Trace View from single-item view

The 'Trace View' tool appears to be available when viewing a list of items (whether in List View or Reading view) no matter how that list is generated - either by a Filter or by just clicking on and "container" in the Explorer tree. It'd be really nice if it were also available from the "single-item" view of any particular item that the user is viewing. I know that the 'Impact Analysis' view IS available and does pretty much the same thing as Trace View but my "occasional" users would benefit from having the familiar Trace View tool available to them when they're looking at a single item.

Comments

  • Anna Henke
    edited July 2018
    We would like to strongly support this Feature Request.
    The common use case here is that we synchronize our backlog items from Jira to Jama and they are the starting point when checking and completing the traceability during develpment:



    As searching for e.g. the ID of the backlog item and starting the Traceability from there opens the item in the Reading View directly, there is not easy way to achieve this - except for narrowing down to some backlog items and then picking the right one to start the anaylsis.
  • Peter Russo
    edited March 2019
    Hello @Ian and @Anna, thank you for sharing this request. I have a few questions to help me understand this better.
     
    @Anna, I would like to understand your workflow more. It sounds like you are:
    1. Searching for backlog items by ID
    2. Opening the item in List/Reading View
    3. Opening the item in Trace View
    My assumption is that there is a step missing between 2 and 3 where you would like to read the single item to get more information about it, and then open it directly in Trace View to understand its traceability. Is that correct, or have I misunderstood?

    And a question for both of you -- would it support this need if you could open a selected set of items from List/Reading View in Trace View? For example, say you selected one or two items in List or Reading View, then you were able to send only those items to the Trace View. 

    If so, what situation would trigger you to work this way? And how often would that situation occur for you?

    Thanks again.

     
  • Anna Henke
    edited April 2019
    Hi Peter,

    thank you for picking up this request again. I noticed that I wrote "Reading View", but actually meant "Item Detail view". I will try to explain our use case a little more in detail and where the problem occurs.

    We are synching our backlog items, which provide the input for the development teams, from Jira to Jama.
    The "Definition of Done" for a backlog item states, that the traceability for all items that have been created / updated in the course of implementing the backlog item, must be complete and un-suspicious. We usually trace our Customer Requirements to the Backlog items and from there the subseqent tree of traces opens up widely.
    Our development teams have Jira as their starting point, as they organize their backlog and their work in Jira. We synchronize the location of the synchronized items from Jama to Jira (and vice versa). So the use case is the following:
    1. Team member opens backlog item in Jira
    2. Team member clicks on the link to the synched item in Jama
    3. Jama opens and the synchronized item is displayed in Item Detail view
    4. Now they want to check, if the traceability is complete for all downstream items, but they can't start from the Item Detail View
    5. --> so this is the point in the workflow where things get nasty, and where people need to use and figure out workarounds, as the Trace Viewer can only be started from the list or reading view
    6. Workarounds are available, but always require addional activities, like searching for "something" that contains the item but also other items (as searching e.g. for the Item Key will open the item in the "Item Detail View" again), or using "find-me" and selecting the parent container. All workarounds require to manually select the correct item again from the list.
    You asked if selecting one more more items and sending them to the Trace Viewer would solve that issue: No, it wouldn't, because the starting point is a single item that opens in Item Detail View and the workaround for opening some sort of list in Jama containing the item would remain.

    The need for this use case is quite common, as tracing items within Jama for the purpose of completing the traceability for a backlog item, is done on a daily basis.

    Another use case which is not that common, but very important, is a similar situation in an audit, where the auditor wants to review the traces of any item within Jama. Any "workarounds" used in an audit lead to a higher stress level of the audited person and have negative impact on the trust in the used tool.

    Please let me know if this clarified our feature request. There are also other feature requests in place that are related to the Trace Viewer (including its interaction with the Traceability Rules and other). I consider the Trace Viewer as a great tool, but the acceptance is low, because of the limitations and little "annoyances" it has. I'd be more than happy to provide our ideas of how to add value to the Trace Viewer.

