Work Items

Work items help define project tasks that needs to be done in a time context manner. This time context can be iterations for Unified Process or sprints in Agile development. Work items are one of the core features of RTC as it connects how requirements as well as all project deliverables constituting iterative development will be assigned, tracked, and implemented. Here are the steps necessary to plan a release through Rational Team Concert.

The first step is to create a release plan for the project. This will define the overall project schedule and scope. (Dates for specific Iterations will be established during class.)

The second step is to add resources to the project plan. You will add the resources to the project and specify the dates and hours for which they are required. Choose from the users who are added to the project area.Decisions on resource assignments will be decided by the individual teams.

The third step is to identify, evaluate, and document risks in the project. We must therefore create risk actions to mitigate and counter these risks. Risks will be mentioned in the Executive Summary, a work item included in each iteration. Risk is more formally a Work Item (see iteration plan) and is included in each iteration. More details on crafting risks, prioritizing risks, and mitigating risks will be presented in class.

The next step is to use the project requirements (iteration plan) and allocate work items to roles (owners) accommodated by development team members. .For some of the iterations, specific work items will be specified; in others, the detailed formation of the work items may be left up to the team to develop and assign to owners. In an iterative development model, one may assign implementation work items to the implementation or development iterations.

As we can see, creating work items requires an understanding of the requirements, assessing the risks of each, and developing a plan to tackle the requirements. Work items allow for the tracking of all of these. Creating, prioritizing, assigning, and verifying work items are easy. Associating work items to iterations, requirements, defects, and plans is more difficult as it depends on these items to be defined first.

For more tips into creating, customizing, and validating work items, please refer to this manual:

Create Work Items in Eclipse Client

Creating work items in Eclipse Client is easy.

  1. Start the Rational Team Concert application.
  2. Make sure you are logged in to a Repository Connection. If not, log in using your Jazz.Net username and password. RTC should automatically connect all your repository connections you have set up. See Setting up RTC Eclipse Client manual to set up RTC with your account.
  3. Right click Work Items, then New, then Work Item... The Create Work Item window appears.

  1. Select a Work Item type and click Finish

  1. Fill in the Summary, Severity, Tags, Owned By, Priority, Planned For, Estimate, Time Spent, Constraint Type, and Description of the Work Item. Once completed, click Save on the top right.

Type indicates what type of work item to create, such as Issue, Risk, Business Need, etc. Severity indicates how crucial this task is for the iteration. It also changes the icon found in the Work Items list. Tags are used for querying purposes. Adding custom tags will allow for easier queries. Owned By indicates the member that is owns the work item. Priority indicates the priority of this task in accordance to other tasks in the iteration. Planned For dictates which iteration to organize this work item. If there are any Constraint Types, then the Constraint Date, Planned Start Date, Planned End Date, and Due Date becomes required. If you want to add other comments, click on the Add Comment link in the bottom.

The Link tab shows how the work item can be linked to many different RTC objects. One can add a file or screenshot to the work item, and it will be listed in the Attachment section.Subscribers list all the people that will be notified of changes to this work item. If you have other RTC objects to link, such as other artifacts, change sets, etc, these will be added in the Links section.

The History indicates all the changes made to the work item. This list any changes - description changes, comments, new links, update to links, approvals, etc.

Create Work Items in Web Client

Creating work items in the web client is just as easy.

  1. Log in to . Please see Create Jazz account manual for more details on creating a username and password.
  2. Select your project in the My Project Area on the bottom right.
  3. On the bottom right of the page in the Project Links section, click on Work Items.
  4. On the top menu, click on Work Items. Select which type of work item you'd like to create.

  1. On the New Work Item page, enter in the appropriate fields and click Save on the top right corner.