Agile SCM Talk

Having spent just a few weeks using the 2010 beta and exploring how it could be used by SW project teams, I found a WBS structure that seems to work very well.

The game changed with 2010 because it supports work item hierarchy.

Under your implementation phase in the WBS, list the user stories. Then under each user story list the implementation tasks.

Implementation

• Story one
• Code A
• Code B
• Code C
• Test Story one

Run test case

Fix bugs

Verify bugs

• Story two...

The critical factor is that the tasks be sequentially organized in a mutually exclusive way. I also found that when marking tasks resolved from the IDE upon check-in (and that's the whole aim isn't it) MS project could not level resource usage properly when more than one task is completed at a time. The reason is that the dates of subsequent tasks are not adjusted when having more than zero % complete. By updating % complete on one task at a time you avoid this.

Also, chose a resource leveling period of at least 1 week. That way you don't worry about the clock, just about getting work done according to the estimated effort for a given period.

So, policy must require:

1. A WBS organization where tracking can be done using sequencetially ordered tasks
2. That SW team members resolve their tasks in order and one-at-a-time
3. Set resource leveling to a minimal of one week

When the above rules are followed it provides a very clean, sequential view of iteration work and status. Also, it syncs very well with TFS 2010.

NOTE: Do not put TFS Test Cases in the MS Project WBS. See this link for an explanation.