Some notes
Hi,
I want to share some notes I have after a short period testing Kunagi:
1. Installation on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS: The web site suggests to install the package sun-java6-jdk which is not available in the distribution, it's been deprecated long ago. I installed openjdk-6-jdk instead and Kunagi seems happy with it so far.
2. There seems to be a bug when you add five or more tasks to a story from the sprint's whiteboard page. I click "New Task" and nothing happens, I don't get the new task entry right away. This is usually solved in either of two ways:
2a. I randomly click other Kunagi menus and then go back to the sprint's whiteboard to find the <new> task there. There is however a message about an invalid key displayed in the left column.
2b. Kunagi crashes with the message "Unexpected error: IndexOutOfBoundsException: null Restarting your session..." After a couple of seconds Kunagi is back and then I can access the <new> task.
3. When creating a new backlog entry, the "Estimated work" select box has a list of options 0.5, 1, 2, 3, ... 100. What do these numbers mean? are they hard-coded? It is not clear whether these numbers relate to the backlog's entry priority settings or not, do they?
4. On a related question, how do I set priorities to backlog entries? These should be different from "Estimated work" since there is no implicit mapping between the complexity of a backlog entry and its priority.
5. suggestion There should be a way to get a list of only the tasks I am working on so that I can quickly proceed to update them (say, burn time). The current options such us looking up your name in the dashboard or in the sprint's whiteboard, are slow. The current methods are particularly annoying when the number of tasks is large, which tends to happen when the number of developers grow. In my test case, with 10 developers, this is the item developers complain about more often.
6. Is e-mail handling supported? I can't get it to work ... maybe I need to try harder.
Thank you.
Statement from Kunagi Team
1. Some time ago we had problems with OpenJDK, while SunJDK was working. Using the OpenJDK is perfectly fine now. We will update the instructions on the website.
2. This bug is known as iss242. Currently, we cannot reproduce it any more, so we assume it has been "accidentally fixed" during the work on our next release that is due around September 10th. Should the problem still occur, don't hesitate to contact us again.
3. The estimated work on Stories has nothing to do with priority. The priority of Stories is modelled by it's order in the backlog.
The Story Points, however, provide a measure of the complexity of work. Estimating the Product Backlog allows the Team to decide how much they can commit to implement during one Sprint, and the Product Owner to see a projection of what the Team might accomplish during the upcoming Sprints (given their past velocity).
Story Points are an abstract value and are used to make a relative estimation. In Scrum the slightly modified Fibonacci row you can see in Kunagi is state of the art. It is a Fibonacci scale, because it suits the idea of estimating: the higher the complexity of the Task, the more likely the estimation is to diverge from the actual complexity. Therefore, we do not estimate a complex Story with 39 or 43 points, we just say it's "about 40"...
The Team can use Planning Poker to estimate the backlog. It's important to realize how relative estimation works: A Story of 3 points is roughly half the size of a 5 point story and approximately as complex as a 2 point and a 3 point story taken together. Using this technique, estimation becomes surprisingly precise.
Estimating the Product Backlog is the Team's responsibility; the Product Owner only provides information of the Stories' scope. The Team will soon figure out their own idea of Stories of simple complexity (like 1 or 2 Story Points) and be able to relatively estimate other Stories accordingly.
If you want more Information on Story Points and estimation, search for: relative estimation, planning poker, story points, etc. on the web.
4. The priorities of the Product Backlog are set by dragging the Stories up (higher priority) or down (lower priority). To drag, you have to click and hold on the Story reference icon on the left.
5. We will discuss this suggestion. It's now known as iss265 and it's state can be viewed here: kunagi.org/iss265.html
6. What do you mean by e-mail handling?
Status
Issue is closed.