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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-15T17:29:33+00:00

We’ve been discussing possible alterations to the TFS work items templates — Many of

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We’ve been discussing possible alterations to the TFS work items templates — Many of our developers currently use a mental model with a “rough cut” estimate of time when assessing bugs: “This will take a lot of time”, “This is an easy fix” or “This is medium effort”. They use this as a way to allow PMs to start scheduling and to later populate a firmer effort after research.

We have, I think, two options:

  1. Add a new field to the bug WIT for “rough cut estimate” that’s just text and allow people to enter freetext.
  2. Modify the existing “original estimate” to be a string, and require developers to firm up their estimates to hours.

We’re considering #2 because we’d like to stay as “out of the box” as possible. If we choose option #2, are we jeopardizing out of the box reporting in any way? Are there serious ramifications for reporting if we change the field’s underlying data type?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    On the “requirement” work item type (Scrum: Product Backlog Item, Agile: User Story, CMMI: Requirement), there is a field where you can store a rough estimate. In Agile it is called Story Points, in scrum Effort.
    You can put there any number and I use it with the Fibonnaci sequence. Search on “planning poker” and you get what I am talking about.

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