Professional Team Foundation Server

11.1. Introducing Work Items Concepts

A work item type (WIT) defines the structure for a particular piece of work that needs to get executed. Work item tracking can differentiate between types of work that need to get done, for example, between fixing bugs, implementing a nonfunctional requirement, or completing a task. Each type of work item has its own definition of the information required to keep track of the work. For example, in a bug work item, the WIT defines the fields associated with that bug, and the layout of the form used by the bug work item. A work item itself is just a specific instance of a work item type. When you create a new work item for a project, you use a work item type to do it. Another way to look at it is that the work item type is the template used to create a specific work item in your project.

Now let's look at some of the different concepts associated with work items and Team Foundation Server.

11.1.1. Work Item Types

You've already learned how, when creating a new team project, you must select a process model. The two process models that ship with Team Foundation Server are MSF Agile and MSF CMMI. These process models define a template for your project. Part of this template definition includes defining all the default work items that are associated with the process model. These are the work items that users will have access to out of the box with Team Foundation Server. When a new team project is created, all the different work item types defined ...