In two weeks we will release a completely new navigation in TargetProcess. It was designed to follow several rules:

1. Flatness. It is completely flat. No hierarchies. Currently there are 3 hierarchy levels in TargetProcess, there will be just one soon.
2. Customization. Every person will be able to configure the navigation. It may have just 2-3 tabs or 9-10 tabs. See what you need, no more.
3. Simplicity. We had long process of designing it,
   prototyping it and testing it. There were usability tests in live sessions and they were very valuable.

You may check interactive prototype (note that it is not full and final application, just a proof of concept prototype) and provide your feedback.

We’ve released new TP.Tray in BETA today. Feel free to download (1 Mb) and use it! Any feedback is welcome.

Note: Tp.Tray is a Windows-only application, it allows you to quickly capture screenshots, edit them and post bugs in TargetProcess.

Download Tp.Tray.

Some projects might have a complex workflow with many roles involved e.g. a User Story can have Developer, QA, Analyst, Verifier roles associated with it.  So you might want to know who’s currently working on a User Story as you look at USs  list, with no sideway clicks to other pages.

That’s why we implemented the active role highlight in TargetProcess 2.18.4:

We did our best to provide the complete information about TargetProcess  on the web-site and in User Guides. Still,  judging by the questions people send in, there’s a need to write some sort of guide to our support documentation and videos.

Even if you’ve been working with TargetProcess for a while, we’d still recommend to look at this blog post on TargetProcess do-it-yourself training for some useful learning tips.

If you’re looking to get a demo of what TargetProcess does as an agile project management tool and decide if you need to sign-up for a trial, go to our Product page with all its sub-pages.  Note, that Download page includes plug-ins listed on the Integration page, as well as TP Tray and HelpDesk.

Free Edition, one of the sub-pages, is worth a special note. This is a sign-up page.  BUT one thing to remember is that even if it’s FREE edition, TargetProcess is fully functional and comes with all the updates for free as well. The only limitation of free edition is the amount of licenses which is 5.  So, there’s no need to sign-up for new free edition trials over and over again if you want an upgrade.  You’re entitled to fully functional TargetProcess software with all the upgrades and new releases for free, if you’ve got a team of 5. If by any chance you forgot your account name, or you’ve lost your installation file, or you haven’t had time to look at TargetProcess and want to resume the evaluation, just email us and we will send you all your account information. We keep it and it’s out job to provide it when needed.

Support is your main destination as an eager TargetProcess user :). You  can post  ideas and requests to HelpDesk from there, read User Guides, watch videos, and contact our live chat. TargetProcess System Requirements are also there along with Microsoft Web Platform Installer required to run TargetProcess on-site edition.

On to User Guides. We’ve got .pdfs mostly, but TargetProcess User Guide comes online and is searchable. You can type in any term there and look at search results.

It might take us time to get back to you with personal answers, although we usually answer within 24 answers. But what if you need this answer right away? You might find it yourself with no waste wait time if you use those tips.

Enjoy working with TargetProcess

We’ve got an interesting new tool in TargetProcess 2.18.1 — Bug Pain plugin. It emerged from our own “bug pains”  to empower decision making for QA team as they pull some bug to fix, with no Product Owner involved.

Disclaimer: QA Team are aware of product development strategy, they just needed some help with bugs prioritization when Product Owner is not available to talk.

Bug Pain value in TargetProcess depends on “Severity, “Visibility” and “Class” values as below:

“Severity” indicates bug severity per se. This could be some grave error that ruins the whole release or a small UX flaw. We’ve got the following “Severity” values:

5 - Much anger & crying - No workaround
4 – Anger & swearing - Difficult workaround
3 – Annoyance & frustration - Easy workaround
2 – Confused
1 – Laugh if notice

“Visibility” indicates how many users are likely to spot bug and how soon. E.g. it takes 10 steps to reproduce bug (random not straightforward steps), in a browser used by 1% of people -  or this is an error on Login Page for 100% users as they attempt to login.  Our Visibility values are:

1 - ~5%
2 - <50%
3 - >50%
4 - ~100%

“Class” shows relevance of bug in the context of product development strategy.  This value can differ for each particular company/project/product.  Speaking of TargetProcess, improving usability is paramount for us at the moment.  So, a bug with usability related Class will be more important than a bug found by Trial User.  Here’re the Classes we’ve got:

1 – No customer, Security
2 – Free/Trial user, Cosmetic
3 – Paid Customer, Usability, Whoops

Bug Pain is calculated based on this formula:

[Bug Pain] = X * [Severity] + Y * [Visibility] + Z * [Class],

where X, Y, Z are specified in the plugin setup (8, 5 and 4 respectively).  These values have been identified experimentally based on common sense for a cloud of bugs and may vary for each particular company/project/product:

Next, bugs can be filtered by Bug Pain value.  The most important and urgent bugs will be on top of the list and should be fixed first:

This plug-in is a helpful tool for Product Owners and QA Teams as they prioritize bug fixes.

Bug Pain plug-in comes out-of-the box with TargetProcess now.

We released TargetProcess 2.18.2 today with several fixes and cute pics  in Kanban board: visual bugs and tasks count for user stories.

This is not an ultimate health diagnostic utility for user stories, but it’s at least possible to see right away how many bugs and tasks are wrapped in in it.

If you have any better images for “bugs” and “tasks” :), you’re welcome to submit your comments to TargetProcess UX Group:

http://groups.google.com/group/uxtargetprocess

Today we updated TargetProcess Roadmap page.

Our roadmap is really worth looking at now since  we’re working on some particularly exciting things - fully customizable navigation, improved TP Tray and multiple projects support.

Stay tuned and let us know what you think of those new navigation concepts!

We’ve got TargetProcess UX community for enthusiastic contributors:

http://groups.google.com/group/uxtargetprocess

In the new 2.18 release we got rid of an obsolete entity that existed in TargetProcess since primeval times and caused lots of questions and confusions from our customers. We removed Actors.

That’s how the workflow edit screen looked previously — each entity state was supposed to have an Actor, and Actors were supposed to be managed for this single purpose:

Roles were supposed to be managed as well in another screen. This added confusion — what is Actor, what is Role, where Actor should be applied, where Role etc.  Now Roles are used for workflow setup as well, and there are no Actors anymore.

In a nutshell, Actors were waste. We’re looking now to make TargetProcess less clicky, more crispy and laconic. So we said “bye” to Actors and now go only with Roles.

Soon (in February) we will release a completely new Tp.Tray. It is a small windows-based application that helps you to capture screenshots and post bugs into TargetProcess really fast. In fact it will be a free screen capture utility with a nice interface and basic functionality.

There are many new features and improvements in Tp.Tray. It will be possible to capture several screenshots and store them in a library for future use.

Next, you’ll be able to merge several screenshots into one image and edit it as required. Editing is much more powerful and optimized for screenshots with annotations.

In the next releases we will extend Tp.Tray with some nice capabilities like:

• Instant notifications about events in TargetProcess
• Ability to add Features, Stories and Requests quickly
• My ToDo list
• Automatic time tracking

Stay tuned!

TargetProcess allows to create virtually ANY custom workflow. What you need is a little bit of thinking and creative approach.

Let’s look at the communication thread below:

Customer:I want to add a custom field to the story template; I would also like it to be (or not to be) a certain value for the story to be able to be marked done. Thanks.

TargetProcess Team: Can you give us an example of what you’re looking for this custom field to be, please?

Customer: I want to make sure that documentation is written before the story is closed. So maybe radio buttons? It could start as “needs documentation” then have options of “documentation written” or “documentation n/a,” both of which could be chosen for the case to be able to be closed.

TargetProcess Team: Unfortunately, TargetProcess doesn’t allow you to create such a “dependency” on the state of an entity. But you may create custom fields that are “required” fields; forcing someone to pick the status of the documentation (needs, written, or n/a) upon the creation of a user story.  You could include “needs doc” as a state before “closed”.

As you see, basically, you could juggle with custom fields and custom states to get what you need.