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We have an existing Traceability Matrix in Excel that has columns like:

  • Project
  • Business Rule Group
  • Requirement ID
  • Business Rule
  • Type
    etc, etc

I would like to stay DRY (don't repeat yourself) in the sense that when we create a new requirement in this Excel spreadsheet...that its Requirement ID will propogate into and throughout TFS as needed. It seems counterintuitive/odd that we would ever need to re-enter this Requirement ID value in TFS.

Am I off base or is this perfectly doable? I recently watched this Microsoft TFS webcast. While informative, it did not address this fundamental question.

https://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-IN&EventID=1032448402&CountryCode=IN

I then envision the creation of TFS Work Items that are tied to one or more Requirement IDs. This would extend and close the forward/backward traceability from our Traceability Matrix in Excel, into TFS Work Items, throughout subsequent feature requests/use cases/unit tests/source code/etc, and back again.

Thanks!

Clay
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2 Answers2

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You can modify any work item in TFS, and thus also the Requirement/User story work item. You can add a new field in there that stores your Requirement ID.

Visit MSDN to see how to modify your work item: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms243849.aspx

Ewald Hofman
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  • Ok, I understand that capability. What I'm having trouble finding/understanding is how (if possible) our RTM Excel document can be the point of origin for creating requirements. Given the following example: 1. User enters a new requirement (ID #1000) into the RTM Excel spreadsheet. 2. (a miracle happens) 3. TFS utilizes the RTM spreadsheet and pulls ID #1000 (along with all other requirement IDs) to populate areas of TFS where we will then associates Work Items with these requirement IDs. Am I thinking about this incorrectly? If not, then I just need know what step 2 is above. – Clay Jan 21 '11 at 16:17
  • You can use the default Excel integration that is available within TFS. If that is not enough for you, you might want to wait for some news on the Word plugin for TFS (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2009/08/20/vsts-rangers-projects-summary-of-projects-covered-on-this-blog.aspx). There is a chance that some more news will follow shortly. – Ewald Hofman Jan 22 '11 at 16:56
  • You can generate Requirement traceability matrix from tfs using SmartExcel4TFS. check this link http://www.modernrequirements.com/smartexcel4tfs/ and see the video in the provided link – joinsaad Apr 23 '15 at 13:25
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While I don't think tfs supports this out of the box, assuming you are keeping the document in the projects sharepoint site you could set up a custom workflow that would add the requirement id to a global list. How to modify global lists can be found here. http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/shair/archive/2010/03/08/tfs-api-part-23-create-global-list-xml-way.aspx

Sean Lynch
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