been changed to help improve performance for teams with very large work breakdown structures.
Historically, if a Team Dashboard was opened in read-only mode, the read-only flag would also propagate to any WBS Editor windows that were opened. This linkage has been broken. As a result, an individual can now open the Team Dashboard in read-only mode (for example, to view team rollups), and then open the WBS Editor to make changes if problems are noted.
During a project launch, teams commonly need to perform high-level capacity planning - for example, to estimate the end-to-end project schedule and to choose the scope for various project iterations. Several changes have been made to facilitate this activity:
The WBS balancing panel now includes a "Team" row in addition to the colored bars for each team member. This new team row displays the balanced completion dates for each milestone, making it easier to distribute work across a series of future iterations.
In earlier versions of the dashboard, teams would have to create "placeholder" tasks to record time estimates for this future work. Now, rough time estimates (and milestones) can be entered directly on WBS components that have no subtasks, and the vertical black balancing bar will take these time estimates into account.
Teams may wish to enter vacation time or other schedule exceptions in the WBS Editor Team Member List months in advance. In the past, this would cause the team earned value charts to extend artificially far into the future (to include the week when the exception was recorded). The earned value charts have been enhanced to avoid this problem.
Several changes have been made to improve the usability of the user interface:
Historically, clicking the script button has opened the "default" script, form, or report for the currently active task. To view the menu of other available scripts and forms, it was necessary to click the small down-arrow to the right of the script button. In practice, however, opening the script menu is a far more common action. Accordingly, the behavior of the main script button has been changed to open the menu instead of opening the default script. For users who prefer the former behavior, a checkbox is provided in the Tools > Preferences window to revert back.
In the Task & Schedule window, it is now possible to choose the set of columns you prefer to see in the Task list. This can reduce clutter and make it easier to focus on the information that is most important to you. In addition, if the table columns are resized or rearranged, these changes will be remembered the next time you open that task list.
Several common items on the script menu have been given clearer, simpler names to reduce confusion and to lower the learning curve for people who are beginning their first team project.
The Preferences tool now includes an option to enable large fonts throughout the application.
Several enhancements have been made to the charts and reports:
The Weekly EV Report has always included "Previous" and "Next" links to scroll forward and backward in time. Now, it also includes a link for jumping directly to a specific date.
When applying a label filter to the Team Project Rollup Plan Summary, autocompletion support is now provided as you type.
The Tasks In Progress chart is now configurable, allowing you to change the red overspent rings to either black or white.
When viewing the Kanban chart for a team, you can now filter the list of tasks by assigned individual.
Several enhancements have been made to the LOC Counting support:
The LOC counter now includes support for counting changes made to files in a subversion repository. The count can include uncommitted changes made to a working copy as well as changes made in past revisions. Multiple past revisions can be listed, and need not be not consecutive.
The LOC Counter report is often used during the postmortem phase of a PSP project to measure added, deleted, and modified lines of code. Now, individuals can drag data from that report and drop it onto a row in the Size Estimating Template to apply actual size metrics.
When creating tasks and workflows in the WBS, it is a best practice to use a PSP Task to represent detailed software development activities. Several improvements have been made to this support:
In the WBS, a PSP Task can be followed by Design and Code Inspection tasks to represent the associated peer reviews. When this pattern has been followed, the Task & Schedule "Flat View" will now automatically insert the inspections into the correct order within the phases of the PSP task.
The dashboard has always allowed individuals to configure multiple collections of "To Date" data that can be used to track different types of work. Now, new options on the Team Project Parameters and Settings page allow individuals to select which "To Date" rollup they would like to use for new PSP tasks.
Teams sometimes encounter, fix, and log defects that should not technically count against their quality metrics. (For example, they might fix a defect in legacy code that they inherited from some external source.) Individuals can now enter 0 in the "Fix Count" field of the defect dialog to indicate that a defect should not count against quality metrics such as yield or defect density.
If you drag-and-drop an empty directory onto the Quick Launcher, it will now ask you if you wish to create a new Team or Personal dataset there.
When saving a data backup file, it has historically been possible to save in either ZIP or PDBK format. Now, a third option is available: "Redacted Process Dashboard Backup." Choosing this format allows you to select various categories of data (for example, names of individuals, projects and tasks) that should be scrambled or removed from the backup. This can be a useful tool to protect privacy or confidentiality.
Fixes for many bugs: #3414722, #3568544, #3568552, #3568555, #3568563, #3568565, #3568567, #3568568, #3568576, #3568577, #3568580, #3568582, #3568583, #3568585, #3568588, #3568589, #3568591, #3568592.

