Create and Assign a Work Item
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe a work item and how it tracks changes.
- Create a work item and assign it to a team member.
- Explain what happens when a work item moves to In Progress.
See Your Team in Action
CalcPro has a project, a pipeline plan, and a team with the right access. Now the real work begins.
Your team has three tasks ready to start.
- Cassie Evans is fixing a bug where the decimal button calculates incorrectly.
- Cassie Evans is adding a subtraction button that was cut from the first release.
- Ryan Jackson is updating the display font to match the new brand guidelines.
Each task is a separate piece of work that needs to be tracked, reviewed, and deployed independently. In DevOps Center, each one gets its own work item. You create the first work item for Cassie’s bug fix.
Explore Work Items
A work item is a record in DevOps Center that tracks a single change or a small group of related changes. It represents a bug fix, a new feature, a configuration update, or any other piece of work your team is doing.
Work items provide visibility across your team. Developers see what they’re working on. Managers see the full picture of all in-progress work.
Every work item moves through a lifecycle.
Status |
What It Means |
|---|---|
New |
A work item exists but work hasn't started. |
In Progress |
A developer is actively working on it. |
In Review |
Work is ready for peer review. |
Ready to Promote |
Change is ready to move to the next stage. |
Promoted |
Change has moved to the next pipeline stage. |
Closed |
The work item is done and the change is available in production. |
Create a Work Item
Create the first work item for the CalcPro project. Cassie Evans will fix the decimal button bug.
You create this work item without connecting it to a full pipeline as we couldn’t connect your pipeline to sandboxes in Unit 3. In a production environment, work items automatically flow through all configured pipeline stages.
- In DevOps Center, select the Work Items tab.
- Select New.
- In the Project field, select CalcPro.
- In the Subject field, enter:
Fix decimal button calculation error. - In the Description field, enter:
The decimal button returns incorrect values when chaining operations. Cassie to investigate and fix in the Dev sandbox.
- In the Assignee field, select Cassie Evans.
- Leave the Development Environment field empty.
- Select Save.
The work item is saved with a status of New. DevOps Center is waiting for Cassie to start work.
What Happens When Development Begins
Moving a work item to In Progress requires a connected development environment (sandbox), which isn’t available in a Trailhead Playground. This section explains how the process works in a production environment.
Cassie is ready to start working on the bug fix. In a production environment with sandboxes connected, she would move the work item to In Progress to signal to the team that development has begun. This action triggers DevOps Center to automatically create a feature branch in the CalcPro repository for this work item. The branch name follows the format feature/WI-000001 (the number matches the work item ID). Cassie can now work on the fix in her development sandbox.
You've successfully set up DevOps Center for the CalcPro project and created your first work item. Your team now has a complete system to track work, manage changes, and deploy to production with confidence.