Work Product Descriptor (Artifact): Work Items List

This artifact contains a list of all scheduled work to be done within the project, as well as proposed work that may affect the product in this or future projects. Each work item may contain references to information relevant to carry out the work described within the work item.

Purpose

To collect all requests for work that will potentially be taken on within the project, so work can be prioritized, effort estimated and progress tracked.

Relationships

Roles	Responsible: Project Manager	Modified By: Ambassador User Project Manager
Input To	Mandatory: Assess Results Manage Iteration Plan Iteration	Optional: None	External: None
Output From	Assess Results Manage Iteration Plan Iteration

Main Description

This artifact provides a focal point for the entire team:

It provides one list containing all requests for additional capabilities or enhancement for that application. Note that some of these requests may never be implemented, or be implemented in later projects
It provides one list of all the work to be prioritized, estimated, and assigned within the project. The risk list is prioritized separately.
It provides one place to go to for the development team to understand what Micro-Increments need to be delivered, get references to material required to carry out the work, and one place to go to report progress made.

These are the typical work items that go into this list:

Use cases (and references to use-case specifications)
Supporting requirements
Changes and enhancement requests
Defects
Development tasks

Work items can be very large in scope, especially when capturing requests for enhancements, such as “Support Financial Planning” for a personal finance application. To allow the application to be developed in micro-increments, work items are analyzed and broken down into smaller work items so they can be assigned to an iteration, such as a use-case scenario for “Calculate Net Worth”. Further breakdown may be required to identify suitable tasks to be assigned to developers, such as “Develop UI for Calculate Net Worth”. This means that work items often have parent/child relationships, where the lowest level is a specification and tracking device for micro-increments.

Work Items should contain estimates, see Guideline: Managing Work Items and Guideline: Agile Estimation.

Properties

Optional
Planned

Illustrations

Templates	Work Items List
Reports	Iteration Burndown Project Burndown
Examples	Work Items List

Tailoring

Representation Options

As a spreadsheet or database

The Work Items List can be captured as a separate artifact, represented by a spreadsheet or database table. See Example: Work Items List.

In specific tools

Project Management, Requirements Management and Change Request tools are options to capture the list of work to be done.

As part of the Iteration Plan

The Artifact: Iteration Plan typically references work items that are assigned to that iteration. If the team is capturing the iteration plan on a whiteboard, for example, the team may choose to reference high-level work items in the Work Items List that are assigned to the iteration, and maintain low-level child work items used to track day-to-day work only within an iteration plan.

More Information

Checklists	Work Items List
Concepts	Micro-Increments
Guidelines	Agile Estimation Managing Work Items Prioritizing Work Items

This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the
Eclipse Public License v1.0 which accompanies this distribution.