OK - one of the new technologies that we are using in my really fun project is the Conchango Scrum template for TFS. This has already cause me to scream out loud so i will most certainly get back to it.
Let me get a couple of thing right first:
- I don’t think this is a good way of doing SCRUM. You miss a lot of the great interaction within the team when you need to do this kind of reporting.
- I think that the Conchango template is as good as it probably will get when you are forced to use tools like this. I do hope that it might even get slightly better…
So - now that my personal thoughts about this is out of the way - here is the problem I’ve encountered:
I have initiated a lot of Product Backlog Items (or well 5 of them). Then i created Sprint backlog items for them and linked them together. But then i ran into problems - the Sprint work item caused me a lot of worries.
As far as i can understand the Sprint work item is a representation of all the work items being worked on in a sprint. However Conchango has chosen to build these upon the Areas and iterations that is inherited living in TFS. This is a bit confusing… or maybe not but one of the reports are: All sprints that returns 12 sprints when only 3 sprints is added to areas and iterations.
Well - if i ever understand that i’ll post the solution here.
However two things i have noticed about the sprint work item is these:
- You’ll need to set Start and Stop Date for the sprint
- You’ll need to set the state of the sprint to In progress
Failing to do these things will cause the burn down and other reports to fail.
Also you’ll have to be absolutely sure that the product backlog items and sprint backlog items is connected to the sprint (of course), but the right sprint (which is quite hard to figure out from the query). Finally make sure that the sprint backlog items are connected to the right sprint and the right product backlog item….
As you might notice i am a bit frustrated. A good documentation is also missing which makes it the more harder to understand. I’ll get back in the question