What are work areas used for with the scrum methodology

Question

On visual studio online there is an option to configure work areas. I created a project and it uses the "Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2013.4" process template.

I started entering work items into the project and found an option to configure work areas, I'm not sure how to use work areas in this context.

What is the purpose of a work area in the context of the scrum methodology?

Answer 1

Area's are a way to organize a backlog when you have multiple teams (teams then have their own area), multiple physical things that make up your product (web site, fat client, some kind of integration library).

Or, a very common usage, feature area's of your product (e.g. shopping cart, search, check-out, payment, user management). You can probably derive some of this from the PBI title or you're using tags for this. This leads to stories that include the work on all layers, which ensures that each story in itself provides value.

There is nothing in Scrum that directly relates to this, though many larger scrum projects use feature teams and try to break up the product in multiple of these area's to prevent teams from tripping over each other in the same piece of code. It provides the teams with clear focus and helps them in the refinement (because they don't need to know all the ins and outs of the whole product all the time).

In the past many teams used the area to denote technical area's of the product (front-end, business layer, database layer, database schema, webservices etc), which is considered not the best way to break up a backlog, as it often leads to component or layer stories that in themselves do not provide any value.

The official documentation can be found here. I think these Q's at the bottom of the page will help you as well:

* Q: What kind and how many area nodes should a team define?

You don’t have to add any area nodes. However, areas are useful to filter work item queries and reports based on features. Consider these guidelines when adding area nodes:

• Define areas that support your traceability and security requirements.
• Avoid creating an area structure that is too complex. You can create areas to partition permissions on work items, but complex trees require significant overhead for permission management. You might find that it is too much work to duplicate the structure and permissions in other team projects.
• Each team can create a hierarchy of areas under which the team can organize their backlog items, user stories, requirements, tasks, and bugs.
• Use areas to represent logical or physical components, and then create child areas to represent specific features. Your team can use this structure to keep work items organized and improve traceability by component or feature.
  (Remark: Be careful with this is it also reflects your team structure. It may lead to delayed value.)
• Create areas that you want to restrict access to.

* Q: How do I structure teams, areas, and iterations to support hierarchical teams or scale agility within an enterprise?

A: Although there is no concept of sub-teams, you can create teams whose area paths are under another team, which effectively creates a hierarchy of teams. To learn more, see Add another team. Also, these two white papers can walk you through the steps for configuring teams, area paths, and iterations to support portfolio management or enterprise organizations:

• Agile Portfolio Management: Using TFS to support backlogs across multiple teams and
• Scaled Agile Framework: Using TFS to support epics, release trains, and multiple backlogs.

* Q: Is there a way to decouple teams from the team area path?

A: Yes. If your organization has several teams that work from a common backlog and across many product areas, you might want to change how teams are configured. By adding a custom field to represent teams in your organization, you can reconfigure the agile planning tools and pages to support your teams and decouple assignment to teams and area paths.

(Remark: this is currently not possible on visual-studio-online)