Configuring time tracking

Time tracking data can help you monitor the progress of a release, iteration, or project and capture information for planning and analysis. For example, time tracking data can help you identify the percentage of work complete on a feature, potential schedule overruns, progress on tasks by team members, and the time spent each day on specific items for resource allocation and billing purposes.

Users enter time tracking data when they perform activities on items, such as fixing issues. Helix ALM groups time tracking values and calculates totals to provide up-to-date information for a project, a part of a project, or specific items. You can choose the values to use for reporting time tracking totals for issues, requirements, requirement documents, test cases, and manual test runs.

Helix ALM can capture and calculate the following time tracking data:

  • Estimated hours—Approximate number of total hours it should take to complete an activity.
  • Actual hours—Actual number of hours it takes to complete an activity.
  • Remaining hours—Estimated number of hours it should take to complete an activity from its current state.

Note:  Time tracking can also be used to track story points used in Agile development.

Helix ALM also automatically calculates additional values based on the estimated, actual, and remaining hours values:

  • Percent done—Percentage of work completed compared to the remaining hours reported. For example, if the actual hours value for a test case is 5, the estimated hours value is 9, and the remaining hours value is 4, the percent complete value is 56%.
  • Variance—Difference between the number of actual hours and remaining hours compared to the estimated hours. For example, if the actual hours value for a test case is 5, the remaining hours value is 2, and the estimated hours value is 8, the variance value is -1. A positive variance indicates an activity is taking more time to complete than the estimate and a negative variance indicates an activity is taking less time to complete.

Perform the following steps to use time tracking in projects.

Note:  Time tracking is automatically configured in new projects based on the default workflows. See Default time tracking fields. If you modify the default workflows, review the time tracking settings to make sure they are configured correctly.

1. Review information about how time tracking totals are calculated. See How time tracking totals are calculated.

2. Determine which workflow events you want to collect time tracking data for and enable the time tracking field for the event dialog box. Users will enter time information in these fields. See Capturing time tracking data.

3. Select fields to use for calculating actual, estimated, and remaining hours, and story points in the time tracking project options. See Setting time tracking project options.

4. View time tracking data in list windows, reports, and other areas. See Viewing time tracking data.