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• La beta du Feature Pack est disponible pour Team Foundation Server 2010 et Project Server Integration

  La beta du Feature Pack est disponible Pour Team Foundation Server 2010 et Project Server Integration Microsoft vient d'annoncer la disponibilité de la beta du Feature Pack de Team Foundation Server 2010 et Projet Server Integration ce qui marque la fin des CTP(community technical preview). La beta du Feature Pack de Team Foundation Server 2010 et Project Server (TFS-PS) est disponible uniquement pour les abonnées MSDN et sur licence « Go Live », ce qui signifie qu'elle peut déjà être utilisée dans un environnement de production. Pour mémoire, Team Foundation Server est un outil de travail collaboratif accompagnant la suite Visual Studio Team System(VSTS). Il permet la gest...

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• Must-do activities for a team leader, and time managing them

  - by MeLight

  This is a two part question Part one: I'm leading a small team of developers of mixed skills (juniors and seniors). I'm sometimes feeling that I focus too much on my own code, instead of seeing the big the picture, and managing the team. What would you say the most crucial non-coding activities for a team leader, related to his team members? Part two:Given that I know what other (non-coding stuff) I should be doing, what is a good time division between my own code writing and managing the other team members (code reviews, whiteboarding, meetings etc).

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• TFS vs. Star Team comparison

  - by ryanabr

  I have a sales call today in which the person that I am talking to is interested in what TFS would give them over Star Team, The first thing I believe that I can say is that TFS is cheaper! Especially if you are doing MSFT development already and your team members have MSDN subscriptions as the CALs for TFS are covered in the MSDN subscription. The other thing that I noticed about Star Team was all of the references to ‘readiness’ and ‘integration’. While that is great, that means that other tools will be needed to provide the features that are already bundled with TFS like, SharePoint integration, as well as Analysis Services and Reporting Services to provide visibility on the web with reports on project health, and team velocity. Below is a quick table that I was able to throw together to answer some high level questions: Feature TFS Star Team Work Items X X Work Item custom Queries X X Customizable Work Items X Web Portal View X X Reporting X Integration Version Control X X Build Management X Integration Integrated Test Suite X Integration Cost Free for first 5 / MSDN Sub covers others $7500 / seat

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• What Is The Relationship Between Software Architect and Team Member

  - by Steve Peng

  I work for a small company which has less than 100 persons. Several months ago, this company offered me position of SA and I accepted. There are three teams in this company, and I work for one of them. This is the first time I work as a SA. During the past months, I find I don't have any power of management, I even can't let the team member do things (coding-related) in the way which is correct and more efficient. The team members argue with me on very very basic technical questions and I have to explain to them again and again. Though some members did take my advice, other members stubbornly program in their way which frequently proved wrong finally. Recently I feel a little tired and confused. I wonder what is correct relationship between a Software Architect and team members including the team leader? Besides, is software architect also leaded by the Team Leader?

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• What is a "cross-functional team" actually?

  - by Idsa

  The general meaning of "cross-functional team" is a team which combines specialists in different fields that are required to reach the goal. But it looks like in Agile cross-functionality means not only combining different specialists, but making them mix. Henrik Kniberg defines cross-functional team this way: "Cross-functional just means that the team as a whole has all skills needed to build the product, and that each team member is willing to do more than just their own thing." But where is the line drawn? Is it normal to ask developers to become testers for an iteration if it is required?

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• How to manage a growing team?

  - by Andra

  I'm the admin assistant of the CTO and our organization has recently experienced a lot of growth. Within six months, we have merged with another organization and our Dev team has grown from 8 to 16, with another 8 people in QA. What we're dealing with now is a highly technical individual, with little patience, managing a much larger team than he's accustomed to, 40% of which is junior as well as an increase in the number of projects. Needless to say, my boss is being pulled in too many directions at once. How can I help him manage his workload and his team so that the team feels they're getting enough help and support and remain effective? Also, where can I find additional resources on managing a growing team?

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• What is a "cross-functional team" actually?

  - by Idsa

  The general meaning of "cross-functional team" is a team which combines specialists in different fields that are required to reach the goal. But it looks like in Agile cross-functionality means not only combining different specialists, but making them mix. Henrik Kniberg defines cross-functional team this way: "Cross-functional just means that the team as a whole has all skills needed to build the product, and that each team member is willing to do more than just their own thing." But where is the line drawn? Is it normal to ask developers to become testers for an iteration if it is required?

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• Encouraging business and team members to write more code

  - by Aliixx

  I am really interested to hear any ideas or working practices that can be adopted to encourage our team of developers to write more code. A little background here is involves a team of varying disciplines, experience and qualities and the nature of the work has a large focus on bug fixes and business logic / data validation over writing lots of new greenfield code or even refactoring. We are attempting to move to a more Agile philosophy and really what would be great is to hear any ideas that can be sold to the team and / or the business with the aim of: Writing more new code to improve experience, abilities and increase exposure to newer and emerging patterns and practices. Energizing the effort of the team and inspire. Encouraging wider input of new ideas, patterns and practices from the team as a whole. I would be very interested (and grateful) to hear any ideas or examples of ideas that can help here. Thanks!

