How to Make Your Requirement IDs More Descriptive and Distinctive Using Custom ID

Modern Requirements4DevOps offers the functionality to add Custom ID’s to Work Items. The intent of this feature is to make a Work Item field more readable and recognizable. For example “PX-REQ-00001” for the first requirements work item in Project X.

Our Custom ID feature offers the same benefits alongside the added benefits of using the Custom ID in the Queries module.

Custom ID’s can be setup as a custom property that exists on each of your Work Items. The Custom IDs is not designed replace the work item ID, instead it complements it.

The Custom ID property offers an easy method of identifying several necessary information of a given Work Item all within one field. It also proves to be an incredibly useful tool for identifying a requirements source in cross-project queries.

By allowing you to consolidate the information into one field you make a Work Item more approachable to less involved users. The Custom ID capability adheres to the following guidelines:

Work Items can be assigned a unique code based on different Work Item types. For example, a Requirement Work Item type’s code could be REQ, a User story Work Item type’s code could be US, and a Bug Work Item type’s code could be BG.

You can create the starting number that your Work Item types will increment from thereafter. For example, you can dictate that User Story Custom ID numbering should start at 1 or 10000 and it will increment every User Story’s Custom ID by thereafter.

You can also add an optional project prefix for any Custom ID. For example, a project name such as “Project X” could have the prefix PX assigned to it.

Finally, you can choose to include the Scope of any Work Item. The ID number is not repeated in the scope; the scope can be Team, Project or Collection. Scope guarantees the custom ID will be unique within the scope.

Using the example covered in the above guideline, a Custom ID for the first (00001) Requirement Work Item in Project X would be “PX-REQ-00001” – which is a concatenation of the project prefix + Work Item type code + number.