Question

We are using TFS 2008 for project managmeent and I am looking for a method to roll up smaller tasks into larger tasks within tfs. Our work flow works like this:

1. I create a new large work item, say ‘Implement web page X’ and assign it to my developer (lets call him Brad)
2. Brad receives the task. Now he has never designed ‘web page X’ before and has no idea how long the whole thing will take to implement. However, he has done pages like it in the past…so Brad takes the large task and splits it into four or five smaller tasks that he can estimate.
3. Brad takes his five new tasks and creates an estimate for how long each task will take. Even a few of these tasks are longer than say 8 hours of work, so he continues to break the tasks down into small enough pieces where he believes he can accurately esitmate how long it will take him to implement the new web page.
4. Brad now has a great task list with realistic estimates of how long each task will take. I can use this data and figure out how long it will take to implement this new page.

After going through all of this we have lost the overall ‘master task’. I am looking for a workflow that would allow Brad and myself to reference the master task easily, and to communicate that all of these sub tasks belong to the larger master task.

Any thoughts on how to implement such a work flow, or a better suggestions on how to tackle task roll up in tfs?

Answer 1

There is no such support in TFS yet. However it will be possible to do something like this in rosario because it will support nested tasks, just like a tree structure.

You could utilize iterations and areas within TFS to accommodate this need.

Use these links as inspiration:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlee/archive/2006/08/09/when-to-use-team-projects.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/slange/archive/2007/01/30/my-2-cents-on-areas-and-iterations-in-team-foundation-server.aspx