Iteration overview

The Iteration Overview gives the user the ability to visualise important metrics for the iteration and an overview of his team and the work that needs to be done.  

The Iteration Overview is divided into four main components

• Iteration Header
• Iteration Timeline
• Iteration Backlog
• Iteration Board

Iteration Header

The Iteration Header displays metrics for the selected iteration.

The following metrics are displayed from left to right side of the header:

1. Iteration Name 
2. Team Commitment which is editable by hovering over the field, given that the user has the permission to edit it.
3. Iteration dates and number of days remaining.  These dates are editable by hovering over the fields
4. Story points if they are configured in JIRA Agile
5. Iteration Workload - Sum of remaining estimate divided by sum of Team's total remaining availability 

Iteration Timeline

Team Backlog overview with Iteration Timeline expanded (click to enlarge)

Issue forecasting on the iteration timeline

Issues are automatically placed on the iteration timeline to create a forecast of the work schedule of team members. Issues are forecast on the timeline if they meet all of the following criteria:

• The issue is in the iteration.
• The issue has a remaining estimate.
• The issue status is not closed or resolved.
• The issue is assigned to a team member.

Forecast issues are colored green. 

Issues that are not in the iteration are also displayed on the timeline, and colored blue, if they are planned for individual team members for the days of the iteration. The blue issues are not part of the forecast.

Worklogs are also displayed if team members logged work on issues in the iteration.

You cannot drag issues to the iteration timeline. The issues are automatically arranged according to their ranking. Also, issues that are marked as blocking other, linked issues are placed after the issues that they block.

Issue dependency display in Iteration Timeline (click to enlarge)

Issue Linking

In this version the only issue link type used is blocks / is blocked by and are included as one of four default link types in new installations of JIRA.

If Blocked is not available on your instance you can create it as a new link type as documented in JIRA documentation.

If manually created the following must be respected:

1. Name: Blocked
2. Outwards Description: blocks
3. Inward Description: is blocked by

 This feature is not working in this version if other names are selected.

Iteration Backlog

The Iteration Backlog is displayed on the left side of the status board below the timeline.  It shows all unassigned issues that have been added to the sprint/iteration and groups them by Epics. The total remaining hours are displayed to the right of the Unassigned Issues header.  The issue cards in the backlog all have the following metrics, displayed from left to right

• Left handle with the 'status colour'
  • Blue - New
  • Yellow - In Progress
  • Green - Done
• Issue type and priority icon
• Issue key
• Issue name
• Fix version, if available
• Story Points, if configured
• Remaining estimate

To assign issues from the backlog, the issues can be dragged and dropped on the status lane for the prospective assignee.

Iteration Board

By using the Iteration Status Board you can get a great overview of the current status for your team.

Team Backlog for the Rocket 6 iteration (click to enlarge)

Member Availability

Member Availability for an iteration, is shown to the right on the screen for each user where negative numbers  indicates that the user does not have enough remaining availability for the assigned issues.

The availability for the team is displayed in the header. It is based on the total team hours remaining availability, minus sum of remaining estimate for the assigned issues.

Issues that are in the selected iteration and assigned to a user who is not in the team are displayed in the bottom of the Member section for informational purpose. Those issues are not used in the availability calculations.

Status Category

On the Iteration Status Board the assigned issues are divided into the issue status categories available in JIRA 6.2 and later versions. The category colours are Blue for New, Yellow for In Progress and Green for Complete. Issues have a left border with the status category colour.