Satya's blog

Work item types

The Scrum process is ready to use and provides multiple predefined work item types:

Adoption Item: Tracks when changes by one team must be adopted by another team
Defect: Identifies a bug
Retrospective: Records what went well and what did not go well in the recently completed iteration
Story: Describes part of a use case
Task: Describes a specific piece of work
Impediment: Tracks things that get in the way of progress
Epic: Used when a story is too big to complete in a single iteration (sometimes called a "sprint") or when there are too many unknowns to estimate the amount of work. An Epic can be broken down into several stories.
Track build item: Typically created from a build result to track the fixes that are needed for a failed build

The Formal Project Management process is also ready to use. This process provides the following work item types:

Defect: Identifies a bug
Task: Describes a specific piece of work
Project Change Request: Provides a formal mechanism to renegotiate key project parameters, such as scope, timeline, or resources
Plan item: Records commitments that the development team makes to the business organization
Risk: Describes project risks, and provides a matrix to calculate the risk probability and impact
Risk Action: Describes specific actions to counter or mitigate a risk
Issue: Identifies and describes a potential problem for which no concrete solution is proposed. Issues can be created from risks that do not have a proposed solution.
Milestone: Identifies a significant event in the project plan or a phase plan

You can define additional work item types to complement the development process that your team follows.