Work Item Associated with multiple values

No, neither of these are permitted for the following reasons:
- One of the purposes of a work item category is to unambiguously route
that work item to a particular team, so that it appears in the plan for
that team. If a work item could be associated with more than one
category, then it could be concurrently assigned to more than one team,
causing that work item to incorrectly add cost to the schedule of both
teams.

- One of the purposes of the owner field is clearly identify who is
responsible for a work item. If it is assigned to more than one
individual, each of the assignees could easily assume one of the others
would take care of it, and the work item remains undone. If more than
one people will be working on that activity, you need to specify how
much time each of them are expected to contribute, so that their
schedules are appropriately loaded. To do so, you would create a
sub-task for that work-item, reflecting the work done by the "non-owner".

Cheers,
Geoff

On 9/11/2010 12:38 PM, gayatrivikram26 wrote:

Hi

I would like to know whether a Work Item can be associated with
multiple Work Item Categories (Field Against field) and also multiple
Owners at a time?

Thanks
Gayathri....

Thanks a lot Geoff. It is clear now.

Thanks
Gayathri...

Hi.

I would like to follow up on this a bit.

So suppose that you have two teams that need to work on the same set of work items. Also suppose that the work items are grouped into categories, say Server and Client. I.e. both teams will be working on work items having both categories.

But the Server and Client categories must be assigned to separate teams. I do not want to just assign the work item to a specific team category since then I would loose track of whether the work item is a Server or Client work item. So for this to work, I need to add extra (sub)categories:

Server
- Team 1
- Team 2
Client
- Team 1
- Team 2

If I have even more teams or more main categories this is not a very elegant solution. Any way to solve this?

No, neither of these are permitted for the following reasons:
- One of the purposes of a work item category is to unambiguously route
that work item to a particular team, so that it appears in the plan for
that team. If a work item could be associated with more than one
category, then it could be concurrently assigned to more than one team,
causing that work item to incorrectly add cost to the schedule of both
teams.

- One of the purposes of the owner field is clearly identify who is
responsible for a work item. If it is assigned to more than one
individual, each of the assignees could easily assume one of the others
would take care of it, and the work item remains undone. If more than
one people will be working on that activity, you need to specify how
much time each of them are expected to contribute, so that their
schedules are appropriately loaded. To do so, you would create a
sub-task for that work-item, reflecting the work done by the "non-owner".

Cheers,
Geoff

On 9/11/2010 12:38 PM, gayatrivikram26 wrote:

Hi

I would like to know whether a Work Item can be associated with
multiple Work Item Categories (Field Against field) and also multiple
Owners at a time?

Thanks
Gayathri....

Hi.

I would like to follow up on this a bit.

So suppose that you have two teams that need to work on the same set of work items. Also suppose that the work items are grouped into categories, say Server and Client. I.e. both teams will be working on work items having both categories.

But the Server and Client categories must be assigned to separate teams. I do not want to just assign the work item to a specific team category since then I would loose track of whether the work item is a Server or Client work item. So for this to work, I need to add extra (sub)categories:

Server
- Team 1
- Team 2
Client
- Team 1
- Team 2

If I have even more teams or more main categories this is not a very elegant solution. Any way to solve this?

No, neither of these are permitted for the following reasons:
- One of the purposes of a work item category is to unambiguously route
that work item to a particular team, so that it appears in the plan for
that team. If a work item could be associated with more than one
category, then it could be concurrently assigned to more than one team,
causing that work item to incorrectly add cost to the schedule of both
teams.

- One of the purposes of the owner field is clearly identify who is
responsible for a work item. If it is assigned to more than one
individual, each of the assignees could easily assume one of the others
would take care of it, and the work item remains undone. If more than
one people will be working on that activity, you need to specify how
much time each of them are expected to contribute, so that their
schedules are appropriately loaded. To do so, you would create a
sub-task for that work-item, reflecting the work done by the "non-owner".

Cheers,
Geoff

On 9/11/2010 12:38 PM, gayatrivikram26 wrote:

Hi

I would like to know whether a Work Item can be associated with
multiple Work Item Categories (Field Against field) and also multiple
Owners at a time?

Thanks
Gayathri....

I belive there are 3 options for that but they need testing:

option 1)
Create categories like server team1 and server team 2 and map these to the 2 teams.

option 2)
map the client and server to the project area category

option 3)
create a new attribute to hold the value of wether this is client or server as it is obviously not what decides the team and is as such not a category.

You might even consider if you are structuring your teams wrong since you have this situation where 2 teams are handling the same tasks.

The only purpose of the "Found In" categories are to automatically map
work items to teams. So if a concept does not help with that mapping,
it should not be included in the categories list.

If you want to classify work items in some other way, the easiest is to
just use "tags" for this. In your example, you would introduce a
"server" and a "client" tag. You could also introduce a "server"
boolean attribute, but that would be a lot more work (you'd have to
extend all the editor presentations to display it), so I would suggest
trying the "tags" approach first.

Cheers,
Geoff

jicwrote:

I would like to follow up on this a bit.

So suppose that you have two teams that need to work on the same set
of work items. Also suppose that the work items are grouped into
categories, say Server and Client. I.e. both teams will be working on
work items having both categories.

