Set Plan properties

After a Plan is created, any user with permissions to modify the Plan can edit the Plan's properties. Generally, Plan properties should be reviewed and set before Work Items are added to the Plan, and before the team begins work on it. This is especially important if the Plan spans multiple projects.

To access and edit Plan properties:

  1. Click the Properties button on the Plan detail pane toolbar (or Plan page toolbar if you are not viewing the Plan in the table).

  2. Click the Edit button to put the Plan Properties form into edit mode. Note that this may not always be necessary, as many of the property fields can be edited in-place. Such fields provide visual feedback when you hover over them.

Basic properties

Key properties to focus on include:

  • Start Date: The date planned for the team to start working on the Plan.

    The Burn-down and Burn-up charts do not render any information until the Start Date property is set. In addition, you must set other properties, add Work Items to the Plan, and start the Plan progress.

  • Due Date: The data planned for the team to finish working on the Plan.

    The Burn-down and Burn-up charts do not render any information until the Due Date property is set. In addition, you must set other properties, add Work Items to the Plan, and start the Plan progress.

  • Status: The current status of the Plan.

    Default statuses are Open, In Progress, and Done. Status values can be customized in the Project Administration.

  • Capacity: The capacity of the team during the period beginning on Start Date and ending on Due Date.

    The Capacity value can be hours or Scrum story points. The value is an important property to specify, and specify accurately. Polarion calculates the progress statistics of the Plan by comparing the Capacity value against the actual progress on processing the Plan's Work Items. (The Initial Estimate field of Work Items reflects the capacity needed to process each item.)

  • Started On: The date the team actually began working on the Plan.

    It is important to set this field in order for the Plan to accurately report actual progress compared to planned progress. The value is set automatically when Plan status changes to In Progress.

  • Finished On: The date the team actually finished working on the Plan.

    It is important to set this field in order for the Plan to accurately report how the plan actually progressed compared to how it was planned to progress. The value is set automatically when Plan status changes to Done.

  • Parent: The ID of the Plan that is the immediate parent of the current Plan, if any. This property can be left empty if the current plan is a top-level Plan in a hierarchy of Plans, that is, it is not a child of some other Plan. The parent is usually specified when the Plan is created. However, if the parent was created later, or the structure of Plans has evolved, you may need to set it here.

    If you are not sure about the ID value, open the parent Plan and invoke the Open in Table action. The ID is shown under the Plan title in the Planning sidebar.

Set Configuration properties

You can set some properties in the Configuration of the Plan properties that control Plan content and calculations. You can set the following configuration properties:

  • Project Span: By default, a Plan is for the single project that its contained in and only Work Items within that project can be added to it. Project Span adds Work Items to the Plan for multiple projects.

    Specify the projects to include in this field. Include the Plan's own project if it also contains Work Items to be added to the Plan. When a planner adds Work Items to the Plan, it is possible to select Work Items from all projects specified here. Planners are able to access the Plan and add Work Items from any of the projects specified, as well as the Plan's own project.

  • Allowed Types: Restricts the type(s) of Work Items that can be added to a Plan. The list is dynamically populated with all types defined in the projects specified in Project Span (or the current project if Project Span is empty). By default, any of these types can be added to the Plan. You can restrict this to one or more types.

    For example, if the Plan is for a bug-fixing iteration, this property could be set to the Issue type, which prevents the Plan from being populated with any other Work Item type besides Issues. If some Task items are processed in the same iteration, that type can also be specified along with Issue. Planners can then populate the Plan with only these types. They could not, for example, add Change Request items to it.

  • Prioritization Field: Specifies which field should be used to store priority values for Work Items in the Plan when the items are prioritized.

    By default, the standard Priority field of Work Items is used for prioritization. However, it is possible to define one or more custom fields in the project configuration, which can be used to store priority values for different kinds of prioritization. For example, there could be custom fields like Business Priority and Development Priority, with the latter created for use with Plans. For more information, see Prioritizing Work Items, and Prioritizing on a Custom Field.

  • Calculation Type: Specifies the calculation the system uses to calculate and report the Plan's progress. The default is Time Based, meaning that values for Remaining Estimate and Time Spent are used to calculate Plan progress. By default, Remaining Estimate is calculated on items that have Resolution set, but still have a Remaining Estimate value greater than zero. If this is not the preferred behavior, an administrator can set the system property com.polarion.plans.calculateResolvedRemainingEstimate to false so that the Remaining Estimate value of resolved Work Items is not calculated. The best practice is to clear Remaining Estimate when the terminal state of workflow is reached. If Time Spent and Remaining Estimate are not filled for items planned to a time-based Plan, it behaves like a custom field-based Plan, and the "burn when done" principle is followed using either Initial Estimate (if filled) or the default estimate value as the Work To Do value of the Plan.

    The other option is Custom Field Based. This means that a custom field is used to represent an estimate of work. Work done is calculated as the sum of such a custom field for all the items that are resolved. When this option is selected in the menu, the Estimation Field property becomes visible, and you can select from a list of currently configured Work Item custom fields of type float (the required type for this property).

  • Default Estimate: Specify a value to use for Work Items' Initial Estimate field. Use as the default for any Work Items in the Plan that have no value set for their Initial Estimate field.

  • Previous Time Spent: Stores the sum of the Time Spend field for a Plan that contains Work Items which has some time already spent. That is, the items contain a value in their Time Spend field. This property is updated automatically by the system and you should not normally need to edit it. You can find detail about the calculation in Previous Time Spent Property.

The Plan properties page also provides a field for a Plan description, and a section where any custom fields for the Plan, configured in Administration, can be edited.