My team is asking me to add all these states in the PBI workflow.
New,
Prioritization,
Design,
Business Review,
IT Review,
Approved,
Committed,
In Development,
Development Done,
QA Testing,
Ready for UAT,
Released to UAT,
UAT Testing,
Available in UAT,
Ready for Production,
Released,
Reopen,
Resolved.
I know that we can accomplish the same by using Tasks or Reason field and we have to keep the workflow "Simple" but my team is insisting to track that using a single field (State) so that it is clear. I would like to know if it is a good idea.
I appreciate your thoughts and feedback.
We can't say how many states are reasonable or best. TFS is extensible and customizable, it is designed for customers will be able to meet the needs of the organization.
But as we know, the more states you define, the more transitions you must define. The maintenance and further upgrades will be more complex. Changing the workflow states of work items, specifically those in the task and requirement category can cause unexpected challenges in existing functionality as well as future upgrades. Changing to requirement types (Product Backlog Items and Bugs for Scrum, User Stories for Agile and Requirements for CMMI) will require modification of the Agile or Kanban board. They will also most certainly prevent an automatic easy template upgrade.
Customization should be well-thought out, instead of changing the existing State field, you may consider add a new "customStatus" field which won't impact existing reports and upgrades.
A good blog for your reference: http://blog.nwcadence.com/tfs-customization-pitfalls-payoffs/
This is another option for you to think about but you don't necessarily need to amend the states. You could use Board Columns which can be set on the Kanban board. With each column, you can optionally choose to split containing a Doing and a Done which could mean you require less states.
You can then query on Board Column instead of State
I was in a similar scenario to you when setting up our TFS (although not with as many states requested!) and I ended up going with Board Columns. Here is ours, it seems to work for us:
All of these have no split with the exception of In Development because when development is done it is not necessarily ready for test.
This functionality came with TFS 2015 Update 1 so you would need to upgrade if you're not on that version.
Here is how we use each state:
New - New PBI or Bug
Approved - Confirmed the work will be done and complies with the DOR (Definition of Ready)... (Contains enough info, priority assigned, tasks created, test plan created etc)
Committed - Assigned to a future sprint
In Development - Contains a Doing and a Done
In Test - QA
Ready for Release - Signed off and ready for release
Done - Released and DOD (Definition of Done) has been completed.
Related
When checking in TFS under Work\Backlogs\Backlog items, any Sprint, I can see PBIs and linked tasks under them. However bugs I noticed are treated at the same level as PBIs, meaning I can never see a Bug under a PBI, but I can see a task under a Bug.
Is this because the understanding is that Bugs are an occurrence after PBIs are marked as "Done" in a future sprint (since all PBIs should have gone through testing until completely reviewed and accepted).
I'm thinking if this is the logic then Bugs in their own right are like a PBI - a new "Problem" Backlog Item lol.
We are getting confused because we at first wanted to see Bugs under PBIs or Tasks to see what the bug is associated with, but because a bug may occur from an assortment of development done in the future, it's treated as independent on the same level as a PBI. Am I understanding this correctly or is there a way to put bug under a PBI\Task in the backlog when viewing (I know you can link it as so, but I mean for viewing purposes in the backlog). Thanks.
You can configure team settings to set your team's preferences for tracking bugs.
To see Bugs under PBIs, you can select the option Bugs are managed with tasks under Working with bugs tab. See Show bugs on backlogs and boards for details.
On the board settings page, you can configure bugs display behavior.
They can be treated as Tasks, in which case they show as children of PBIs, at the same level as Tasks, and are displayed on the sprint board.
Or, they can be treated as Requirements, in which case they are shown at the same level as PBIs and can have Tasks created underneath them.
It sounds like you currently have the latter behavior enabled, but would prefer the former.
This is configurable at the Team level. You can configure one behavior or the other, but not both. This means that for a given team, bugs can either be Requirements, or they can be Tasks. They cannot be Requirements in some situations and Tasks in some others.
Also note that if you've upgraded from an earlier version of TFS, you may have to manually enable the feature, since it required some changes to the process templates that you or your TFS administrator may not have made.
From a "process controls" POV, in a continuous delivery/deployment context, how important is it to mandate that source control commits are associated with an Agile PM (or ticketing tool) "work-item?" Here "work-item" means any of: user story, task, defect, bug, etc.
The end-goal is to ensure that developers are not placing new features into production that were not derived from the product owner. Obviously code reviews are a critical part of a proper process-controls story, but having a code review presumes the reviewer can look at the associated statement of work (e.g. user story) to ensure the code changes reflect the requested work.