New in Process Dashboard 1.14.0.1 (Jul 29, 2013)

New in Process Dashboard 1.14 (Jul 29, 2013)

Significant changes were made to the earned value support:
It is now possible to customize the set of charts that appear on the earned value report. In addition, clicking on these charts now opens a page displaying a larger chart with helpful instructions on how the chart can be used and interpreted.
The Earned Value report now includes a "More Charts" hyperlink. Clicking on this link makes it possible to see all of the EV charts in the web browser. (Previously, many of these charts were only available in the "Chart" dialog of the Task & Schedule window.)
New charts have been added to display the Earned Value Trend and the Direct Time Trend.
The earned value report now includes a "Kanban View" of the tasks that have been completed recently, the tasks that are in progress, and the tasks that are planned for the near future.
By default, the bars on the Gantt charts depict dates from the Forecast column of the task list. Now, a configuration button makes it possible to depict Plan, Replan, or Baseline dates instead.
In the past, the Weekly EV report used generic phrases such as "Tasks Completed This Week." This wording was confusing for views of data in the past or the future. These section headings have been altered to be clearer and more descriptive.
New topics have been added to the online help for each of the earned value charts. These topics explain how to interpret the data in each chart, and provide helpful analysis tips for people who are new to earned value tracking.
A new help topic has been added that explains the difference between Plan, Replan, and Forecast dates. This help topic explains these three calculations in detail, so users can understand and appreciate the differences between the dates that are generated.
The WBS now has a special "personal editing mode." When the WBS is opened from a personal dashboard instead of the Team Dashboard (and the team leader has not disabled edits by team members), the WBS becomes aware of the individual who opened it, and changes its behavior:
Newly created tasks are automatically assigned to the individual who opened the WBS.
If the individual makes a change that affects one of their coworkers, the WBS will display a warning and offer to undo the change.
The individual is only allowed to edit their own row in the Team Member List.
The individual can disable these features if desired by toggling a checkbox in the "Team" menu. (So for example, these new features will not prevent a Planning Manager from making changes to their coworker's tasks.)
Numerous changes were made to provide better support for the SEI PSP courses:
A new Student Profile element has been added to the PSP course assignment sequence, giving students an opportunity to answer questions about their job position, experience, and so on.
The Analysis Report exercises now allow the use of the Size Estimating Template and PROBE.
"To Date" metrics are no longer reset on the first PSP2 project in a PSP Fundamentals & Advanced course.
During the PSP course, PROBE Method D for Size will require students to use their Estimated Proxy Size verbatim; they will not be allowed to edit the number.
During the PSP course, the PROBE Wizard will not offer PROBE Method C1 for Size as a selectable option.
The final page of the PROBE Wizard has always performed a sanity check on the planned productivity. If it is unrealistic, the wizard prints a warning message and takes the user back to reevaluate their estimates. Unfortunately, that warning message was easy to overlook, resulting in confusion when the PROBE wizard looped back to the earlier pages. The buttons and messages on the sanity check page have been altered to make it more clear that a planning error may be present.
When students are allowed to edit the quality plan and they produce phase times that do not sum up properly, an error message is now displayed on the Project Plan Summary.
Student data can now be exported to an XML file.
When capturing defect data, individuals can now:
Make a single entry to represent several related defects that were found and fixed simultaneously.
Mark a defect as "pending" (i.e. found, but not yet removed).
Alter the date associated with the defect entry.
Several usability enhancements have been made to the WBS Editor and the team project integration features:
The Team Project Setup Wizard will now provide suggested default values for the team process, the name of the EV schedule, and the location of the Team Project Network Directory.
If an individual enters their initials incorrectly when joining a team project, the "Sync to WBS" operation will detect this error and display a message, helping them to correct it.
Actual Size is now displayed in the WBS Editor for each component in the hieararchy.
The charts in the Rollup Plan Summary report will now use consistent colors to represent the various phases in the standard metrics collection frameworks. This makes it easier to correlate data between several charts.
When a note is attached to the root node of the project in the WBS Editor, that note will now be copied down into the personal plans of each individual. This can be used to record helpful project-specific URLs for team use.
In the past, if a node was deleted from the WBS and a new node was created in its place with the same name, the Sync to WBS operation would perform a similar delete/recreate operation. Now, the Sync to WBS attempts to detect this scenario and reuse the existing node instead of deleting/recreating it. (Note: deleting/recreating nodes in the WBS is still discouraged; but now when the mistake occurs, the consequence should be less severe.)
In the past, the WBS editor would display a confirmation prompt every time you request to delete a node. Now, the WBS Editor will only display this confirmation prompt when the node to be deleted has actual time associated with it - and the warning message has been altered to describe this new condition.
In the past, when a leaf task in the WBS was subdivided, the next "sync to WBS" operation would often result in a "top-down-bottom-up" error in the personal plan of the affected individual. This problem has been corrected.
Significant changes were made to the installer for the Process Dashboard:
On 64-bit Windows, sometimes the installer would not create Process Dashboard shortcuts. This problem has been corrected.
If a user has less than 800MB of memory (for example, because they are running in a virtual machine), the Process Dashboard shortcuts would fail to start the application. The installer has been adjusted to create shortcuts that work on systems with limited memory. (Note that the Process Dashboard does not require or use that much memory; the problem was with the shortcut icon itself, not the application.)
Several changes have been made to improve compatibility with various programs and operating systems:
The "Export to Excel" hyperlinks have been tweaked to improve compatibility with a variety of web browsers and with newer versions of Microsoft Office.
If the dashboard data directory was unreachable (for example, because it was on a network drive that was unavailable), or if other operating-system-specific problems prevented the dashboard from locking the data, the dashboard was incorrectly displaying a message claiming that someone on another computer had locked the data. This error message has been corrected and clarified.
The "Import Defects from Code Collaborator" feature was not working against Code Collaborator version 6. This problem has been corrected.
The "Generic" process template now allows the use of the Size Estimating Template and PROBE. (This functionality will appear for projects created using the Generic process template after upgrading to version 1.14.)
The "C > Tools" menu now includes an "Open Dataset" option, giving all users the ability to open data backup ZIP files.
When users filter the Time Log Editor to display the current week, they can now easily select which day of the week to use as the starting point.
In the past, when a user made a change to a data value within the Process Dashboard, that change might take 30 seconds to appear on the Project Plan Summary form in their web browser. Now, these changes will appear in the web browser immediately.
The LOC counter that is built in to the Process Dashboard will now count lines appropriately even when comment indicators appear within string literals.
When all the tasks in a earned value task list share a common path prefix (common for team projects), the Flat View will extract that common prefix, making the display easier to read.
In the defect log editor, a combo box displays the defect type standard that has been set at each level of the hierarchy. In the past, when a defect type standard had been set at the team project level, nothing was displayed in this combo box for individual, leading people to think that their standard had not taken effect. Now, this combo box will display the name of the defect type standard that was set by the team project, minimizing confusion.

