Independent work item on Task Board. How to put in Task Category?

Question

Does anyone know how an impediment could appear on the task board? I use TFS 2013. The process template is for Scrum. I tried to put this work item on Task Category but it doesn't work.

Answer 1

You must modify the states in Impediment.xml to the same states used by Task work item, the Transitions need to be modifyed too, so copy the states and transitions from Task.xml to Impediment.xml

<STATES>
  <STATE value="To Do" />
  <STATE value="In Progress" />
  <STATE value="Done" />
</STATES>

Aditional you must add this work item type into the TaskCategory in Categories.xml

<CATEGORY refname="Microsoft.TaskCategory" name="Task Category">
    <DEFAULTWORKITEMTYPE name="Task" />
    <WORKITEMTYPE name="Impediment" />
</CATEGORY>

That's all.

Answer 2

I'm not sure if this works for 2013, but in 2017 you can create a Style.

Go to the settings of the Sprint Backlog, by clicking the cog in the top-right corner Go to the tab Styles and add a new rule with the criteria Blocked = Yes. Then, whenever a task has this property, it will show in your specified color!