Herein lies the issue.
Context
I've always assumed to have a workflow where work-tickets are associated with commits, such as with Jira, but now I'm working with a corporation whose PM tool is incapable of associating work-items or defect-tickets with source commits.
With this client, I'm also seeing a catch-22. First, I'm told by representatives of the PMO that such ticket-to-commit associations are not needed. Second, the engineering org paid for an outside consultancy to audit and flag major process flaws. The #1 flaw that was identified was the inability for management to know if developer commits have any bearing on authorized work.
From my POV, I think the PMO needs to realize that they are the "tail wagging the dog" and that they need to embrace tooling changes or special integrations to overcome this problem (not to mention more maturity with Agile philosophy).
However, perhaps I'm the one who simply is over-concerned about the ticket-to-commit associations, and perhaps there is another way to achieve effective process controls without that particular mechanism?
When dealing with regulated industries, such as health care or governing bodies, full traceability from scope to code is a requirement. I once had to perform an audit to validate that every line of code correlates to a line in the SRS for FDA approval, although generally it's enough to demonstrate that there exists a method of traceability (such as a branch in github that is named to match a task / story in JIRA and code integration is enabled).
If you're not in a regulated industry, requirement-to-code traceability is not a requirement... but it is still immensely helpful. The advantages include, and are not limited to:
Full transparency to everyone on the team, tech or not. The amount of confidence that this evokes is amazing, and the amount of chatter it reduces.
Reports to identify what theme in the requirements are causing the greatest amount of code churn, because there's a heavy cost to that.
Identifying features affected by a PR. This is immensely helpful when a release is planned, some aspects of the release are unattainable or buggy, a lot of the code has already been merged, and the team needs to isolate what to release and what not to.
Confirmation of an opinionated truth by remove the opinion: "I'm sure I did it... let's double check... yup! (or oops, let's rectify that!)". This helps deter CYA behavior, which is drain on morale and negatively influences efficiency.
Simple implementation with existing mainstream toolsets (JIRA, Trello, Asana, Freshdesk for tickets... Github, Bitbucket for repo and tickets... Zapier, IFTTT for integrations across systems that lack built-in integrations)
For every team I have ever managed or established (as dev manager, PMO, product manager, consultant or founder), it has been my explicit expectation that every line of code can be traced to the requirement for the reasons listed above. I advocate implementing this using the branch-per-topic pattern in git (Github or Bitbucket), where the branch is prefixed by the JIRA task/story/bug (eg. XYZ-2443-fix-that-bug) so that JIRA's integration automatically displays a link of the branch to the issue.
Of course, this is not the only way, but it is my preferred process at this time and is meant to illustrate a concrete example.
I will be using TFS 2012 and I am confused as to how to setup work items for one job where there are dependencies to the steps needed to get the job completed. For example, if the job first needs to get feedback from the end user, then a developer needs to build the base classes. After the base class work is completed then another developer needs to build the UI components. After the UI is completed then the tester needs to test the work. This job requires multiple people, including more than one developer. Each step cannot be started until the prior step is done. Should all of these steps be different work items or all in one work item? If multiple work items, how do you have the work item show as ready to work on for the next person when the prior work item is completed? If only one work item, then how do you handle the steps for multiple developers? This is one example. There could be the case where we have five developers all dependent upon each other before they can start their own work.
It sounds like you're trying to fit TFS into a formal waterfall process. It probably isn't going to be a good fit in terms of creating Gantt charts for you. In TFS you can use the hierarchy of user stories and tasks to accomplish half of what you want. For the other half you can create the appropriate link type between the tasks.
However, TFS isn't going to give you a Gantt chart like view for them, it isn't designed that way. If you really want to manage projects in this fashion, I'd look at integrating TFS with MS Project and/or Project Server.
As an aside, I would strongly consider just having those people talk to each other rather than relying on a tool.
As long as your performing an agile process your on the right track. Sprints should be based on PBI deployment, not completed tasks. If you find yourself pushing a PBI across multiple sprints, you may want to break-up your PBI. It is better to do this than keep wondering if your team is getting things done, since a group of tasks are moving into a new sprint. Getting a PBI to completed at the end of a sprint should be a key goal for an agile team.
Assign all the tasks needed to complete the PBI. Tasks should be created by the team together. This will help decide how to break down the tasks. I would break down the tasks mentioned into independent tasks based on functional groupings (UI, Business Model, ect). The art of this is to not break them down too much. The team will decide this for themselves. (remember to keep agile and let the team make short-term mistakes if it will help long-term: estimation, scope, quality, ect.
