Purpose
This is a lightweight getting started guide for our team while formalized training material is being developed.
How to Start Creating Your OTL
Object List and Task Outline
Start with a list of your objects. When you believe you've captured all your deliverables, start an outline to elaborate your tasks. Include the whole SDLC for development tasks. Formal testing planning would be a set of its own objects. Concurrently or after, build your milestone list. Below is an example of the objects (deliverables) and a task outline for the migration project itself. I started with the object list and its types and through collaboration with the team we talked through the tasks. This provided a good starting point for the detailed tasks in the OTL template itself where things became more clear, estimated, adjusted, and scheduled. We included the red PMO touchpoints here because I used this later in the task descriptions to call out the parties involved.
If you're working on an OTL for a project that hasn't started yet, and you don't know the scheduled dates yet, create an object for Project OTL, type ProjectPlan, and include tasks for Review & Revise OTL (rechecking that it's still accurate), Schedule Tasks (adding due dates to the planned work), Sign-Off by PMO (explain to the PMO what is active work versus what may be dropped on the backlog for later elaboration).
Red indicates work performed by the PMO
| Object | Object Type | Tasks |
|---|---|---|
| FIS Migration Plan | Project Plan |
|
| Methodology Training Session | Training Session |
|
| Ontology Training Session | Training Session |
|
| JIRA OTL Training Session | Training Session |
|
| Professional SCRUM Training | Training Session |
|
| Project OTLs+ | Project Plan |
|
| Retrospective | Closeout Document |
|
| Project OTLs+ | Project Plan |
|
| Retrospective | Closeout Document |
|
Milestones
Milestones come out of your communication plan. What do you need to tell your stakeholders? You might want to have things like kickoff, final delivery, but during planning you might have a major go / no go decision point. Maybe you want to communicate when certain modules are ready. Below is an example of the milestones for the migration project itself.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Projects & Leads Identified and Methodology Selected | 3/17/2017 |
| Estimated Project Schedule | 4/9/2017 |
| Leads Start OTL Development | 4/110/2017 |
| FIS Schedule Finalized | 4/25/2017 |
| FIS Engine Started | 6/2/2017 (ballpark estimated) |
The Full OTL Template
The following is an example of the 3 types of rows you will find useful in generating your OTL.
As you finalize your OTL, run it through the /wiki/spaces/ITSPRO/pages/67404306 to make sure you captured everything you can prior to formal review.
Using the template
- Columns. The columns are designed to help you copy & paste this into JIRA. Labels map to the forms. To save space it made more sense to have a single column for the "Epic Name" and "Summary" because the "Epic" input form and the "Task" input form have different labels but it serves the same purpose, a short description. So if you see a / it means [Epic form label] / [Task or Milestone form label].
- Milestones. Just a name and a date. It is recommended to keep a separate list of milestones, add them here if you need to visually represent where in the schedule you intend to communicate something to your stakeholders. Notice, no epic link. When you get in JIRA your milestones will nicely be bundled in the view for "Issues without epics".
- Epic. These are your objects (deliverables). By the time you're filling out this table the list should be pretty solid.
- Task. As you work your outline into this format and start defining phases and estimates you may find yourself creating new tasks. It's assumed task lists will be elaborated during this part of the process as you dive into schedule planning activities (SDLC phase, estimates, due dates, people). The Epic Link column is there to really serve as a reminder to fill that out on the JIRA form. You could probably leave this as "Epic Name" to cut down the effort here. It's really just about the reminder to tie your tasks to the epic in JIRA.
- Orig Est. Notice the h for hours. Doing it here makes for more copy paste and less typing when you migrate into the form. If you don't include it then JIRA will default to minutes if you don't type the h.
Confluence Tips
Note the confluence table controls in the menu above. You'll want those row controls to add, remove, cut, copy, and paste. See https://confluence.atlassian.com/doc/tables-136463.html for full guide on features.
if you get into the highlighting traps (e.g. trying to copy a table from one page to another), Confluence has some interesting quirks when it comes to table copies via highlighting. Here's somethings I discovered
- If you want to copy an entire table, place your cursor above at the line above the table and shift arrow down to highlight it. The line above the table appears to carry the metadata that defines it as a table. Highlight only the table and you'll just get text.
- If you want to capture multiple cells to say delete data, do a drag and click but start your mouse outside of the table. The cells will be highlighted in blue if you clicked right. Oddly, this doesn't carry color information, but don't worry about the colors. That just makes for easier reading.
- If you want to copy a row WITH the colors, click and highlight the row content INSIDE the table boundary. You won't see the blue highlighted cells, but it will get the color formatting information.
| Issue Type | Epic Link | Epic Name / Summary | Object Type | Object Complexity | Epic Summary / Task Description | Phase | Orig Est. | Due Date | Assignee |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Milestone | Short description of milestone | MM/DD/YY | Lead | ||||||
| Epic | Very short object name (noun) | See Reference | See Reference | Summarize what this object is | |||||
| Task | Epic Name | Short description of task | Describe what the task is doing. Include conditions of success, e.g. requires approval of a particular person before closing. Other folks involve? Call out the players by people, or team, of whatever makes sense. Make sure the estimate includes everyone's time. | See Reference | Xh | MM/DD/YY | Person |