Plan types

Choose from the following plan types based on your team's development style.

Release plan

A Release plan is the highest-level plan in IBM® Engineering Workflow Management that provides a brief overview of the project goals. A Release plan displays plan items, such as Stories and Epics that are associated with a project area or team area, child team areas, current iteration, and its child iterations.

Although you can create a Release plan for any iteration, it is advisable to create a Release plan for the top iteration.

In the Plan Details, the Release plan has a check box to Include All Items, which includes execution items from subteams and past iterations in the plan. If the plan view is grouped by iterations, it does not include execution items from child teams or show items from past iterations.

In the Formal Project Management process template, the following plan views are provided by default:

Schedule Variance: Displays and colorizes work items based on the expression. There is no difference between the planned time that is captured in the planned snapshot and the current schedule. The Proposed and Planned start and end dates are populated from the dates in the Proposed and Planned snapshots.
Traceability: Displays Engineering Lifecycle Management traceability columns for Test By and Affected By.
Note: This view is only visible when a project area association exists with IBM Engineering Requirements Management DOORS® Next or IBM Engineering Test Management.
Work Breakdown: Groups work items by owner. Displays a hierarchical view based on the parent-child relationship of the work items
Work Breakdown and Schedule: Displays work items and the Gantt chart based on phases. You can use the Gantt chart to view the progress of a plan, dependencies between work items, and viewing critical path. You can also use the Gantt chart to change the schedule of work items.

Note: If you follow the Scrum or Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) Program process template, a Release plan is called a Release Backlog.

In the Scrum process template, a Release Backlog groups work items based on the following plan views by default:

Ranked List: Displays work items based on rank. For more information, see Ranking work items.
Work Breakdown: Groups work items by owner. Displays a hierarchical view based on the parent-child relationship of the work items

Tip: Managing a Release Backlog

A Release Backlog is managed by using the plan editor. The plan editor assists you with stack ranking your backlog items by using drag or specific keyboard actions. In the View As section, select Work Breakdown to customize the Plan editor view to display the backlog items.

Phase plan

Engineering Workflow Management projects are organized into a series of fixed-length development periods called iterations. Each timeline has its own set of iterations. A phase plan displays the goals to be achieved in an iteration. You can create a phase plan and assign work items that are to be completed in an iteration.

In the Formal Project Management process template, a plan groups work items based on the following plan views by default:

Schedule Variance: Displays and colorize work items based on the expression. The Proposed and Planned start and end dates are populated from the dates in the Proposed and Planned snapshots.
Traceability: Displays IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management traceability columns for Test By and Affected By.
Note: This view is only visible when a project area association exists with Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next or Engineering Test Management.
Work Breakdown: Groups work items by owner and displays a hierarchical view based on the parent-child relationship of the work items.
Work Breakdown and Schedule: Displays work items and the Gantt chart based on phases. You can use the Gantt chart to view the progress of a plan, dependencies between work items, and viewing critical path. You can also use the Gantt chart to change the schedule of work items.

Note: If you follow the Scrum or Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) 3.0 Program process template, a Phase plan is called a Sprint Backlog.

In the Scrum process template, a Sprint Backlog provides the following plan views by default:

Planned Time: Displays work items based on a timeline such as past, today, or tomorrow, and groups them by owner.
Ranked List: Displays work items based on rank.
Roadmap: Displays work items that are sorted by rank. The Accumulated Time column displays the duration bar for each work item, which indicates the duration that is taken to resolve the work item. You can drag the right end of the duration bar to change the estimate of the work item. Rescheduling changes the work sequence as defined in the My Work view.
Taskboard: Displays plan items in the left column and execution items in the columns to the right. You can drag the child execution items to any of the state groups to change status. Use the Colors option to highlight a plan item's state. Work items are sorted by status.
Traceability: Displays Engineering Lifecycle Management traceability columns for Test By and Affected By.
Note: This view is only visible when a project area association exists with Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next or Engineering Test Management.
Work Breakdown: Groups work items by owner. Displays a hierarchical view based on the parent-child relationship of the work items

Tip: Planning a Sprint

You can use the Plan editor to manage Sprint Backlogs. As with a Release Backlog, the editor assists you with stack ranking your Sprint Backlog. In addition, the Plan editor provides a view to display the work breakdown structure of all work items, grouped by the owners. Drag or specific keyboard actions are used to manipulate the work breakdown structure or reassigning the task to do load balancing. Key work item attributes, like the estimate of a task, can be changed in place and the changes are immediately reflected in the corresponding progress and load bars.
In the View As list, select Taskboard. Plan items, such as stories, display in the left column. To mark a work item as complete, drag it from the Open or In Progress columns to the Resolved column. You can define more states in the process template.

Cross-project plan

A cross-project plan can include items that track items in other projects. It displays all items that belong to it (matching the plan query) and the items that are tracked by them. You can also use cross-project plans to view work item relationships as a Kanban board.

Important: The cross-project plan is used for tracking purposes only. Because project areas have different processes, iterations, timelines, and so on, the progress bars in the plan details section do not reflect the rolled up schedule of the tracked work items.

By default, a cross-project plan groups work items based on the following plan view:

Project Schedule: Displays the scheduling relationships among work items across projects.

For more information about tracking work items across projects, see Tracking work item relationships across projects.