Assign QA tasks with unique names for each PBI. Don't use QA for the task name, it can become difficult to prioritize on the Board view. If you have a test team, let them create there qa tasks. Agile is agile (the team is the team).
The other main key point I learned was don't move on to tasks until the PBI has been planned completely, don't move on to sprinting until the tasks have been planned completely. This will help ensure that once your are sprinting, your not making decisions for that sprint in the middle of the sprint.
I hope this gives you some pointers.
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I recently shifted to a new organization that follow Agile mode of development. The current project we are working has stalled due to many requirement changes that were reported recently. Since this is my first Agile assignment (after working in 4 years in non-agile environ), its a bit hard to differentiate where the problem really is.
Ruby on Rails is the platform that is being used for development. Since I can't ask a vague question, I will narrow it to this.
In agile, is it ok for the business team to relax and give requirements at will? (Some requirements given during the final sprints were altering the entire design of our app)
Or, its the development team's mistake not foreseeing the numerous possibilities of the application and not having a concrete design that could have welcomed abnormal changes?
In agile, is it ok for the business team to relax and give requirements at will? (Some requirements given during the final sprints were altering the entire design of our app)
It is OK (albeit not wise ;-)... so then an agile development team would tell them "fine guys, this would cost this amount of extra time and consequently this much schedule slippage."
If they are willing to pay the price, all's well.
If they decide that maybe the new feature is not that urgent after all, all is well too.
If they insist on including the new requirements and keeping the original schedule, that project is not agile :-(
Or, its the development team's mistake not foreseeing the numerous possibilities of the application and not having a concrete design that could have welcomed abnormal changes?
I don't think the design should be ready to welcome any kind of changes and any new features - that would only lead to bloatware, and a lot of extra work which in the end proves useless.
Agile projects should have some sort of roadmap too, so that the developers have at least a rough idea where the product is supposed to be in a year's time etc. This would allow them to plan forward and extend the design to make room for probable future changes.
If business doesn't give timely information about the roadmap (or if it proves unreliable), that is (usually - barring really unforeseen market/environment changes) business' fault. If the team did not use that info wisely, it's their fault.
Agile doesn't mean you don't have requirements or specifications or you can be free and easy with them. The business leads need to know what they want. The benefits of being agile is that if you do need to change paths, you can do that in an easier way, so you can adapt quickly.
Requirements changing will be painful no matter what your development methodology. There still has to be a strong clear plan, at least at that point in time.
Agile projects are supposed to have requirements gathering, design, analysis, coding, testing; just like the waterfall development model. However, in an agile project, the phases are supposed to cover less ground and therefore, happen faster.
I agree with Péter Török's answer, but its also the responsibility of the agile team or the agile team manager to teach the business team that the project will deliver better results each round if they postpone new requirements until the next requirements phase. Since a round is supposed to be 30 - 90 days, most new requirements can wait. The few requirements that can't wait, need to have a time and schedule cost.
Opinion of a Scrum Master here. It sounds like the business is lacking a clear knowledge of what 'agile' is, or how they implement it. Agile needs to be applied with structure, whether that be Scrum or Kanban or something similar. Too often it is a synonym for 'we don't design or document' things.
If you are meaning a team using Scrum, this would be manageable as long as the Product Owner and Scrum Master are on top of their game.
If the business team are giving requirements 'at will' that do not align, it is up to the Product Owner to take these on board, and prioritise a list of tasks prior to sprint planning. If they don't align with what has already been done, they may be estimated as large stories, due to the need for refactoring etc. by the team. It will then be up to the Product Owner to decide if it is worth proceeding with them despite the size, or working on alternative stories that align with work already done.
This would be a tough environment for the whole Scrum team to work in, but you would expect the business to see the lost value by changing direction between sprints, and hopefully align the product to a direction before too long. It certainly is not the development teams fault for not anticipating this, I would more say the Scrum Master and Product Owner need to have some serious words with the business units involved.
There needs to be a buffer between the sprint and the backlog.
The Business Team own the backlog and the prioritisation of the stories in the backlog but once the Dev team have committed to x number of stories in the sprint then it is unwise for the business team to tinker with its content. If you find this happens I would suggest shortening the length of the sprints.
If however a super urgent new requirement comes up that just cannot wait for the next sprint then another story/stories of similar points value have to be removed.
It is important that the business team manage their backlog so that in the sprint planning meeting the next set of stories are fully specked, prioritised and ready to go.
In agile, is it ok for the business team to relax and give requirements at will?
