Tracking waste in TFS
Overview
Tracking waste and gathering the empirical data is one of the most effective ways of convincing people for the need to adapt.
This needs an Estimated Effort field, as in Scrum for Team System template.
This can be done with the MS templates, by adding this field in.
You need to use the estimated effort field, so that the burndown is not affected.
Steps
Within the area path of the team project, create a top level area called waste, under that add the key waste areas as you become aware of them
Whenever a team member encounters an issue that is causing them to lose time, they create a Task (Sprint Backlog Task in SfTS 3) and set the Area path (feature scope in SfTS 3) to be waste and the sub area if known.
Then update the estimated effort with the amount of time lost.
Set
Estimated Effort = time lost
Planning scope/Iteration Path = sprint
Work Remaining = 0
Feature Scope/Area Path = WasteSubArea
Description = Meaningful comment
Title = Meaningful Title
Create a separate work items or update the work item as and when further waste is identified.
Reporting
Create a new work item query, and save it with a meaningful name. I have used "Waste Query"
Add the columns that you want to report on, by editing the column options. I have added the Estimated Effort and Area Path columns
After saving the query, you can then open it up in excel and create a report with a pivot table and a chart to help create transparency regarding waste
Other Process Templates
For this to work with other process templates, you will need to add in an "Estimated Effort" field to the Task work item