    Regards
    Anna
  • Peter Russo
    edited April 2019
    Thank you Anna. I can clearly see the pain points around step 5 and 6, especially with your illustration of what it is like to present item trace information to an auditor using a workaround. This is very helpful.

    And it's good to know that viewing individual items from a given Reading or List view in Trace View is not a concern, at least for this workflow.

    Thank you for offer to provide feedback as we look at improvements to Trace View in the future, we will most definitely keep you in mind as we dig in further.

    Best,
    Peter
  • Ian Webb
    edited April 2019
    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for your interest in this. Our use case is a bit less complex that Anna's - I'm really just interested in making life easier for our 'occasional' Jama users. These folk are frequent users of the 'Item Detail' view of individual items and being able to "trace" the item (in both directions) would be very useful for them. Of course they can already do this via the 'Relationships' widget but this is bit clunky as it moves the user away from the item that is the actual focus of whatever they're doing. I'd echo Anna's comments regarding the idea of selecting from a list or reading view - if I'm already looking at the 'Item Detail' view of the item I'm working on, one click to get into the trace view for that single item is a lot more appealing than having to go through more steps to get there. As I say, it's all about trying to make things as simple as possible for our occasional users.
  • Peter Russo
    edited January 17
    Thank you for the details Ian, that really helps. One follow up question - you mention a pain point around how the Relationships widget moves the user away from the item that they are trying to focus on. What's the next step after opening the widget that moves your users away from the item detail page? Opening upstream/downstream items from that panel to understand more about how they trace to the item? Or is the widget blocking the item detail in a disruptive way?

    Thanks again,

    ------------------------------
    Peter Russo
    Jama Software
    ------------------------------
    -------------------------------------------
    Original Message:
    Sent: 04-03-2019 15:47
    From: Ian Webb
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    Hi Peter,

    Thanks for your interest in this. Our use case is a bit less complex that Anna's - I'm really just interested in making life easier for our 'occasional' Jama users. These folk are frequent users of the 'Item Detail' view of individual items and being able to "trace" the item (in both directions) would be very useful for them. Of course they can already do this via the 'Relationships' widget but this is bit clunky as it moves the user away from the item that is the actual focus of whatever they're doing. I'd echo Anna's comments regarding the idea of selecting from a list or reading view - if I'm already looking at the 'Item Detail' view of the item I'm working on, one click to get into the trace view for that single item is a lot more appealing than having to go through more steps to get there. As I say, it's all about trying to make things as simple as possible for our occasional users.

    ------------------------------
    Ian Webb
    Enphase Energy, Inc.
    ------------------------------

    Original Message:
    Sent: 04-02-2019 16:07
    From: Peter Russo
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    Thank you Anna. I can clearly see the pain points around step 5 and 6, especially with your illustration of what it is like to present item trace information to an auditor using a workaround. This is very helpful.

    And it's good to know that viewing individual items from a given Reading or List view in Trace View is not a concern, at least for this workflow.

    Thank you for offer to provide feedback as we look at improvements to Trace View in the future, we will most definitely keep you in mind as we dig in further.

    Best,
    Peter

    ------------------------------
    Peter Russo
    Jama Software

    Original Message:
    Sent: 04-01-2019 03:53
    From: Anna Henke
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    Hi Peter,

    thank you for picking up this request again. I noticed that I wrote "Reading View", but actually meant "Item Detail view". I will try to explain our use case a little more in detail and where the problem occurs.

