Every so often, when new users get introduced to TFS this question pops up:
"How can I assign a task to multiple people?"
My common answer is a task in TFS is not a grocery list, suggesting that, each task is assigned to a particular individual on certain timeframe. This task, or a bug, impediment or some other private work item depending on the project’s process template, can be reassigned when needed but it will always be assigned to a single owner.
Reasoning? Like a grocery list, each item can be picked up by single person at a time.
“What if an item on this is a group of items, like a fruit basket” you’re asking?
- Then you should split this task to smaller ones. Having done that you can split each fragment to different owners. Let Bob bring the apples and let Jane bring the oranges.
“Wait… what if the item on the list is a bag of apples? Splitting it seems overkill.”
- It depends how many apples you want. Clearly picking up just a handful of apples still qualifies for a single task. But if you need thousands of apples then you should consider splitting that task over multiple people. In this case, Let Bob bring 200 apples and let Jane bring 800 apples (as she is a better gatherer, right? J).
