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Version: 2022

Work overview

Development teams can leverage Work to describe, plan and keep track of development activities.

A work item describes what changes to a model need to be done, be it new parts of a model, updates to a model or removing unused parts of the model. Additionally, work can be used to describe other development activities such as testing and deployment.

Requirements generally lead to work. When a requirement is not yet implemented, work can be used to describe how the requirement will be implemented. When a requirement is changed, work can be used to describe the required changes in a model.

When a work item is linked to a requirement, it will be placed at the same business process, feature and iteration of this requirement by default. Moving the requirement to a different business process, feature or iteration will also update the linked work. The work will receive an icon indicating the link in each tree: .

A work item can be explicitly assigned to a different business process, feature or iteration than the requirement. This exception will remain intact even when the requirement is moved to a different business process, feature or iteration. When a work item has a different assignment, the value will be highlighted and will recieve a different icon in the corresponding tree: . Tasks are available to restore the business process, feature or iteration of the work item to match the requirement.

An example of a work item assigned to a different iteration than the requirement. The task can be used to quickly re-align the iteration with the requirement.

Copying work items

A work item can be copied using the Copy work item task. The task can optionally copy the details of the work item as well. By selecting a requirement, business process, iteration and feature the work item will be assigned to these items. If these fields are empty the work item will be created as an unassigned item in the respective tree.

Copy work item task pop-up

Work status

To keep track of the implementation progress, each work item has a Work status. The task Move work status to state can be used to update the status of a work item.

The values for work status can be configured freely in the Advanced menu under Master data - Specification. An order number can be specified which decides the ordering of the various statuses in the combobox when changing the status.

Additionally, a Progress value can be defined for each status. This value will be used when determining the average progress of all work items linked to a requirement, business process, feature or iteration. Work having a status with no progress value will be excluded from this calculation.

It's also possible to define a status as inactive. When a work item has an inactive status it should indicate no more work is being performed on this work item. By default, inactive work items will not be shown in the business process, feature and iteration overviews or in the impact analysis tabs.

note

One default status is required and can be set using the Set as default status task.

A work status can be configured to correspond to a certain lane in the taskboard by specifying the Taskboard sequence no. When left empty, work with this status will not show up in the taskboard.

A configured work status

Effort

To be able to make an estimation and to keep track of the remaining hours, work items contain the fields Original estimated, Remaining and Completed.

Fields for work effort in hours

note

The sum of remaining work will be shown in the linked requirement and iteration.

Planning work

Linking (planned) project versions

In order to plan when a work item will be developed, a project and project version can be assigned to it. This does not need to be an existing project or project version but can also be a project or project version intended to be created in the future. Note that any name chosen here is not binding and only serves as an indication that the work will take place in a future project version.

A project version can be linked by using the task Link (planned) project version, or by filling the (Planned) project and (Planned) project version fields in the form.

Link (planned) project version task

Checking the checkboxes in the task pop-up indicates that a future planned project version should be used.

By default, all changes of the project version compared to its previous version are assigned to all work items linked to this version. This is called implicit work linking. By changing the assigned project version of the work, the implicit links with the previous version are lost.

Creating new project versions

If a work item is linked to a planned project version, this project version can be created directly from the Work screen. To do this, use the task Create project version or branch.

Create new project version or branch task

The task provides three options for creating new project versions:

  • Create new project:
    • This creates a new project.
  • Copy existing project version:
    • This will create a copy of an existing project version.
  • Create a new branch:
    • Creates a new branch based on the specified project and project version.

The task will become unavailable once the linked project version has been created or when work is linked to an already existing project version.

Viewing changes as seen from an object

For every model object a pop-up screen is present that shows the changes throughout the entire previous version chain, specifically for that object. This pop-up screen can be activated with the CTRL+H shortcut.

Use CTRL+H to see the history and implicitely linked work items for an object

Assigning work items to developers

It is possible to assign a work item to a developer using the Assign work item task. To unnasign a work item, clear the Developer id field in the task popup.

Linked work

Relationships between work can be defined. When a relationship is defined, it will show up under Linked work for both work items.

Links between work

Some relationships are bidirectional and some relationships can be unidirectional. For instance, 'Relates to' is bidirectional. When a work item relates to another, the latter work item also relates to the former. On the other hand, 'Predecessor of' is unidirectional. When a work item is a predecessor of another work item, the latter is a successor of the former. It is not possible to link work to itself.

By default, the Software Factory is shipped with common relationship types. However, the types of relationships between work and their directionality can be configured freely in the Advanced menu under Master data - Specification.

Discussion

The discussion tab page can be used to leave comments regarding work. The main screen contains a prefilter which only shows the work items with unresolved comments.

Tags

To quickly and freely categorize work, tags are available.

Attachments

Files can be uploaded as attachments to a work item.

Log

The work log records all changes to the links, title, description, status and attachments of a work item.

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