What is a feature tree?

A feature tree is a way to look at planned product features hierarchically, so you can quickly understand the relationships among product features you have specified.

A feature tree is what you see when you click the Tree button on a tracker overview screen. (You can return to the traditional single-level tracker view by clicking list.)

The feature tree shows you the nested descendants of an artifact at whatever level of detail you need, all the way down to the tasks supporting your lowest-level user stories. When you define a user story that depends on several tasks for its completion, and you declare each of those tasks a "child" of the user story, they appear as subordinate nodes under the "parent" user story artifact in the feature tree.

User stories are the most common components of a feature tree, but any kind of artifact can appear. For example, when the completion of a user story depends on fixing a bug, the artifact representing the bug appears in your feature tree as a "child" node under the artifact representing the user story.

For each artifact in the feature tree, look for this key information:

Priority

A relative measure of how important the feature is, compared with the other features you want in the product.

Artifact ID

The permanent alphanumeric identifier for the artifact. Use the Jump to ID box to quickly find artifacts by their artifact ID.

Title

A short phrase identifying the work that the artifact describes.

Status

The artifact's position in the work flow of its project. Standard status values are "Open," "Under development," "In QA," and the like.

Estimated Effort

A measure of the work required to deliver the work described in the artifact. The units used are up to you -- just make sure they are used consistently across the project, so that you get accurate totals when you need them.

Remaining Effort

A measure of the work that's still to be done on the artifact, in the same units used in Estimated Effort. Project members must update this value whenever they advance the work in the artifact.

Planning Folder

The planning folder that the artifact is assigned to, if any.