1. IBM Software Exercise
Developing Software with
IBM Rational Team Concert
Exercise 2: Managing Work Items

2. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013 Exercise 2. Managing Work Items 2-1
V9.0
EXempty
Exercise 2. Managing Work Items
What this exercise is about
The purpose of this exercise is to become familiar with the IBM® Rational
Team Concert™ Work Item perspective and views, and to gain experience
with creating, querying, triaging, and working on Rational Team Concert work
items.
What you should be able to do
At the end of this exercise, you should be able to:
• Create a work item in the project.
• Query work items in the project.
• Adjust how the results are sorted and how they are displayed, and then
add conditions to the query to limit its scope.
• Join a Rational Team Concert project, and then switch context to the new
project.
• Triage a work item for the project.

3. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
2-2 Developing Software with IBM Rational Team Concert, V4.0.4 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013
2.1. Create a work item
Scenario
In this exercise, you practice creating a work item in the JKE Banking project.
__ 1. Start Rational Team Concert, and select the C:Workspacesdeb workspace.
Help. This step might not be necessary if the Rational Team Concert client is open from a
previous lab.
__ 2. In the Team Artifacts view, expand the JKE Banking folder. Right-click the Work Items
folder and then click New > Work Item. The Create New Work Item window opens and
shows the available work-item types.
__ 3. Select Defect, and then click Finish. A Work Item editor window opens.
__ 4. Populate the common defect properties:
• In the Summary field, enter Sample Defect for Deb.
• In the Description section, enter Sample description.
• From the Filed Against list, select JKE/BRM.
• From the Found In list, select Sprint 2 Development.
• From the Owned By list, select Deb.
• From the Priority list, select Medium.
__ 5. Click the Links tab so that you can add an attachment.
• In the Attachments section, click Add File.
• Click Desktop and then select RS843.
• Double-click photo.png. The file is attached to the defect.
__ 6. Click Save.
Help. A unique ID is assigned to your defect, and it is saved in the Rational Team Concert
database.

4. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013 Exercise 2. Managing Work Items 2-3
V9.0
EXempty 2.2. Create simple work-item queries
Scenario
In this exercise, you practice creating simple work-item queries in the JKE Banking project.
__ 1. In the Team Artifacts view, open the JKE Banking folder. Right-click the Work Items folder
and then click New > Query. The Work Item Query editor window opens.
__ 2. In the Query editor, click Start from scratch.
Help. In this step, you create a query for all of the work items that are associated with the
JKE Banking project.
__ 3. Click Run to start the query.
Help. Because you did not add any conditions to this query, all work items that are created
for the JKE Banking project are displayed in the Work Items view.
__ 4. In the Work Item Query Name field, enter All JKE Banking Work Items, and then click
Save.
Help. This personal query is saved in the My Queries folder in the Work Items file in the
JKE Banking project.
__ 5. Modify the query so that it sorts according to the status and owner of each work item:
• Click the Column Display tab at bottom of the Query editor.
• In the Sorting section, look at the Available sort columns list:
- Double-click Status.
- Double-click Owned By.
Help. In this step, you sort first by status and then by the owner.
__ 6. Click Run.
Help. The Work Items view shows the query results that are sorted by status and then by
owner.

5. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
2-4 Developing Software with IBM Rational Team Concert, V4.0.4 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013
__ 7. Customize which work-item properties are displayed in the query result list:
• Click the Column Display tab at the bottom of the Query editor.
• In the Columns section, click Set to Defaults to populate the default properties. The
most commonly displayed work-item properties are displayed.
• In the Columns section, look at the Available columns list:
- Double-click Creation Date to add it to the Selected columns list.
• In the Columns section, look at the Selected columns list:
- Double-click Created By to remove it.
- Click Owned By.
- Click Up until Owned By is the fourth item on the list after Status.
Help. Because you want to sort the list by status and owner, place the Owned By and
Status fields right after the work-item Type and ID columns in the results.
__ 8. Click Run. The Work Items view shows the query results with the new property display
format and applied sorting changes.
__ 9. Save the modified query as a new personal query:
• Click Save Copy.
• Replace the text in the Name field with this text: 
All JKE Banking Work Items by Status and Owner
• Click Save. The new query is saved, and the original “All JKE Banking Work Items”
query remains unchanged.
__ 10. In the Work Items view, click the Creation Date column header. What happens? The results
are sorted by the Creation Date property values only.
Help. This sort does not affect the saved query. The sort affects the order of the current
results in the Work Items view.

6. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013 Exercise 2. Managing Work Items 2-5
V9.0
EXempty 2.3. Create more sophisticated work-item queries
Scenario
These lab exercises go deeper into querying Rational Team Concert work items. You add
conditions to the query so that only urgent work items are displayed.
In this exercise, “urgent” means all JKE Banking work items that meet these criteria: the
priority is high, or the severity is set to Critical and Blocker, or the creation date is after 1 day
ago, and the status is set to Unresolved.
__ 1. Start with the “All JKE Banking Work Items by Owner and Status” query from Exercise 2.2.
• If the query is not already open, complete these steps:
- In the JKE Banking project folder, expand Work Items, and then expand My
Queries.
- Right-click All JKE Banking Work Items by Owner and Status, and then click
Edit.
• In the Work Item Query editor, click Save Copy.
• In the query Name field, enter Urgent JKE Banking Work Items.
• Click Save.
Help. In this step, you create a third personal query that is updated with conditions in the
remaining steps of this exercise.
__ 2. On the Conditions tab, do these steps in the “AND All must match” section.
• Click the Add Conditions icon.The Add Conditions window opens.
• Select the Priority property.
• Press and hold Ctrl, and then select the Severity property.
• Click OK.
The Add Conditions window closes, and two Condition windows open
__ 3. Select the values for Priority and Severity properties:
• For the Priority value, select High.
• For the Severity value, select Critical and Blocker.
• Click Run.

7. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
2-6 Developing Software with IBM Rational Team Concert, V4.0.4 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013
Help. After you click Run, note the results: In the Work Items View, only one work item is
found because only one work item meets the conditions that you set for the Priority and
Severity properties.
__ 4. Set the query to choose either Priority or Severity conditions. In the “AND All must match”
section, complete these steps:
• From the list, click OR. The section is now “OR Any can match.”
• Click Run.
• Click Save.
Help. You want the query to choose either Priority or Severity conditions, but not both. After
you click Run and Save, how many work items were found?
__ 5. Add two more conditions to this query: Creation Date and Status. Set the query to search for
work items that were created on or after 1 day ago and that are unresolved.
• In the “OR Any can match” section, click the arrow next to the Add Conditions icon on
the far right, which looks like a green plus sign.
• Select AND Group. A new, nested section is displayed called “AND All must match.”
• In the new “AND All must match” section, click the Add Conditions icon.
- Select Creation Date.
- Press and hold Ctrl, and then click Status.
- Click OK. Two condition boxes are displayed in the lower part of the “OR Any can
match” section.
• In the Creation Date field:
- Click Relative date.
- In the field, enter 1.
- Click the down arrow next to Creation Date is, and select after (including).
• In the Status field, select Unresolved.
• Click Run.
Help. These old, unresolved work items would also be urgent.

8. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013 Exercise 2. Managing Work Items 2-7
V9.0
EXempty __ 6. Click Save.
Help. In this step, you save the updated “Urgent JKE Working Work Items” query.
After you complete this step, unresolved work items that were created on or after 1 day ago
are listed.

9. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
2-8 Developing Software with IBM Rational Team Concert, V4.0.4 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013
2.4. Join the project team
Scenario
In this exercise, you accept all of the work for the JKE Banking Project. This project contains
a Java™ application that is being developed to perform a banking function.
__ 1. If the Work Items perspective is not already open, switch to that perspective.
Help. To open the perspective, click Window > Open Perspective > Work Items.
__ 2. Open the My Work view.
__ 3. In Inbox section of the My Work view, click Accept all work.
Help. In this step, both the work items that are planned for in the product backlog and that
are unplanned are moved to the Future Work section. The JKE Banking Project work item
that is assigned to you for the current iteration is moved to Current Work section.

10. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
© Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013 Exercise 2. Managing Work Items 2-9
V9.0
EXempty 2.5. Review your assigned work item for the JKE Banking
project
Scenario
In this exercise, you explore a work item in the JKE Banking project.
__ 1. Open the Implement - Requests sent in form of email work item in the Work Item editor.
• In the My Work view, look at the Current Work section.
• Double-click the work item called “Implement - Requests sent in form of email.”
__ 2. On the Overview tab, thoroughly review the information, including these fields:
Summary
Description
Discussion
Priority
Severity
Filed Against
Planned For
Created By
Owned By
Help. The information on the Overview tab provides insight into what must be done, why,
and who requested the work. The Discussion field might contain additional important
information from other team members or stakeholders.
__ 3. Click the Links tab and answer these questions:
• Are there any attachments?
• Are there any links?
• Are there related work items?
• Do duplicates exist?
• Are there parent or child work items?
• Are there any Subscribers who get notified when the Task is modified?
Help. Complete these steps to develop the practice of thoroughly reviewing work items that
are assigned to you before you decide how to act on them.

11. Student Exercises
Course materials may not be reproduced in whole or in part
without the prior written permission of IBM.
2-10 Developing Software with IBM Rational Team Concert, V4.0.4 © Copyright IBM Corp. 2008, 2013
__ 4. Click the Overview tab, and update this information:
• In the Estimate field, change the value to 3 hours.
• In the Time Remaining filed, change the value to 3 hours
• Click Save.
Help. Rational Team Concert converts the estimate string from 3 hours to 3h.
__ 5. Click the History tab and answer these questions:
• How has the work item evolved?
• Who is making changes to what fields and when were they made?
• What were the previous field values?
End of exercise