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This feature is not yet stable. It is in preparation for the next release and will be available until end of June 2012. |
Idea
There are two different time planning levels within ictime:
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Apart from having two different places to enter time budget planning information, there is also a specific approach for being able to manage rough time budget plans and detailing planning at the same time. This is explained in detail in this chapter.
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Please note that planning in ictime is always time-based. Even though you can assign a cost/price to you work for time you log, we do not offer financial budget planning at this stage, but just time-planning. |
Planning Approach
When you plan your project, especially in the beginning, you might only have a very high-level planning (e.g. time budgets on project or component level), and with the time, you can go more into details (tasks, sub-tasks). So you need to start planning with very rough numbers, but of course with the time, you want to benefit from being able to plan more in detail. It also might happen that some people in general prefer to plan top-down and others want to plan bottom-up:
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As a conclusion and to cover both needs, you need to set top-down time budgets on a certain level, and at the same time, you want to use bottom-up time budgets that are derived from a more detailed planning on lower levels. How this can be reached is described in the following.
| Info |
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Please note that planning in ictime is always time-based. Even though you can assign a cost/price to you work for time you log, we do not offer financial budget planning at this stage, but just time-planning. |
| Table of Contents |
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Planning Approach
When doing the planning and when showing time planning values, we distinguish two kinds of values:
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Even though it might be difficult to understand in the beginning, it is very simple. It's basically all about the component time planning value. By setting a generic plan value on component level, you decide that this value should be used for calculating the results for the project (top-down approach, not very detailed). By not setting it, you decide that the calculated result for the component (= work estimates for all task/sub-tasks of the component) should be used for calculating the project time budget (bottom-up approach, detailed). |
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Examples
Have a look at the following example:
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If you don't use components and/or if you have tasks without component assignment, such tasks will be automatically summed up into a "virtual" component provided by ictime in order not to break the logic that all calculated values always need to come from the next-lower level("No Component"). You can't set a generic plan value for this "component" of course, but the calculated value will be considered for the project like it were a real component. This way, work estimates on task level are made available to calculate the planning value for the project without having a real component. |
Setting Plan Values
Work Estimates (Issue Level)
Plan values on the level of tasks and/or sub-tasks are managed via the respective JIRA functionality. See http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Logging+Work+on+an+Issue#LoggingWorkonanIssue-Specifyingtimeestimates and Work Estimates, Remaining Estimate.
Component
Project
Target/Actual Comparison (Reports)
Accuracy / Planning Progress
Difference in % between a generic and calculated value on one level (indicates that detailed planning is required)
Planned/Logged
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