During my presentation at the WI .NET User Group the this past week, I had a number of questions on customizing the TFS Process Template.  I’m going to answer some of these questions in detail on my blog.  The first one I’m going to cover is “Can I lock the original estimate in TFS so I can see how good we are at estimating?”  The answer is yes.  But before we begin, a couple of notes.

First make sure you have TFS Power Tools installed.  For the TFS 2010 RC, download them here.

Second, I’m going to show you how to do it using the MSF for Agile v5.0 Task Work Item Type (WIT).  While other templates are going to be slightly different, you can use this same method as a general guideline on how to do this.

Finally, what we are looking to do here is lock (make read only) our Original Estimate once we start booking time against the task.  Here’s how:

Step 1:

Open the “Task” WIT from the Server.

Step 2:

Goto the Workflow tab.

Step 3:

Open the initiating transition.  (The one that sets up the Active state on the far left)

Step 4:

Select the Fields tab.

Step 5:

Click new.

Step 6:

Select the Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.CompletedWork field.

Step 7:

Goto the Rules tab.

Step 8:

Click new and select the COPY rule type and click OK.

Step 9:

Set the fields as follows:

Step 10:

OK all the way back to the Workflow tab.

Step 11:

Open the Active State either by double clicking or selecting “Open Details” from the context menu.

Step 12:

Click New.

Step 13:

Select the field Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.OriginalEstimate.

Step 14:

Goto the Rules tab.

Step 15:

Click New, select WHENNOT and click OK.

Step 16:

Select Microsoft.VSTS.Scheduling.CompletedWork for the Field and 0 for the Value.

Step 17:

Goto the Rules tab.

Step 18:

Click New and Select READONLY.

Step 19:

OK all the way back to the Workflow tab.

Step 20:

Click Save.

You’re Done!

Now as long as you don’t enter any work against as task you can continue to modify the Original Estimate field. 

Once hours are booked against the task, the Original Estimate field changes to read only.

Good luck and Enjoy!