Using Areas to create work item hierarchy

To create a kind of work item hierarchy we have thought of using the Area (Are path) Field.

The following example illustrates what we want to accomplish:

We have the following 7 work items. A feature is divided into a number of stories that are divided into a number of tasks.

Feature 1
- Story 1.1
- Task 1.1.1
- Task 1.1.2
- Story 1.2
- Task 1.2.1
- Task 1.2.2

For each work item a area node is created, so task 1.1.1 will have the area path "Feature 1\Story 1.1\Task 1.1.1"

When creating a new work item a new area node is created (We are aware that this need to be done either manually by the user, or through the API).

The advantage of using the Area to show the work item hierarchy is that it is easy for the user to see where in the hierachy the work item is and also to change the hierarchy, and there is some other advantages when creating reports.

• The question is however if anybody knows about any problems in using Areas in this way
• Is there a possible problem when the number of work items increases, and thereby the number of area nodes
• Is there a better approach to creating a work item hierarchy

There might be some issues with scaling the area node and performance could slow down and I would also not recommend going this path.

We understand that users want to do this and hence we will be providing this ability in our next release unfortunately there is not an easy option in v1 to do what yo want.

Thanks,

Mohammad