    We are synching our backlog items, which provide the input for the development teams, from Jira to Jama.
    The "Definition of Done" for a backlog item states, that the traceability for all items that have been created / updated in the course of implementing the backlog item, must be complete and un-suspicious. We usually trace our Customer Requirements to the Backlog items and from there the subseqent tree of traces opens up widely.
    Our development teams have Jira as their starting point, as they organize their backlog and their work in Jira. We synchronize the location of the synchronized items from Jama to Jira (and vice versa). So the use case is the following:
    1. Team member opens backlog item in Jira
    2. Team member clicks on the link to the synched item in Jama
    3. Jama opens and the synchronized item is displayed in Item Detail view
    4. Now they want to check, if the traceability is complete for all downstream items, but they can't start from the Item Detail View
    5. --> so this is the point in the workflow where things get nasty, and where people need to use and figure out workarounds, as the Trace Viewer can only be started from the list or reading view
    6. Workarounds are available, but always require addional activities, like searching for "something" that contains the item but also other items (as searching e.g. for the Item Key will open the item in the "Item Detail View" again), or using "find-me" and selecting the parent container. All workarounds require to manually select the correct item again from the list.
    You asked if selecting one more more items and sending them to the Trace Viewer would solve that issue: No, it wouldn't, because the starting point is a single item that opens in Item Detail View and the workaround for opening some sort of list in Jama containing the item would remain.

    The need for this use case is quite common, as tracing items within Jama for the purpose of completing the traceability for a backlog item, is done on a daily basis.

    Another use case which is not that common, but very important, is a similar situation in an audit, where the auditor wants to review the traces of any item within Jama. Any "workarounds" used in an audit lead to a higher stress level of the audited person and have negative impact on the trust in the used tool.

    Please let me know if this clarified our feature request. There are also other feature requests in place that are related to the Trace Viewer (including its interaction with the Traceability Rules and other). I consider the Trace Viewer as a great tool, but the acceptance is low, because of the limitations and little "annoyances" it has. I'd be more than happy to provide our ideas of how to add value to the Trace Viewer.

    Regards
    Anna


    ------------------------------
    Anna Henke
    MeVis BreastCare GmbH & Co. KG

    Original Message:
    Sent: 03-29-2019 13:30
    From: Peter Russo
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    Hello @Ian and @Anna, thank you for sharing this request. I have a few questions to help me understand this better.

    @Anna, I would like to understand your workflow more. It sounds like you are:
    1. Searching for backlog items by ID
    2. Opening the item in List/Reading View
    3. Opening the item in Trace View
    My assumption is that there is a step missing between 2 and 3 where you would like to read the single item to get more information about it, and then open it directly in Trace View to understand its traceability. Is that correct, or have I misunderstood?

    And a question for both of you -- would it support this need if you could open a selected set of items from List/Reading View in Trace View? For example, say you selected one or two items in List or Reading View, then you were able to send only those items to the Trace View.

    If so, what situation would trigger you to work this way? And how often would that situation occur for you?

    Thanks again.

     

    ------------------------------
    Peter Russo
    UX Designer
    Jama Software

    Original Message:
    Sent: 07-11-2018 08:42
    From: Anna Henke
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    We would like to strongly support this Feature Request.
    The common use case here is that we synchronize our backlog items from Jira to Jama and they are the starting point when checking and completing the traceability during develpment:



    As searching for e.g. the ID of the backlog item and starting the Traceability from there opens the item in the Reading View directly, there is not easy way to achieve this - except for narrowing down to some backlog items and then picking the right one to start the anaylsis.

    ------------------------------
    Anna Henke
    MeVis BreastCare GmbH & Co. KG

    Original Message:
    Sent: 02-26-2017 15:24
    From: Ian Webb
    Subject: Trace View from single-item view

    The 'Trace View' tool appears to be available when viewing a list of items (whether in List View or Reading view) no matter how that list is generated - either by a Filter or by just clicking on and "container" in the Explorer tree. It'd be really nice if it were also available from the "single-item" view of any particular item that the user is viewing. I know that the 'Impact Analysis' view IS available and does pretty much the same thing as Trace View but my "occasional" users would benefit from having the familiar Trace View tool available to them when they're looking at a single item.

    ------------------------------
    Ian Webb
    Enphase Energy, Inc.
    ------------------------------