TFS – How to Record Support Hours on an Iteration

In project management, there is always a need to record how much work is being done to troubleshoot and/or identify issues for a particular release.  To address this, we could set up a team project with the following settings:

Area and Iteration Path:
Create an area path specifically for support issues. For example, the area path could read the following:

Area Path	Description
Support\Stage	Use this for the staging environment
Support\Production	Use this for the production environment

This allows us to track supporting tasks done in either the staging or production environment.

The iteration path should be set to your software iteration. For example, if in stage you are running version 2.13.0, and you need to create a support task to troubleshoot something in stage. You set the area path to stage and the iteration to version 2.13.0. The same can be applied when a task needs to be created on a production release. This allows us to track the number of tasks in each environment and for each release/iteration

Task Detail:

When you create a task, the task should be created with this additional information:

Property	Value	Description
Discipline	Analysis	This depends on the template you are using on TFS. You may create another entry that reads Support.
Type	Corrective or Mitigation	On stage you may use Corrective to correct problems before production. On production , you can use Mitigation because you need to minimize the impact of the problem
(Details tab)  Schedule Estimate	hours	The estimated hours
(Details tab)  Schedule Remaining work	hours	The work still remaining. This is important to update because a tasks may not be completed the same day, but you need to report the number of hours left.
(Details tab)  Completed  work	hours	The hours completed in the tasks

 It is important to add the completed work and remaining work to the correct Area and iteration path. This would be the only way that the reports can accurately show how much support effort is being done and in what iteration. This can lead to a better understanding of the development process and identify possible issues.

I hope this is useful.

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