I am trying to understand how to operate Team Foundation Service with scrum methodology. A problem of mine is:
I have a Product Backlog Item and five Work Items. Three Work Items are assigned to the backlog item and are displayed on the "board", so I can move them in between to do, in progress and done. Two other ones are not being displayed on board. Why? How can I assign them to the backlog to be able to see them on board?
I have accomplished this by creating a "Project Tasks" spike to get these types of tasks to show up on the board in their own lane. You can also estimate this SPIKE, if you want to make sure this work is counted in your velocity, but I tend to treat these as "overhead" tasks that don't deliver value, so I don't report on them in our velocity.
If the tasks are related directly to the value you are delivering (for example, you are performing an investigation spike to determine how to estimate a user story) you should definitely estimate that PBI, give it points, and then add those tasks to that PBI.
Either way, adding the tasks as children of a PBI is the way to get them on the board.
If I understand your question correctly, search for the work items that you want to assign to a backlog item. Right click on the task task and then choose 'Link to an Existing Work Item'. Choose parent for the link type and make sure that you know the work item ID of the back log item and enter that in the work item ID. Press ok and then save the task item in the lower part of the web page.
That worked for me.