New in Process Dashboard 1.13 (Jul 29, 2013)

Several enhancements have been made in the Work Breakdown Structure Editor:
A strikethrough font is now used in the "Assigned To" column to indicate which individuals have completed a multi-person task.
"Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons have been added to the toolbar.
The Team Member List will now allow you to reorder individual team members using drag-and-drop.
If you are starting a new project iteration, you can now use Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V to copy and paste team members from the old team member list to the new team member list.
In the past, when individual team members open the WBS from their personal dashboard, the WBS Editor would sometimes unexpectedly open in read-only mode. This problem has been corrected.
In the past, the Team Dashboard's Team Project Parameters and Settings page displayed a checkbox allowing the team leader to decide whether team members could edit the WBS. This checkbox has been moved into the Work Breakdown Structure Editor itself, in the "Edit > Preferences" dialog. As a result, if a team leader has locked down the WBS (forbidding edits by team members), they will need to reaffirm this choice in the "Edit > Preferences" dialog of the WBS Editor after upgrading to version 1.13
If you insert a workflow underneath a component that has a LOC size estimate, the "Code" or "PSP" task in that workflow will automatically inherit that LOC estimate.
Several enhancements have been made in the WBS Common Team Workflows window:
It is now possible to define a workflow that distributes time across various phases using percentages, even if your team does not use size estimates or historical productivity rates.
The keyboard accessibility of the Common Team Workflows editor has been improved. Keystrokes such as Tab, Enter, Delete, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, and Ctrl-X will now perform more intuitive, spreadsheet-like behaviors when the focus is not in the first column.
The Task Size Units column now supports autocompletion.
The semantics of the "%" column have changed for tasks in a workflow that are performed by more than one person. Please consult the help documentation for more information.
Several enhancements have been made in the Task & Schedule window:
When an individual views one of their personal earned value task lists in the Task & Schedule window, they will see a "Notes" column that allows them to view and edit the notes associated with each component or task.
A strikethrough font is now used to indicate tasks that are 100% complete.
When an individual views one of their personal earned value task lists in the Task & Schedule window, the schedule pane (in the lower portion of the window) now contains a "Notes" column. This column can be used to record arbitrary information about a particular schedule period, such as the reason why a particular week has an unusual number of planned or actual direct task hours.
When you toggle from "Tree View" to "Flat View" and back, the currently selected task will be preserved.
A new charting and reporting extension is available. This optional extension can display Gantt charts, burn-down charts, and several other useful views of earned values schedules.
The Defect Log Editor now provides a feature to Import defects from the system clipboard. This can be used to copy and paste defects from an external source, like a web page or an Excel spreadsheet.
The "Tools > Preferences" dialog now provides an "Always on Top" option. (This feature will only appear if you are using Java 1.6 or higher.)
If you pause the timer on the main dashboard toolbar, it will pause the "Fix Time" timer on the currently active defect dialog as well. If you subsequently resume the main dashboard timer, it will resume the defect fix timer as well.
The dashboard has always allowed you to set an "END" date for a personal earned value schedule. (This feature is typically used to record the date when an individual will unequivocally leave a project team, due to an impending reassignment.) When an individual with an END date is assigned too much work, their personal schedule may project that certain tasks will "never" be completed. Although that information is useful at an individual level, it can result in a frustrating lack of insight at the team level. Now, when one of these schedules is a part of a team schedule, the team rollup schedule will hypothetically rebalance these tasks to the rest of the team, calculate the date when the rest of the team might complete the tasks, and display that completion date in the team's "merged" view. The "Assigned To" column for such a task will indicate that the task has been hypothetically rebalanced to the team.
Fixes for several bugs: #3064050, #3064051, #3064053, #3064054, #3064057, #3064059, #3064060.