Hi Matt,

Releases are another way of grouping stories. You group stories into sprints which are releasable increments but a release is a larger goal that makes sense on it's own.

Let's say you have a product that is at version 1.7. You plan the next release 1.8 which has a logical and consistent set of features. You break these down into stories and then plan several sprints in which you implement them. You might have a sprint zero at the beginning and a hardening sprint at the end. In our case a release typically takes 7 to 10 2 weeks sprints.

Another example is for large projects that are broken down into several releases. 

As a Product Owner, you want to plan your release (see the aggregate points it requires, projected completion date) and track your release burn down (or up) rate to track how you are doing. Depending on this you might move features (themes) or stories in and or out of the release.

Today we could emulate that by using separate backlogs, one per release. But it makes it more complicated to move stories and you loose the aggregated stats. If you manage several products each with a roadmap of releases it becomes a lot of backlogs.

Finally if you pull data from the API into other tools you need to maintain the grouping between those related backlogs somehow.

On a side note, I think this is also related with the stories priority issue. For me a release is where stories are grouped together in a prioritized way, while themes are where stories are grouped in a logical way (are related functionally or technically but not priority). I see the release feature as a way to solving the dual theme/priority viewing issue.

The hierarchy would look like:

Backlog:

   -> Releases:

      -> Stories in priority order

   -> Themes:

      -> Stories logically grouped

So a release "view" would give you the priority/date/effort view of the backlog and the theme "view" (the current one) would give you the function/feature/effort view of the backlog.

In the sprint planning view, you would have the "release" view on the right, either grouped by releases or with some form of decorator to indicate the release a story belongs to.

Hope this make any sense...

Thanks,

Stefan

Any update on when adding this grouping into "releases" will come ?

This is exactly what we are looking for. After a while, the backlog becomes crowded with completed theme/stories. It would be really good to be able to hide completed releases.

This is especially a problem since the principle of the backlog is to have the highest priority on top. If everything at the top is "completed" you have to scroll down which beats the principle.

Thanks,

Stefan

Yes it does.

Thanks !

Sure. Thanks!

Actually, on second thought, it would be good to have "english with swiss french".

We work in both languages depending on the customer, but always in the CHF currency.

Generally speaking, the language and the currency should be separate settings.

Thanks,

Stefan

Yes, perfect.

Thanks!

Stefan

Our business is to build mobile Apps.

Since there is an API, this is something we might do, either internally for our own use or in collaboration with you for your customer if you are interested.

Rather than start digging into the API and how it might look like, I wanted to make sure it does not already exist.

You can contact me directly if you want to discuss this further.

Thanks,

Stefan

Actually language is not that important, only regional settings (number, currency and date formats).