XSARUS Redmine workflow

Redmine

Redmine is the central project management tool used by XSARUS. The following three workflows use this tool: projects, development through, and service desk. This document relates to the development workflow.

Redmine prevents information from being delivered to individuals by email or phone and therefore may not be known to the team working on the project. In addition, Redmine provides a fixed workflow for accepting new work and eventually delivering it to the production environment.

Redmine's standard views can appear cluttered with dozens of issues. Using the column, filter and group functionalities will quickly give you a better overview.

Created overviews can be saved so you can easily use them again when you log back in at a later time.

Structuring Redmine

In Redmine, the Business Value column can be added to the statements. You do this by clicking on options in the Issues tab and adding the column BV to the selected columns:

Then in the same screen, clean up the column view so that you only have the columns below selected and group the results by status.

You have now created an overview that contains all the information you need to work in Redmine in a structured way. Save the overview so that it is visible in the right menu under "My custom queries".

Explanation of important columns

In the XSARUS workflow, some columns are leading. Correct use of these columns promotes work flow.

Status
The status indicates the stage an issue is at.

Status options:

• New
• Analysis: doing
• Analysis: done
• Development: to do
• Development: planned
• Development: doing
• Development: done
• Test: to do
• Test: OK
• Test: NOK

Environment
The Environment column combined with the status says something about progress of the issue and the location where the work is taking place.

Environment options:

• Empty
  In this case, the issue is not available on any of the environments or is just consulting work that does not require an environment.
• Development/Preview/Staging
  If an issue is assigned to one of these environments, it is in progress or available on the staging environment for testing.
• Production
  An issue with the production environment is available on the production or live environment and can be tested on this environment.

Business Value
The Business Value (BV) can be used to indicate the order of issue processing. This works with values from 0 to 100:

• No BV or BV 0: unimportant
• BV 100: urgent

All values between 0 and 100 can be used to prioritize issues relative to each other.

Priority
Priority can be used to bring extra attention to issues (especially during the refinement or plan session), but is secondary to a Business Value.

Assigning issues

In Redmine, you can see in the “Assignee” column who the issue has been assigned to. At that point, the responsibility and action lies with that person.

Is an issue assigned to you and have you followed up on the issue? Then link the issue back to the person who assigned the issue to you.

Do you want to draw someone's attention to an issue? Then use a monkey tail (@) and type in the name:

When you do this, the person will receive an e-mail that he/she has been mentioned in an issue.

My issue overview

If you click on "My page" in the upper left corner, you will see all issues assigned to you in one overview.

Description of issue

Everyone benefits from an efficient throughput and thus a short turnaround time for work. The more completely an issue is created, the sooner it can be refined*. The sooner an issue is refined, the smoother it can be included in the planning.

*Every week, the development team holds a refinement meeting. During this meeting, issues are worked out technically and assessed for complexity based on the information in the issue. This results in an estimate of the number of hours based on the information in the issue. Only when an issue has an hour estimate can it be scheduled during the plan meeting.

Redmine shortcuts

In order to simplify your use of Redmine and reduce administrative tasks, a floating element is available in Redmine containing five shortcuts:

📋 Copy title of ticket
Allows you to easily copy the title of a ticket.

🔗 Copy URL of ticket

Allows you to easily copy the url and title of a ticket, useful for communication with colleagues and communication towards the team you are working with at XSARUS.

📝 Add new ticket description
Allows you to fill the description field of a new ticket with a fixed structure in one click. With this you ensure that the ticket is set up completely and clearly. Under the five headings, work out the issue and save the issue. This ultimately results in the following structure:

🛟 Add problem ticket description
Allows you to fill the field of a new ticket with a fixed structure for describing a problem in one click. You use this structure to ensure that the problem is explained clearly and reproducibly. Under the five headings, work out the problem and save the issue.