Dependencies are a crucial part of your PI/Big room planning and execution. As an RTE or middle management team member, you often face challenges of going through 10's and sometimes 100's of dependencies captured during PI planning.
Kendis gives great capabilities to capture dependencies in a simple and easy way. However, there are customers who create dependencies links in their agile tools e.g., Jira or AzureDevOps. So far Kendis is able to visualize those dependencies as lines, however, it wasn't possible to manage those dependencies and to be able to edit further details to provide better context.
A lot of work by the Kendis teams in the last few months was put into making the whole experience seamless, whether you create dependency from Kendis or in your agile tool.
1. Create Dependencies View at Jira Boards
Compare to the older view, while creating a new dependency now you can
Set the title of the dependency
Provide detailed description
Set responsible
Set Target Resolution Date
Engage other team members through conversations
Ability to set the arrow direction
2. Dependencies List View
Dependencies list view offer now more filters, sorting, and other options.
3. Feature Level Dependencies List
While looking at the dependencies of an individual feature the view shows the nice separation of feature and story level dependencies. This is a major enhancement compared to the earlier version.
4. Line colors
Earlier at Jira boards, there was only Resolved and Open dependency (Red and Green), but with this release, there are more colors to provide better visualization of the lines. For example, the default color of dependency is grey and it turns red only when it has missed its due date or sprint where it was supposed to be done.
5. Improved experience in handling dependencies created in Jira/AzureDevOps
Dependency links created in your agile tool (Jira, AzureDevOps) are shown automatically at Kendis as lines in blue color.
If the dependency link is between 2 stories, it will be shown in the relevant team
If the dependency link is between features or between a feature and a story, it will only be visible in Phoenix mode
If one of the items exist in Kendis board (in one of the sprints columns) and another item is not on the sprints then it is only visible at the list view last section
5.1 Jira/AzureDevOps Dependencies Edit
Earlier it wasn't possible to edit the "blue lines" dependencies, however, with this release, if a dependency is created in Jira/AzureDevOps, you are able to edit and start treating this dependency like a Kendis dependency.
6. Dependency Wheel with Jira/AzureDevOps Links
In Smart Reports, now the dependencies created in Jira/AzureDevOps will also be shown as relationships between teams.
7. Analytics Improvements
Under the Analytics option, there are 2 small but useful enhancements are added.
7.1 Delivery by Feature with Phoenix Values
Delivery sprint and team (Phoenix value) is visible at the Delivery by Features view.
7.2 Progress By Team Enhancements
Previous Load which is Load (Sum of Story Points) for each team sprint in your "Planning" state of Kendis board is now visible as the first bar on the chart.
Understand better in tabular format what each team committed and what they delivered. Each number is clickable to view the details.
8. Other Fixes
Following are improvements and bug fixes in other areas of Kendis
The board will lock while in the process of “State switching” and “Board Rescyn” to avoid multiple users starting the process at exactly the same time.
Edit Board Settings → Additional Settings Save option is renamed to “Save & Close”
Fix for the Risks saving issue, while pasting contents from other tools with rich-text
Sprint Status can now be updated manually, more details at https://help.kendis.io/en/articles/5981527-how-to-update-jira-sprint-status