Yes, it's ok to change requirements (maybe not relax), but in our teams we will not disrupt or change the scope of the sprint unless the work currently in scope of the sprint is made redundant as a result of the new requirements added to the product backlog by the product owner (not the sprint backlog). Also note that if you commit to 100 points worth of work in a sprint, you complete 80 points and the the requirements change enough for the sprint to be disrupted then the team has still delivered 80 points that sprint based on the POs original requirements. (important when dealing with external clients)
its the development team's mistake not foreseeing the numerous possibilities of the application and not having a concrete design that could have welcomed abnormal changes?
We have a very high-level understanding of the overall features/project being worked on, however before we accept User Stories (broken downs chunks of the feature/project) we ensure that we fully understand what the Product Owner wants. If the product owner is unsure then we will ask the person whom does know. Note I am not saying that you plan out the whole project, you only nail down 1 or 2 sprints worth of user stories.
(This is how I do it, but there is no prescriptive rules, every agile rule make Agile less Agile - My opinion)
No, it is not ok to give requirements at will.
There is a general notion that business and development work together on daily basis and do that not primary in written form, but as well face to face (often to review or plan stuff). The idea is not to make too much assumptions on the future, but some and go with these.
Having done this as a coder, the only advice I can give: Setup for change. As you learn about your framework, the product side learns about the business.
If you run into problems like these: Its actually important that you fix this problem. This is what you have sprints for: Fail at something and then fix it after a retro. Doing this for a while should lead to a sane organized process how to get all the requirements at the right moment.
However: Proper engineering has hurt no-one yet as well as proper security and requirements engineering. If you need to do this despite your agile process: so be it.
In the default TFS setup there are three work item types: scenario, task and bug. That last one is quite straightforward, and task also: it's a specific job for a team member to complete. But I think scenario is a bit vague.
I usually create a scenario for larger and more general units of work: for example "Create functionality to add employee lines to an employer." Smaller, more specific work items would then be tasks, for example: "Create detail form.", "Create save method on server.", etc
When I check in changes I link the changeset to the scenario AND to the specific task. Is this a good habit? How do you deal with tasks and scenarios? Any resources to best practices?
I've also heard scenarios are actually meant for use cases, is this so?
Scenarios can be any user story.
You only need to check in to the task.
When tasks are created, they should be linked to a Scenario first, before assigned to developers.
That way the association between checkins and scenario is automatic (and reportable).
No point double handling
In the MSF Agile template, Scenarios can also be thought of as "User Story" - kinda like a lightweight agile use case.
The Scenario details the broad picture of the functionality that is wanted to be implemented, recording a single path of a users interaction with a part of the system. For example, in Stack Overflow a couple of Scenarios might be "Ask a Question" or "Answer a Question". Scenarios and Quality of Service Requirements can be thought of as top level work items in MSF Agile (i.e. the work items that define the system) with Scenarios being functional requirements and Quality of Service being non-functional requirements.
I tend to create multiple tasks from each scenario and typically only record my check-ins against the task. In TFS 2010 properly hierarchical work items are coming which will make this way of working easier to report on. Currently work item associations are bi-directional (i.e. you can say that a task is associated with a scenario but you cannot say that it is a child of it).
There is nothing wrong with marking your check-in against the task and scenario, just that it creates more work for you when checking in. Also, the scenario might be getting delivered by a number of developers were-as a task tends to be down at the granularity of individual person activities.
If you are doing a lot of associating of a work item to a scenario, then the following tip might be handy for you (http://www.woodwardweb.com/vsts/top_tfs_tip_3_r.html). It shows you how to modify the standard MSF Agile process template to remove the ability for check-in's to resolve the Scenario but just associate the check-in with that work item. Resolving on check-in for a long running work item like a Scenario is nearly always not what you want to happen - but is the default behavior out of the box.
Hope that helps.
If by "default TFS setup" you mean the "MSF for Agile Software Development" project template, then a scenario is defined as follows:
A scenario is a type of work item,
recording a single path of user
interaction through the system. As the
persona attempts to reach a goal, the
scenario records the specific steps
that they will take in attempting to
reach that goal. Some scenarios will
record a successful path; others will
record an unsuccessful one. When
writing scenarios, be specific as
there are many possible paths.
To get a bit more info on this, have a good look at the "Documents/Process Guidance" folder under the project in team explorer - it explains the recommended process fairly well
You can think of scenarios as representing the users perspective, whereas tasks are the developers perspective. According to the MSF Agile documentation a scenario "represents a single path of user interaction through the system you are building.", and a task "identifies a specific item of work for a team member to perform."
Tasks can be linked to scenarios. When checking in you, as a developer, have solved a task, not the scenario, so you should relate the changeset to this task.