Categorising TFS Work Items

Question

I was reluctant to post this question at first as it seems like functionality that could be pretty fundamental to the way in which TFS manages work items, but I cannot find anything documented that covers it; how do I categorise TFS work items (more specifically, new tasks)?

I've created a bunch of tasks. Some may fall under 'solution setup', others fall under 'core development' for example. How do I represent this categorisation in TFS? Is it something I need to consider when I'm creating the new tasks? Or are the work items brought back in this way during the query?

Answer 1

There are a handful of ways that people typically categorize/organize their Tasks:

1. Group tasks by User Story. This is done by linking the WI's, and this information will show up in WI Queries, and on the Task Board (task board only available in tfs 2012 and up).
2. Use the Area field and Area hierarchy to categorize your Tasks. The Area hierarchy is typically used to represent a functional breakdown of your application, then applied to WI's to categorize them based on which functional area they affect.
3. Activity Field. There is a field on Task work items called Activity that by default that has the values: Deployment, Design, Development, Documentation, Testing, Requirements. This list can be customized by editing the Work Item Type Definition.

Answer 2

Surprisingly difficult to find anything on this. I was already using 'linked item' as I should, the problem was the query. I created a new query and set the type to 'Tree...' so that the hierarchical structure was pulled back in away that mimicked a tasks and sub-tasks structure.