Adam Cogan demoed SSW’s TFS Smashing Barrier at the ALM Conference @ Luna Park yesterday. It’s a neat little user control that has always existed on the SSW website (visible only to internal staff) that allows a user to quickly report an issue on the page and to find out:

  • What active tasks are there for the current web page?
  • What tasks have been completed for the current web page

It helps stop the following common scenario:

  • Tristan: “Hey! This button is atrocious. You should fix it”
  • Mark: “I think we’ve got that captured already. Let me check”
  • … 5 mins later …
  • Mark: “Yep it’s already there.”
  • Tristan: “Oh… Okay”
  • Mark: “Now what was I doing again…”

5-10 mins might be wasted here

What we want to happen is:

  • Tristan: “Hey! This button is atrocious.”
  • Tristan: “Let me check the backlog on this page”
  • Tristan: “Oh it’s already there”

Only 2 mins of Tristan’s time is wasted here

Precious time saved when the information is right in front of the user already.

Here’s what it looks like:

TFS Smashing Barrier

TFS Smashing Barrier was well received with about 70% of the attendees thinking it was a great idea.

Great work guys.

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