Elaborating plan items

After creating a release plan, which identifies the high-level items that the team intends to implement for the release, the development lead decides which items to target for the current iteration and decomposes those items into child development tasks.

Before you begin

Before you elaborate plan items, you must create a release plan, which contains plan items that are linked to the requirements that are identified for the release. You also must identify and create the iterations for the release schedule.

Step 1: Create iteration plan

The release plan contains the items that you plan to implement for the release. The release is divided into multiple iterations. Each iteration has a start date and end date. Before the start of an iteration, you must identify the items that you intend to complete in that iteration. The first step is to create an iteration plan.

Supporting tasks:

• Creating plans in the client for Eclipse IDE
• Creating plans in the web client
• Planning an iteration

Step 2: Assign plan items to an iteration

After you create an iteration plan, the next step is to decide which items to target for that iteration. This step is typically done in a meeting with other development team members.

1. Open the release plan in the plan editor.
2. Review the plan items and decide which items to include in the iteration. Take into account the ranking of the items, the size estimates, and the length of the iteration.
3. For items that you decide to include in the iteration, use the inline editor to set the Planned for field to the iteration.
4. Using the inline editor, assign the items to owners.

Supporting tasks:

• Viewing work items in a plan
• Creating, modifying, and moving work items in a plan

Step 3: Create development child tasks

Because plan items correspond to high-level release requirements, you must decompose them into finer-grained work items that describe the specific development tasks that are required to implement the requirements. For example, a plan item might require changes to core libraries, multiple parts of the user interface, and the documentation.

1. For each plan item, create task work items and link them to the parent plan items. You can do this through the work item editor or through the inline editor in the release plan.
2. In each of the task work items, provide a description of the work to be done and an estimate of how long it will take to complete the work. Assign each work item to a team member.

Supporting tasks:

• Creating work items in the client for Eclipse IDE
• Creating work items in the web client
• Triaging work items in the client for Eclipse IDE
• Triaging work items in the web client

Results

After completing this task, you have an iteration plan that contains plan items and development child tasks for the work to be done during the current iteration. The development tasks are assigned to developers.

What to do next

The business analyst add details to the requirements that are linked to the plan items that are targeted for the current iteration. Developers use the detailed requirements as guidance when they work on their development tasks.