TFS confused by team, area, project, area, iteration

Question

I\'m confused by all the stuff in TFS. Can someone please explain how all this fits together?

• Team project collection
• Team project
• Team

Answer 1

Daniel has provided a good answer, but I want to clarify further.

• Team, Area, and Iteration are independent partitions of work items.

When you see Area Path = DSS\ADC\MML you should think: Area is ADC\MML within Project DSS.

Likewise, when you see Iteration Path = DSS\ADC\Sprint 23 you should think: Iteration is ADC\Sprint 23 within Project DSS.

Each Work Item belongs to exactly one area and exactly one iteration. You can imagine all the work items within a two dimensional grid of Area and Iteration, as below.

Just like Area and Iteration, a Team exists within a single Project. When you see Team = DSS/MML Dev you should think: Team is MML Dev within Project DSS. Notice that, unlike Area and Iteration, the Team uses forward slashes and the Team cannot be hierarchical.

The Work Items are not associated with a Team. Instead each Team can be associated with any subset of Areas and/or Iterations with the project. (To change the Areas and Iterations assigned to a Team, click the Manage Team gear icon in the top right corner of the web page). Therefore the Team is indirectly associated with a set of Work Items. The relation between Team and Work Item is many-to-many.