Picking up Application Development Tickets: Task Lists and Estimations

When working on an Application Development ticket, there are a few things we must consider before beginning any work on the task at hand. 

Firstly, if you are a member of the Application Support team:

1. Check through your Pending tickets: can you go and physically speak to someone about their request and actively close it, rather than waiting and picking up more tasks?
2. Check through your remaining tickets – are they all pending on release? If so;
3. Check through the Application Development group and pick up the most urgent, oldest ticket first (just like we do in the Application Support group)

Once you have picked up the next Application Development ticket:

1. Read through the request and produce an estimated task list
• This can be completed within TFS as linked child tasks under the User Story - please create a list of tasks with estimations against each one, and place this total figure in the Story Points box on the User Story if this is blank (if this is not blank - this should be left as it is)
• If you have any queries with this, speak to John, Rich or Samantha.
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Notes to those on the Application Support team:

Working on these tasks over several days is ok – but please be aware that your priority is always to ensure Application Support tickets are picked up as soon as possible, so be prepared to shelve your progress on these tasks as and when necessary.

As you may need to shelve your progress on these tasks, please be sure to work in a methodical, clear manner so this is possible.
Learning curve: these tasks may be a great way of furthering your development knowledge and skills, so use this as an opportunity to learn new things (whether on Pluralsight, or through learning about our products and systems more intensely, etc)