Usability improvements
Better usability with bookmarkable open pull request, retrospective summary and statistics
So far, all our three main pages didn’t incorporate the search filter criterias like repository, date range etc. into the URL, which leads to the fact that one cannot bookmark statistics with the chosen filter, or share them with the team (e.g., the retrospective summary for sprint XY with the selected date range). This is now fixed. Here’s an example:
Instead of: https://BITBUCKET/plugins/servlet/pra4bbs/stats
Now: https://BITBUCKET/plugins/servlet/pra4bbs/stats/projects/PRA/repos/pull-request-analytics?from=2020-06-01T00%3A00%3A00.000%2B02%3A00&to=2020-06-22T23%3A59%3A59.000%2B02%3A00&targetBranches=develop,master
Instead of an empty page, now the retrospective summary is preselected with the last 2 weeks
Until now we’ve have just shown an empty page when clicking the “PR Analytics” link. To get started and to see content immediately, we now by default show the retrospective summary with the last two weeks:
Retrospective summary redesign
We redesigned the retrospective to improve usability and make the important information stand out more clearly. Additionally, we also link to the statistics from metrics to allow a drill-down and to better connect the statistics and the retrospective summary.
Notification improvements
Backend work for supporting E-mail as another notification channel (**)
So far we focused on Slack for notifications. To reach a wider audience, we will also provide E-mail as another notification target. This only includes the backend work.
Differentiation between approved and needs work in Slack reminders
So far we didn’t differentiate between “Needs work” and “Approved” in Slack due date reminders. This was now changed so that you can better see the actual status of a pull request and where you may need to take action:
Pull Request Activities
Spark line in open pull request list
To get a quick impression about the activity state of a pull request, we now show a spark line in the open pull request list. With this, you should get a feeling about how much work or progress there is on a pull request and if an action is necessary to get the pull request reviewed and merged:
New aggregated pull request statistics
To give an overview about the activities in your pull requests, we now provide a new statistic which gives you an overview of what actions happened like commits, comments and merges. With that, you can directly see how your team worked with pull requests over a given period of time:
Statistics improvements
Replace existing merge frequency statistic with pull request distribution
The existing merge frequency statistic didn’t add any value anymore than the new pull request distribution. That is why we replaced it with the distribution statistics from the retrospective summary. This statistic shows you the different states of your pull requests at different points in time and helps you to see if the pull request workload was equally spread, or if the merges all happened at the sprint end, possibly having an impact on proper PR review:
The retrospective summary will contain a simplified version of this statistic.
Move open pull requests to the bottom to help seeing the workload better
The existing pull request distribution statistic shows the open pull requests at the top in the stacked bar chart. To help better see the pull request workload, we moved them to the bottom:
Extend all single pull request tooltips with useful information
To make it less necessary to click on a tooltip to go to the pull request detail, we now show three more information pieces in the pull request tooltip: the title of the pull request, linked Jira issues and the target branch.
Using a logarithmic Y-axis scale for the statistics
To reduce the impact of outliers, we changed to a logarithmic Y-axis scale for the statistics.
Improved line of code statistic (**)
To better see the total amount of added/removed LOC per day, we now not only show the individual pull requests, but also the aggregated values. Additionally, you can now also see the added/removed lines in the tooltip of a single pull request:
Improved Jira integration (**)
To give you more context in the pull request analytics statistics, we now also show the Jira releases that occurred in the chosen time frame:
