Hi everybody!

The IceScrum development team is glad to announce the immediate availability of IceScrum R2#15 version.
Get it now in the download section!

Note: If you were using a nighty build that already included the Sprint Burnup Chart prior to January 10, 2010, please make sure to export your projects before upgrading, otherwise you will lose all your Sprint Burnup measures.

Changes overview

Here is a short overview of the changes in this version. Please, see the corresponding release note (english, french) to get the complete list of changes.

Korean and German localization

IceScrum² R2#15 now introduces the German and Korean language, thanks to two contributors: Romain Chartier (German localization) and Yong-hee Lee (Korean localization).

Korean and German interface (click to enlarge)

Please note that in order to fully support the Korean localization, the database used with IceScrum² must support and use the UTF-8 encoding character. If you are using IceScrum with its embedded database, you have nothing to do. If you are using your own database, you have to make sure that the encoding characters used to store data is indeed UTF-8.

If you are already using an existing database not configured with UTF-8, and that you don’t plan to use non latin-based characters in your project (you don’t plan to store data using Asian or Russian characters for example), you can still use your old database without changes, but please note that if you insert non latin-based characters in a database that isn’t configured to support the encoding, they may be replaced by question marks (« ? ») or others random characters.

If you were using MySQL, when creating the database, set the default encoding to « utf8_general_ci ». There is also a small change to do in the configuration.properties file, described in the about Configuration FAQ entry.

Sprint Burnup Chart & Burndown improvement

IceScrum² now offers a new chart in the Sprint Backlog : The Burnup Chart. It compares the total number of tasks in a sprint to the number of tasks done every days. You can remove the week-ends from the chart by clicking on the calendar icon next to the « Previous » button on the upper right of the window.

The Sprint Burnup Chart

The Sprint Burndown Chart has also been improved to display every days of the sprint on its X axis instead of gradually updating the axis every days.

The Sprint Burndown Chart

Context Menu alternative

Most of the context menus available in previous version of IceScrum² have been replaced with a new kind of menu, embedded in every post-it notes. The menu is displayed when moving the mouse over its icon, or when right clicking on a post-it note.

Note that the context menu in the release plan still remain the same (when right clicking on a column), for the moment, at least.

The new embedded menu on the post-it notes

ScrumMaster actions on a project

A ScrumMaster can now mask/unmask a project. When a project is masked, it will no longer show up in the projects list to users that are not members of the project.

When a project is masked, closed to new members, or has disabled the « change roles » feature, an icon representing the setting will now be displayed next to the user role on the upper part of the window.

The Scrum Master actions

Search in the Product Backlog

IceScrum R2#15 introduces a search feature in the Product Backlog. The search feature will apply a filter on the visible stories depending on the keyword(s) you will type in the search input box. To cancel the search filter, just change the activated filter, or leave the search box empty.

IceScrum will search the keywords (separated with blankspaces) in the stories attributes: title, description, note, and associated feature. The results in upper case that are suggested when typing characters represents the features corresponding to the keyword(s).

The search feature in the Product Backlog

We wish you a good Scrum experience with IceScrum !

The IceScrum development team.

1. The roadmap is composed of releases, shown on a timeline. Sprints are inside the release timebox. For this Roadmap View, the horizon is usually several quarters.
2. The Release Plan describes sprints and planned stories with an horizon of several months.
3. Sprint Backlog shows tasks for one sprint. Tasks are associated to the stories selected for this sprint.

Sprint Backlog with stories and linked tasks. Horizon is between one week and one month.

Releases are created in the Roadmap View. The Release Plan tab allows the access to the current release. It’s possible to reach other releases from the Roadmap View, by left- or right- clicking on the selected release.

The Release Plan shows sprints and associated backlog stories.

The current sprint appears in blue and closed sprints in green. Future sprints are in grey.

A vision is linked to a release of the product. It is supposed to contains informations about the release such as the objectives, the perimeter of the project, a definition of « finished » and other things important to describe the release. IceScrum offers you a large rich text area to write it down.

Only the product owner can write or change the vision. When the Product Owner has finished to write the vision down, he can save it and go back to the release plan.

Other team members will only have the vision display without the permission to change it.

Jusque maintenant pour définir le cycle de vie d’un produit dans IceScrum, il y avait l’explorateur de release.

Il comportait 2 vues :
* une, appelée vue tableau, montrant en fait le plan de release et permettant de naviguer dans les différentes releases, de créer les sprints, d’associer les stories aux sprints,
* une deuxième, la vue notes, méconnue et probablement peu utilisée, montrant les releases et les sprints de façon temporelle.

Elles sont désormais séparées et accessibles dans 2 onglets différents. La roadmap reprend l’idée de timeline de la vue notes actuelle en l’améliorant sensiblement.

Aperçu après création d’une release

La release contient 4 sprints (préfixés par #).

Release avec période avant le premier sprint

Elle permet de bien voir la durée des sprints. On peut également percevoir la période dans une release avant le premier sprint, appelée parfois sprint zéro, éventuellement le délai entre 2 sprints et celui entre le dernier sprint et la fin de la release.

Etat des sprints et releases

Quand le projet se déroule, les sprints changent de couleur en fonction de leur état : prévu (en gris), en cours (en bleu clair), fini (en vert).

Deux releases

C’est dans cette vue roadmap qu’on peut créer une nouvelle release, à la suite de la précédente.

Cette nouvelle vue permet d’avoir un aperçu général puis de naviguer vers les releases et les sprints.