TFS work item type for requirements management targeting multiple platforms

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In my company we are using TFS for projects targeting multiple platforms (Web, iOS, Android), and since we work on sensitive/regulated projects we have a lot of requirements to produce for each little detail of our softwares/algorithms.

The problems comes when we have requirements that are shared on multiple platforms (a common algorithm for example) and for that we found 2 solutions: either we duplicate the requirements for each platform, or we create additional columns on the requirement itself (like the state column which is duplicated for each platform for example..).

With the first solution it becomes hard to maintain requirements (mostly when you have thousands of entries..) and with the 2nd solution we get a really ugly template, that needs to change when a new platform is targeted and traceability with tests cases is not that good...

So I was wondering if there is a "known/official" solution for theses cases. When I looked at the test case work item type, I noticed that there's the notion of "test point" that represents the test case for a given "test configuration", so maybe the solution is to create a new work item type that would represent the platform (and store the state on the given platform for example).

Anyway, I'm taking any advice/suggestion on that topic :)

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MrHinsh - Martin Hinshelwood On

Tagging was specifically designed to solve just this sorry of issue. In TFS 2013 you can add tags to work items and query based on those tags. If you are running your Test Cases in multiple environments it is bad practice to have duplicate test cases. You should instead use the "Configuration" function that can be applied to each of your Test Cases, blanket, or specific. This allows you to have a single Test Cases that has been passed in iOS but not passed on Android or WP. You can even remove configurations for features that are specific only to a single PBI.

In TFS 2015 you will be able to have the tags display on the cards in the kanban views.