Mobile web/Mingle

For project and workflow management, the Mobile Web team uses Mingle. Various housekeeping and procedural things in Mingle are documented here. Some if not all of these are specific to the mobile web project.

All procedures below assume that you are logged in to the 'Mobile web' project in Mingle.

Adding a new iteration
A new 'iteration' should be added at some point prior to beginning planning for that iteration.

Adding new iteration to current release

 * 1) From any screen, click 'Add card' at the bottom of the screen
 * 2) Under 'Card type', select 'Iteration'
 * 3) Give the iteration a name
 * 4) Click 'Add with detail'
 * 5) Under 'Release' at the bottom of the screen, select '(Current Release)'

Adding new iteration some other release

 * 1) Follow the steps 1-4 above.
 * 2) Under 'Release' at the bottom of the screen, click 'select card' and find the appropriate release to use

Iteration planning
There have been a variety of views prepared in Mingle to help facilitate the various iteration planning meetings.

Story prioritization
Prior to the story prioritization meeting, you will want to prepare the 'iteration planning' view. This view should include the following columns before the meeting begins:
 * The bug backlog
 * The release/quarterly story backlog (NB: If you are planning the first release in a new iteration, be sure to update this column to the proper backlog!)
 * The current iteration's backlog
 * The next iteration (the iteration you're planning for) backlog

To prep the view:
 * 1) Ensure that the iteration for which you are planning has already been added to Mingle (see Mobile_web/Mingle)
 * 2) Select 'Iteration planning' under 'Team favorites' (an expandable menu on the right side of the screen)
 * 3) Click the '-' on any columns you want to remove (typically you only need to remove the iteration prior to the current iteration)
 * 4) Click the '+' on the right hand column of the view
 * 5) Select the next iteration
 * 6) Save the view, otherwise people will not be able to see your changes:
 * 7) Under 'Team favorites' (an expandable menu on the right side of the screen), select 'Add current view to team favorites...'
 * 8) Type 'Iteration Planning'
 * 9) Click 'Save'

After story cards/bugs have been selected for the upcoming iteration, make sure the product owner actually puts the cards in priority order:
 * 1) Select 'rank cards' in the upper left corner of the grid view
 * 2) Move cards around so that they are in priority order (order from highest to lowest goes from top left to bottom right)

Estimation/review
The estimation/review meeting is conducted from the 'Next iteration story wall' view.


 * 1) From 'Team favorites' (an expandable menu to the right of the screen'), select 'Next iteration story wall'
 * 2) Ensure stories in 'needs analysis' are in priority order
 * 3) Review each story in 'needs analysis' with the team. If a story is estimated and ready for development, update its status to 'Ready for development'

Kicking off a new iteration
Kicking off a new iteration involves updating the 'Current iteration', 'Next iteration', and 'Previous iteration' project variables and moving ALL cards from the old iteration that have not been accepted to the new iteration:


 * 1) Click the 'Project admin' tab
 * 2) Click 'Project variables'
 * 3) Locate '(Current iteration)' and click 'edit' in the right-most column of the grid
 * 4) Click the iteration name next to 'Value' (midway down the screen)
 * 5) Click 'select card'
 * 6) Select the appropriate iteration
 * 7) Click 'save project variable'
 * 8) Repeat steps 3-7 for '(Next iteration)' and '(Previous iteration)'
 * 9) Click the 'overview' tab
 * 10) Under 'Team favorites', select 'Cards not accepted from previous iteration'
 * 11) Select all of the cards
 * 12) From the grey box above the list of cards, select 'Edit properties'
 * 13) From 'Iteration', select '(Current iteration)'
 * 14) Repeat until there are no more cards in the view

Adding a new 'release'
A new release should be added prior to beginning planning for it - that is, prior to quarterly planning.


 * 1) Click 'Add card' at the bottom of most of the screens in Mingle
 * 2) Under 'Type', select 'Release'
 * 3) Give the release a name - we follow the convention '  ', for instance '2013/2014 Q2'

Starting a new 'release'
The Mobile Web team maps the 'release' concept in Mingle to quarters of our fiscal year. That is - 2013/2014 Q3 is considered a 'release' in Mingle. To transition to a new release, that is - to transition into a new quarter, you need update the 'Current release' project variable in Mingle:


 * 1) Click on the 'Project admin' tab
 * 2) Click on 'Project variables'
 * 3) Locate 'Current Release' in the table, and click 'edit' in the rightmost column
 * 4) Locate 'Value' on the page (about midway down), and click on the link next to it
 * 5) Click 'select card' from the resulting menu
 * 6) Select the release that you want to start
 * 7) Click 'save project variable'

Update the default iteration/release a story gets added to
When creating a story card in Mingle, you have the opportunity to manually set the release/iteration to which it will be added. Mingle will pre-select a default value. It's a good idea to make sure that these default values correspond to the current release's product backlog (or the upcoming release's product backlog if you're going into quarterly planning). To update the default values:


 * 1) Click on the 'Project admin' tab
 * 2) Click on 'Card types'
 * 3) Locate 'Story' in the table, and click 'Edit defaults' in the rightmost column
 * 4) From here, you can set all the default properties for story cards - including release and iteration