Here at Tasktop, we’re excited about the release of our Targetprocess connector. Having used Targetprocess for almost 2 years, we are thrilled to announce the capability to synchronize Targetprocess with other tools in the agile stack. Indeed, the ability to integrate Targetprocess with other tools is something that we ourselves need and have started to use at Tasktop as our product team has adopted Targetprocess for its backlog management.
Two years ago the Product team began to search for a tool that would satisfy our needs—namely, the ability to create multiple views into a single set of data representing our product backlog. This was of the utmost importance, as our team needed to see the same info presented in different ways depending on what we were trying to accomplish. Sometimes, we needed to see features by release, sometimes by team, sometimes by both. And maybe we wanted to filter down the items we were seeing to only include items from its product category or its epic. The number of scenarios was numerous. We struggled to find a tool that would allow us to do so—until we found Targetprocess!
With Targetprocess, we discovered and loved the capability to create boards to show the desired set of data, grouped according to whatever piece(s) of information was important to allow us to accomplish our aim at a given time. The card views that you can create, in which you can specify the swimlanes used to group and display your data, were incredibly useful and easy to configure.
Over time, our needs have evolved. Tasktop itself has grown, adding more people across all of our departments. Our suite of integration products has increased beyond Tasktop Sync and Tasktop Dev and now also includes Tasktop Data and the Tasktop Sync Gateway Add-On. And, of course, the number of connectors we have that integrate various software systems such as Targetprocess has grown. We’ve had to adjust our use of Targetprocess to fulfill our more advanced needs, and I’m happy to say that Targetprocess has continued to be able to meet those needs.
We’ve created a fairly complex triage process for taking incoming requests across all of our products and connectors, triaging them, and creating features on the appropriate product backlog. We carry out this workflow using multiple views and boards. The triage process Targetprocess has enabled us to enact also includes our ability to trace from features back to their originating request(s) and vice versa. We can see not only what features each team has completed in past release cycles, but also what the impetus was for building those features in the first place.
Over time we’ve also incorporated the practice of creating public vs. product boards, to give people across the company access to the relevant pieces of information about the requests and features important to them. For instance, for a given release cycle we have both a public and a product view that shows the features each team is building, with the public view excluding the information only useful to us on the product team, giving people just what they care to see as to not overwhelm or frustrate them.
Targetprocess itself has been a great tool for our product team to use. Any tool, however, is limited if it can’t share information across the other tools that other teams use in the software development and delivery lifecycle. In our case, we found it frustrating because, as much as we loved using Targetprocess, we were burdened with the manual steps of getting information from it to our developer’s agile planning tool and back. But now with our Targetprocess connector and its ability to connect with all of the other tools in our Tasktop Sync ecosystem, that burden is gone. We’re already using the connector to synchronize features between Targetprocess and our developers’ tool, with it serving as the glue between two tools beloved by the respective teams using them. And now with the Targetprocess connector officially available, you’ll have this glue available at your organization too!
