Current Work Item Perspective

You can use the Current Work Item perspective to view the measures and dimensions of the Team System cube that pertain to the current state of work items.

Note

In order to use perspectives with the Team Foundation cube, you must use Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition or SQL Server 2005 Enterprise (64) Edition on the data tier. SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition that ships as part of Team Foundation Server, does not support the use of perspectives. When you use SQL Server 2005 Standard Edition, the cube elements from all perspectives reside in the Team System data cube.

You can use this perspective to answer questions such as:

  • How many active tasks are assigned to each person?

  • How many bugs are active in each area of the project?

  • How many un-triaged items of each type are active in the project?

  • How many active tasks have issues associated with them, and what are the tasks?

  • How many active requirements have bugs linked to them?

Measures

The following table describes the measures that are included in the Current Work Item perspective. The Current Work Item Count measure is present in all Team Foundation Server deployments. The scheduling fields of Remaining Work, Completed Work, and Baseline Work is present if any process template on the server uses the scheduling fields in work item definitions. Additional measures are present in this perspective when custom fields in the work item type definitions specify "measure" as the reportable attribute. For more information about how to use the optional reportable attribute and its values, see Defining Work Item Type Fields.

Measure

Description

Current Work Item Count

Contains the current number of work items that meet the selection criteria in the query or report.

Remaining Work

Contains the remaining hours of work for work items that meet the selection criteria in the query or report.

Completed Work

Contains the completed hours of work for work items that meet the selection criteria in the query or report.

Baseline Work

Contains the baseline hours of work for work items that meet the selection criteria in the query or report.

Dimensions

The Current Work Item perspective contains all the dimensions that can be used to summarize and filter the measures. These dimensions can be categorized into the following groups, each of which is described in the tables in the following table:

  • Shared Dimensions   These are relationships between the work item and elements in the cube; such as Team Project, Date, or Person, that are shared across many Team System perspectives.

  • Work Item Dimension   The work item dimension contains all attributes particular to work items, such as the State, Work Item Type and Work Item ID. Additionally, work item fields in process templates that have the reportable attribute set to "Dimension" will be reflected as attributes in the Work Item dimension.

  • Related Dimensions   The measures in the Current Work Item perspective can be summarized by attributes of the work items that are linked to them. For each dimension in the Current Work Item perspective, there is a corresponding "Related" dimension.

Shared Dimensions

The following table describes the shared dimensions that are included in the Current Work Item perspective. You can aggregate the measures along each of these dimensions. The Dimension Use column indicates the name of the dimension as it pertains to the measures in the Current Work Item perspective. For all work items, there are a common set of dimension uses defined in the Team System cube. These dimension uses are listed as "Common" in the Origin column. Besides these common dimension uses, new dimension uses can be defined by designating fields as "reportable" in the process template definition. For more information about how to use the optional reportable attribute and its values, see Defining Work Item Type Fields. The MSF process templates contain such dimensions as indicated by the values CMMI, Agile, or MSF (if the attribute is common to both) in the Origin column in the following table.

For more information about the shared dimensions, see Shared Dimensions.

Dimension Use

Dimension

Origin

Description

Area

Area1

Common

The area in which the work item is classified.

Found In

Build2

MSF

The build in which the bug was found.

Integration Build

Build2

MSF

The build in which the bug was fixed.

Activated Date

Date1

Common

The latest date on which the work item was activated.

Closed Date

Date1

Common

The latest date on which the work item was closed.

Date

Date1

Common

The date on which a work item is changed.

Resolved Date

Date1

Common

The latest date on which the work item was resolved.

Start Date

Date1

MSF

The current value of the Finish Date scheduling field

Finish Date

Date1

MSF

The current value of the Finish Date scheduling field

Iteration

Iteration1

Common

The iteration in which the work item is classified.

Assigned To

Person1

Common

The person to whom the work item is assigned.

Changed By

Person1

Common

The person who changed the work item.

Created By

Person1

Common

The person who created the work item.

Team Project

Team Project1

Common

The team project associated with the work item.

1 For more information, see Shared Dimensions.

2 For more information, see Build Perspective.

The Work Item Dimension

The following tables describe the common attributes that are included in the Work Item dimension. This dimension contains all attributes of all work items that are deployed on the Team Foundation Server computer. Every work item definition contains a set of common fields, and these fields are always attributes in the Work Item dimension.

Attribute

Origin

Description

ID

Common

The identification number of the work item, as assigned when the work item was created.

Work Item Type

Common

The type of work item.

Title

Common

The title of the work item.

State

Common

The state of the work item.

Previous State

Common

The previous state of the work item.

Reason

Common

The reason that the state of the work item changed.

Rev

Common

The revision of the work item.

Activated By

MSF

The person who activated the work item.

Blocked

CMMI

Whether the work item is blocked from being completed.

Closed By

MSF

The person who closed the work item.

Discipline

MSF

The discipline to which the task belongs.

Exit Criteria

MSF

The flag to determine whether this scenario should be tracked as an exit criteria for the iteration.

Issue

MSF

Used to highlight the work item, for example, to mark a bug as an issue.

Rough Order of Magnitude

Agile

A rough estimate of the number of person-days to complete the task.

Priority

CMMI

Priority to the business.

Quality of Service Type

Common

The Quality of Service type.

Rank

MSF

Stack rank to prioritize work

Requirement Type

CMMI

The type of the requirement.

Resolved By

MSF

The person who resolved the work item.

Resolved Reason

MSF

The reason why the bug was resolved.

Task Hierarchy

MSF

A string representing Microsoft Project context for the given work item.

Task Type

CMMI

The type of task.

Triage

CMMI

Status of triaging the work item.

Each dimension and dimension attribute that were discussed earlier has a corresponding dimension that enables the measures to be filtered or categorized by the attributes of work items that are linked to the work items being analyzed. This lets you perform queries that answer questions such as "How many active bugs are linked to priority 1 scenarios?"

The dimensions that correspond to the attributes of work item links are prefixed with the word "Related." For example, the "Assigned To" dimension use has a corresponding dimension "Related Assigned To," and so on for other dimension uses.

Dimension

Description

Related Area

Used to categorize the selected work items by the area of the linked work items.

Related Iteration

Used to categorize the selected work items by the iteration of the linked work items.

Related Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date of the linked work items.

Related Assigned To

Used to categorize the selected work items by the person or group the linked work items are assigned to.

Related Changed By

Used to categorize the selected work items by the person or group that changed the linked work items.

Related Created By

Used to categorize the selected work items by the person or group that created the linked work items.

Related Activated Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were activated.

Related Closed Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were closed.

Related Resolved Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were resolved.

Related Work Item

Used to categorize the selected work items by the linked work items.

Related Start Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were started.

Related Finish Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were finished.

Related Found In

Used to categorize the selected work items by whether the linked work items were found in the build.

Related Integration Build

Used to categorize the selected work items by the build in which the linked work items were resolved.

Related Created Date

Used to categorize the selected work items by the date the linked work items were created.

See Also

Concepts

Work Items Schema

Other Resources

Understanding the Structure of the Data Warehouse Cube

Perspectives