TFS and customer requirements

Question

I would like some feedback on how to best track customer requirements in TFS.

We are at the start of a new project, and we have the requirements from the customer, in the form of 20-something long sentences describing what the system should accomplish. They are not as well structured as user stories but not the worst I've seen either. Our PL strongly wants to have them in TFS.

My current solution is to have the customer requirements as epics, Our own requirements derived from the customer req's as features, and the different modules/components we are going to produce as PBI's. Does this match any other practices out there?

We are using TFS 2015, standard scrum template (2015). We are using scrum, and being mediocre at it but improving. I am scrum master, I have experience as SM but just a little with TFS.

Answer 1

Hm... This is tough. In my experience it is not useful to put customer requirements directly into TFS as work items of any sort, especially if they are in the form of "20 long sentences". What I would do is this:

1. Take those 20 sentences and have your designer build a wireframe mockup that completely covers the 20 sentences. This will help you uncover gaps in what the customer is asking for, and give you an excellent visual/tool to go back to the customer for confirmation of what they need/want.

2. However, before you take it back to the customer, validate it by having a technical review with your architect. This will uncover technical snags that maybe no one ever thought of, and it might give you an indication if somethings are going to be a larger effort than you thought.

3.Once you have your architectural review, show it to your customer for confirmation.

4. Now, work with your business analyst to write real user stories based on the work you have done up to this point.

5. Once those stories are written and in TFS you, or the PL, needs to perform a critical analysis of their work and look for any customer requirements that may not have been accounted for.