Talis Aspire in progress board, 11th March 2010

This page, updated weekly, gives a snapshot of the work the development team currently has in progress. Click here to read about how the board works.

Current average wait time: 20 working days

The current wait time is calculated based on stories completed and delivered during the past month on a rolling basis.

The stack

We are deliberately leaving some space at the bottom of the stack to account for any stories arising from the rollover and rollout working group which meets this week. The current wait time has been adjusted to 20 days, this is a reflection of the fact that we have several major stories in progress at the moment, which naturally take longer to implement.

We have added a new story to cover a defect when bookmarking items with multiple ISBNs. Although this defect does not stop users from performing the bookmark operation, the preview display does not display the list of ISBNs correctly.

Next story to be picked up: Allow users to look up items by ISBN

This story allows users to look up item meta data from the bookmark screen using ISBN, in a similar way to how they can manually look up data using DOI.

Currently being coded

Story: Users can make changes in private/publish at a later date

The team continue to work on this major story, which will bring a Wordpress-like publishing functionality to the list editing process. It will also contain some detail changes making it easier for editors to set item importance, as well as performance improvements for large lists. The story requires some significant re-architecture of the application. This story has recently increased in scope through the inclusion of When adding to a list, allow a user to add importance and notes for the library at the same time so our current estimate for delivery is early March. Elements of this story have now entered testing, we are working through some final issues before full testing starts next week.

Story: Users can submit a list for review

This is a major story which will introduce the ability for list editors to request a review, review staff to monitor a queue of requests and commence and then complete a review, emailing the results back to the requester. Our current estimate for delivery is mid-March. We've added some additional requirements to this story following discussion in the comments on this blog post.

When adding direct to a list, allow the user to add importance and library notes

This story enters development this week, and will now be delivered along with Users can make changes in private/publish at a later date.

Use .html to navigate between views

This story entered development this week. It is a simple performance enhancement to reduce the amount of redirects the application performs and therefore increase system responsiveness and perceived performance.

Integrate Blackwell Bookstore pricing information

This story entered development this week. It will allow customers with an on-site Blackwell campus bookstore to configure Aspire to display pricing and stock levels at local branch level.

Currently in test

Story: Support US MARC in bookmarklet

This is a change to allow the bookmarklet tool to support Z-targets which only output US MARC. Previously, the Z-target support was MARC-21 only.

Currently awaiting release

There are no stories awaiting release. Refactor My Bookmarks was released this week, vastly improving the usability of the system in this area.

How the board works

Stories (or cards) on the left hand side sit in the stack waiting to be picked up by developers. The developer always picks up the next card at the top of the stack. As they are picked up and progressed through development, they travel from the left hand side of the board to the right. They eventually leave the board completely once they are released and available for use by customers.

Talis usually releases new features on a weekly basis.

By monitoring the average time it takes for stories to travel through the board, Talis can predict the average time customers will have to wait to use the feature from the point a card is picked up by a developer (i.e. leaves the top of the stack and coding starts) to when it leaves the board completely (i.e. is live and released into product). Predicted wait times will be shown on the top of the stack column on the left hand side.

Board archives

• 26th February 2010
• 18th February 2010
• 11th February 2010
• 3rd February 2010