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Work Item Hierarchy Breakdown

The Hierarchy Breakdown dossier enables Project Managers to gain a bird's eye view of how tasks are distributed across multiple team members, and the linkage between multiple tasks on a single dashboard.

Most often, work items created are hierarchical by default. An idea, epic, or an initiative work item is created. To implement that idea, tasks are created. Below the tasks, sub-tasks are created (many smaller chunks of work to be done for a task to be completed). Bugs are created when there are issues with a functionality, and so on.

It is important for a Project Manager to have an overall picture of how many epics are part of his project, if and how many tasks, sub-tasks, and so on are being addressed by the teams. Insights into work items such as user stories, tasks, sub-tasks, and how they are linked to the parent epic helps the Project Manager in understanding how work is distributed across teams.

The Work Item Hierarchy Breakdown dossier helps understand the work item roll up and roll down in a simple visualization.

In the Work Item Breakdown Hierarchy dossier:

• Level 6 displays a simple bar graph of work items at the highest level plotted according to the story points allotted to them. These are the so-called 'parent' work items which may or may not have tasks, sub-tasks under them.
• Level 5 to Level 2 display a similar bar graph of work items in the lower chain of hierarchy plotted against the story points allotted.
• Level 1 displays the work item at the lowest level plotted against the story points allotted to it.