But the Server and Client categories must be assigned to separate
teams. I do not want to just assign the work item to a specific team
category since then I would loose track of whether the work item is a
Server or Client work item. So for this to work, I need to add extra
(sub)categories:

Server
- Team 1
- Team 2
Client
- Team 1
- Team 2

If I have even more teams or more main categories this is not a very
elegant solution. Any way to solve this?

I would agree to that. In general the filed against and the mapping to a team helps with narrowing down for queries and plans. For queries it is easy to add additional attributes, or use tags. As how to set up the attributes depends on what to achieve.

For planning purposes however, a work item needs to be assigned to a team. The work item can be assigned to a team that contains sub teams, however, I think at some point it is desirable to have the work item being assigned to the team that uses its plans. And at some time it is desirable to have exactly one owner being responsible to do the work.

We had this discussion several times here already where there was demand to have multiple owners and multiple owning teams. Our conclusion so far has been the best solution to this is breaking work items down in a hierarchy. The ones that have "multiple contributors" get child work items that are eventually assigned to one owner/team. For scalability and work break down several hierarchy level can be supported.

Just a thought,

Ralph

The only purpose of the "Found In" categories are to automatically map
work items to teams. So if a concept does not help with that mapping,
it should not be included in the categories list.

If you want to classify work items in some other way, the easiest is to
just use "tags" for this. In your example, you would introduce a
"server" and a "client" tag. You could also introduce a "server"
boolean attribute, but that would be a lot more work (you'd have to
extend all the editor presentations to display it), so I would suggest
trying the "tags" approach first.

Cheers,
Geoff

We had this discussion several times here already where there was demand to have multiple owners and multiple owning teams. Our conclusion so far has been the best solution to this is breaking work items down in a hierarchy. The ones that have "multiple contributors" get child work items that are eventually assigned to one owner/team. For scalability and work break down several hierarchy level can be supported.

Just a thought,

Ralph

I've read this topic and the previous one on this subject, and we've conidered this ourselves, but we find it to not be satisfactory.

For purposes of tracking code review, or retrospectives, or any other task that requires involvement from the entire team, this means creating and assigning new work items for each and every member - and it's ridiculous and time-consuming to open 10 work items just to keep track of work on a single, fully decomposed item. It also causes an unnecessary inflation of work items.

The same is true for when someone is just lending a hand with someone else's task and wants to report the time spent - opening another work item is unwarranted.

We'd like to see the ability to, if not have multiple owners on an item (which I agree entails problems), at least be able to apply "time spent" for additional users in the team the item is assigned to.

Another possible solution (though one I prefer less) is to be able to assign a work item to "entire team", where estimated time is divided evenly and so is time spent.

Hi,

you can add additional attributes such as additional owner(s) or affected team(s) with a multiple value list. We do that for several purposes. This allows for easier sharing and querying.

For reviews, there is the review functionality that can also be used in queries - which reviews do I have to perform etc.

For other demands such as effort tracking, I can see room for improvement. If one does try to do exact effort tracking, it would be nice to have something that could be used to track efforts of multiple users better. I know there are work items to enhance time tracking, which could provide what you asked for at a different level. You might want to consider creating work items or looking into existing work items and express your requirements and needs for their support.

I just wanted to reiterate the example that polymeron gave. A common occurrence is a team wide event like a code review or retrospective that is 1 logical task involving time from many people. In a different tool used for agile planning this was solved satisfactorily by each additional person on a work item would be assigned the same amount of time. For example, a 1 hour review session would assign 1 hour of time for planning to each of the people on the work item. The owner was still responsible for ensuring it happened, but the "contributors" time was accounted for.

Scott

We had this discussion several times here already where there was demand to have multiple owners and multiple owning teams. Our conclusion so far has been the best solution to this is breaking work items down in a hierarchy. The ones that have "multiple contributors" get child work items that are eventually assigned to one owner/team. For scalability and work break down several hierarchy level can be supported.

Just a thought,

Ralph

I've read this topic and the previous one on this subject, and we've conidered this ourselves, but we find it to not be satisfactory.

For purposes of tracking code review, or retrospectives, or any other task that requires involvement from the entire team, this means creating and assigning new work items for each and every member - and it's ridiculous and time-consuming to open 10 work items just to keep track of work on a single, fully decomposed item. It also causes an unnecessary inflation of work items.

The same is true for when someone is just lending a hand with someone else's task and wants to report the time spent - opening another work item is unwarranted.

We'd like to see the ability to, if not have multiple owners on an item (which I agree entails problems), at least be able to apply "time spent" for additional users in the team the item is assigned to.

Another possible solution (though one I prefer less) is to be able to assign a work item to "entire team", where estimated time is divided evenly and so is time spent.

I'd say time tracking and management is our main concern here... Additional attributes don't solve this as far as I understand it.

I am unfamiliar with review functionality; do you have a link to more information?

I'll look into existing work items and see what I can contribute, thanks! :)

EDIT: Having found no relevant work item, I opened a new one: 180832

Hi,

you can add additional attributes such as additional owner(s) or affected team(s) with a multiple value list. We do that for several purposes. This allows for easier sharing and querying.

For reviews, there is the review functionality that can also be used in queries - which reviews do I have to perform etc.

For other demands such as effort tracking, I can see room for improvement. If one does try to do exact effort tracking, it would be nice to have something that could be used to track efforts of multiple users better. I know there are work items to enhance time tracking, which could provide what you asked for at a different level. You might want to consider creating work items or looking into existing work items and express your requirements and needs for their support.