Bugs and Scrum

Bug modelling changes in Scrum for Team System V2.1

We have remodelled bugs so that they are now at the same level as Product Backlog items rather than as a type of Sprint Backlog task. The critical change is to treat a Sprint Task that hasn’t reached a stage of “Done” as an incomplete task rather than as a bug, with the task status field used to track its incomplete state, e.g. “In Progress” – being worked on by the developer, “Ready for Test” - developed code ready for the QA to test and provide feedback.

Bugs are defined as defects with code that had previously reached a state of “Done”. Once identified, bugs are treated as “New work” that should have visibility and be relatively prioritised along with all the items in the Product Backlog by the Product Owner. Another reason to move bugs to the Product Backlog is that the Sprint Backlog is the domain of the Scrum team and is therefore not an ideal place for the Product Owner to engage.

We have added a number of additional fields to the Bug work item to enable greater flexibility when working with bugs data via Work Item Query Language (WIQL) queries whether consumed by Team Explorer or Excel. Custom WIQL queries can be used to augment those that we have provided out of the box and then viewed in Team Explorer or Excel.