Report time for individual Work Items

Polarion makes it easy and fast for developers to report their progress to management. There are several fields in the Work Item detail that are related to time tracking and planning accuracy analysis:

  • Initial Estimate

  • Time Spent

  • Remaining Estimate

  • Status

In addition to the above fields, Work Items contain the Work Records section. Work Records are useful when you have to spend several blocks of time on different days to complete a Work Item. You create one Work Record for each block of time you spend working on the item. Each Work Record updates the Time Spent and Remaining Estimate fields. You or your manager can then generate a Work Report that shows your Work Records using the Create Work Report item on the Actions menu found on the Work Item toolbar.

Note:

The administrator of your project may optionally set a locking date, on and after which you cannot add or modify Work Records. If you need to compensate for time over-reported in a Work Record that is locked, you can create a Work Record for the next reporting period with a negative value for time spent.

Your team needs to define the process for using the time estimating and reporting fields and Work Records. You can use these to facilitate progress reporting.

Assuming that the relevant fields are set as discussed in Estimate Work Item Time, there are two things you do as you work on a Work Item:

  1. When you begin working on an item, go to the Status and select Start Progress in the drop-down list.

  2. As you progress with the item, create a Work Record for every block of time spent on the Work Item.

Work Records in Multi Edit view

You can add Work Records in Multi-Edit view. You need to add the Time Spent column to the table (see Customize the Work Items Table). When this column is present, a special section is displayed in which you can add Work Records. You can only add new Work Records. Existing work records do not appear and so cannot be modified or deleted.