Creating an Iteration
An iteration is a single complete development time box usually resulting in an internal release. An iteration produces intermediate deployable code that has been discussed, designed, implemented and tested. Each iteration is a subset of the final product under development and builds on the functionality of the prior iteration. The iterations grow incrementally to become the final system. A project can contain one or many iterations.
Creating an iteration includes:
Your ability to create, edit, or view an iteration is dependent upon the user role and permissions you have been assigned for the project.
Bulk creating iterations
If you use a project hierarchy, bulk create is available for use in managing your iterations. Bulk create allows you create a single iteration and propagate it to all child projects of your current project. This saves time spent in configuration and makes it easy to establish shared schedules across child projects.
The Bulk Create option is available on the New Iteration editor.
From the New iteration Page, select the Bulk Create field to publish your iteration to all child projects.
- You must be in a parent project to use the Bulk Create field.
- You can only create iterations for those child projects for which you have create permissions.
When you use bulk create, the Iteration Name, Start Date, End Date, and State fields are automatically copied from the parent project iteration to the child project iteration.
Editing an iteration
When you edit an iteration you can modify information such as attribute values and textual descriptions.
You may edit an iteration from the Iteration Summary – This location provides two access routes to iteration editing: the Summary view and the Detail page.
The Edit Iteration hyperlink found on the iteration Status view is not available if the default view of Unscheduled displays. Click the drop-down arrow and select any iteration value other than Unscheduled.
Bulk updating iterations
If you use a project hierarchy, you have the option of propagating edits made to the parent project to all related child projects using bulk update. Rally tracks all linked child projects and updates specified fields to keep the entire project hierarchy in synch.
The Bulk Update option is available on the Edit iteration page.
From the Edit Iteration page, select the Bulk Update field to publish your edits to linked child projects.
- You must be in a parent project to use the Bulk Update field.
- You can only edit iterations for those child projects for which you have update permissions.
When the Bulk Update field is selected, changes to the following fields are updated in the linked child projects:
- Name
- Start Date
- End Date
- State
When editing a child project, the State field can be individually edited, but as long as the child project is still linked to the parent project through the Bulk Update field, any bulk update to the parent project will overwrite the individual edits.
Individual child projects can be unlinked from the parent project bulk update by deselecting the Bulk Update field. When deselected, the Name, Start Date, and End Date fields are enabled. Make a change to any of these fields and from this point on, the child project iteration is unlinked and is not updated when bulk updates are made from the parent project.
Viewing the Iteration Summary and Detail pages
Viewing the Iterations Summary
The Iteration Summary view provides basic information regarding all iterations that have been created. When using a project hierarchy, this view reflects any view scoping settings that you have indicated in the project drop down list box. All columns display the cumulative totals for all projects that have the same iteration name and time box (Start and End date).
Adding a new iteration from a Summary view returns you to the Summary page from which the iteration was created. Your new iteration is added to the end of your Summary display forcing you to scroll to this location, unless you have applied filter or sort criteria.
From the Iteration Summary view you can:
- Edit existing iterations by clicking the edit
icon. - Determine your current iteration - The current iteration is the one that contains today's date.
The following information regarding iterations can be found on this view:
- Iteration Velocity Chart: The Plan Estimate Units accepted per iteration for up to ten previous iterations.
- Resources: The amount of resources budgeted for the iteration.
- Plan Est: The roll up of the gross level estimates for all of the scheduled items assigned to the iteration.
- Task Est: The roll up of the estimates for all of the tasks assigned to the iteration.
- To Do: The cumulative remaining amount of work units to be completed for all tasks in the displayed iteration.
- Actuals: A roll up from all tasks which accumulates the true time the tasks assigned to this iteration took to complete. This is helpful for estimating future tasks.
Viewing the Iteration Detail page
The Iteration Detail page provides a view of an individual iteration. From the Detail Iteration page, you can:
- View a read-only display of a single iteration in its entirety including all current field values and details.
- Perform multiple activities on the displayed iteration.
- Navigate to other work items associated to the displayed iteration.
Multiple actions are provided from the Iteration Detail page:
- The sidebar located on the left of the page displays any associated artifacts related to the current iteration. Click any link to navigate to a summary view of the related artifacts of the indicated type. This Summary view offers all actions of the typical Work Item Summary view.
- Click the
URL icon in the upper-left corner of the Detail page to open a New Iteration Detail page with the complete URL to this work item. From here you can copy the URL to use as a reference link in email to team members, or attachments to other work items, and so on. - Use the Actions button to select options such as Edit, New, Copy, Print, Delete, and other specific actions directly from the Iteration Detail.
- As you navigate through the associations, the Actions button menu options vary in relation to the artifact you are viewing. The top section of the menu options apply to the root artifact (in this case the release), while the lower half of the options apply to the associated work item.
- Use the show
and hide 
icons to control the sidebar display.
Iteration fields
These field values can be set when creating or editing a iteration.
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
| Bulk Create | This field displays when you are in a parent project and create a new iteration. Select this field to apply this iteration to all child projects. The iteration will be created using the same name and end date in all child projects of your current parent project. |
| Bulk Update | Select this field to allow edits made to the parent project iteration to be replicated for all child projects iterations. Deselect from an individual child project iteration to uncouple it from the parent project iteration and allow a unique edit or update to the child project iteration. This field displays only upon edit of a iteration that has employed the Bulk Create option. |
| Name | Enter the name of the iteration. The red highlight of the field Name indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| Theme | Use this Rich Text Format field to enter a theme for your iteration. |
| Start Date | Click the  icon and select the start date for the iteration of the software or application from the resulting calendar. The red highlight of the field title indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| End Date | Click the icon and select the date which targets a iteration of the software or application from the resulting calendar. The red highlight of the field title indicates that this is a required entry field. |
| State | The current condition of the iteration. There are a number of states that can be set from the drop-down list.
|
| Resources | The total number of points that the team thinks it can complete within this iteration. Although points is the recommended unit, you may customize the definition of units to indicate some other unit of measure. |
| Project | A read-only field that reflects your current project. The project field defaults to the project you are in and cannot be manipulated. To create a iteration in a different project, first switch to that project then create the iteration. |
| Plan Estimate, Task Estimate, Accepted, and To Do | These estimate fields are read-only fields for the iteration. These totals are rolled up from the estimates given for the associated scheduled items and their tasks along with the actual number of units of remaining work to be done. The Accepted field calculates and displays the total of scheduled item estimates whose state have been set to accepted. These figures are presented to assist you in providing more accurate estimates for future iterations. These fields are calculated in iteration units. |
| Notes | Recording additional information associated with the iteration such as team decisions, or discussion results. |
| Change Description | Record any changes made to the iteration during an edit. Comments are stored and displayed in the Revision History page. Note: Changes made to the iteration are also systematically captured for Revision History. |