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• What should I do when my team leader is unfair for no reason? [closed]

  - by crucified soul

  I'm a new software developer and this is my first job. It's a startup and the CEO and the working environment is just great. I work really hard and I believe that I also do my job well. But recently, I have felt like my team leader is being unfair to me for no reason. It appears that he is nice to my co-workers, but not me. I figure he is mad at me, but I didn't bother to find out why. I really love this company and I really love working there. But if my team leader continues to be unfair then I have no option other than leaving. How can I fix this? EDIT: The other day he called me into his office and wanted to see my work in the afternoon (Yes, in my country, at summer season after 5PM is afternoon. My office begins at 8AM. And I'm not saying I've problems to work after 5PM). At the time I was facing a weird runtime error and I was pretty tired. I explained the situation to him. Then he found a small logical error in my code and asked me why I didn't fix this. I told him I was trying to resolve this runtime error and that I was sure that this logical error had nothing to do with the runtime error. He then proceeded to yell at me. After fixing the logical error that runtime error was still there. This is not the only occasion he has been unfair to me. I'm saying is being unfair because he doesn't do this kind of thing to other developers when they do really silly mistakes.

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• What actions to take when people leave the team?

  - by finrod

  Recently one of our key engineers resigned. This engineer has co-authored a major component of our application. We are not hitting Truck number yet though, but we're getting close :) Before the guy waltzes off, we want to take actions necessary to recover from this loss as smoothly as possible and eventually 'grow' the rest of the team to competently cover the parts he authored. More about the context: the domain the component covers and the code are no rocket science but still a lot of non-trivial stuff. Some team members can already cover a lot of this but those have a lot on their plates and we want to make sure every. (as I see it): Improve tests and test coverage - especially for the non-trivial stuff, Update high level documents, Document any 'funny stuff' the code does (we had to do some heavy duct-taping), Add / update code documentation - have everything with 'public' visibility documented. Finally the questions: What do you think are the actions to take in this situation? What have you done in such situations? What did or did not work well for you?

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• The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

  - by MarkPearl

  I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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• Installing Team Explorer 2008 on Windows Server 2003

  - by BriteShiny

  I am attempting to install Team Explorer 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 box, without success, which is why I am here. The error log reveals the following: [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): d:.\wcu\ppe\vside.exe exited with return value 1 [07/02/10,10:07:03] InstallReturnValue: GFN_MID VS PPE, 0x1 [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Error code 1 for this component means "Incorrect function. " [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Component Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) returned an unexpected value. [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Return from system messaging: Incorrect function. Apparently the Team Explorer 2008 is incompatible with Windows Server 2008. If you right click on the setup.exe in the TFS Explorer ISO and run a compatibility check it fails. There is a separate installer package to install the VS2008 Shell that is compatible with Windows 2008, but it fails too. Has anyone else been able to install Team Explorer 2008 on Windows Server 2008?

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• Best practice- How to team-split a django project while still allowing code reusal

  - by Infinity

  I know this sounds kind of vague, but please let me explain- I'm starting work on a brand new project, it will have two main components: "ACME PRODUCT" (think Gmail, Meebo, etc), and "THE SITE" (help, information, marketing stuff, promotional landing pages, etc lots of marketing-induced cruft). So basically the url /acme/* will load stuff in the uber cool ajaxy application, and every other URI will load stuff in the other site. Problem: "THE SITE" component is out of my hands, and will be handled by a consultants team that will work closely with marketing, And I and my team will work solely on the ACME PRODUCT. Question: How to set up the django project in such a way that we can have: Seperate releases. (They can push new marketing pages and functionality without having to worry about the state of our code. Maybe even separate Subversion "projects") Minimize impact (on our product) of whatever flying-unicorns-hocus-pocus the other team codes into the site. Still allow some code reusal. My main concern is that the ACME product needs to be rock solid, and therefore needs to be somewhat isolated of whatever mistakes/code bloopers the consultants make in their marketing side of the site. How have you handled this? Any ideas? Thanks!

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• Join our Marketing Intelligence Team in Dublin!

  - by jessica.ebbelaar

  Do you want to work with the brightest minds in the industry? Want to be part of a global team that’s changing the way the world does business? Then Oracle is the place for YOU. Join now as a Marketing Intelligence Representative. You will have the opportunity to develop within the role through working alongside the Business Development, Sales and Marketing teams within Oracle. The Marketing Intelligence Group is viewed as a true talent pool for the Business Development and Sales Teams. Oracle offers a structured training programme for Marketing Intelligence Representatives and Business Development Consultants including our approved sales certified training methodology along with regular product training. Miriam started her career as a Marketing Intelligence Representative six years ago, and shares what she has learned and how her career is progressing. My Career Path at Oracle: June 2005 – October 2005: Profiler in the Marketing Intelligence Team November 2005 - October 2006: Team Leader for MIT November 2006 - February 2008: Business Development Consultant Iberia March 2008 - December 2010: Lead Management Specialist Currently: Sales Program Manager for Iberia & Benelux What did you learn from your role in the Market Intelligence Team Being a Profiler helped me to understand how an organisation works, from the beginning to the end. It is like being in University but being paid! The three key things I learnt in this role are: Knowledge of customers: You are on the phone with over 70 customers daily. Not only does this give you an overview of the IT infrastructure of the customers companies but also how to manage their questions and rejections. Essentially you are learning how to convert their pain and complaints into business opportunities. Knowledge of Oracle: As a Profiler you get an excellent overview of how Oracle works internally, from Marketing to Sales, without forgetting the Operations Team. Knowledge about yourself: As a Profiler I learnt how to work outside of my comfort zone, there is a new challenge almost every day but Oracle are there to support you every step of the way. Oracle really invests in developing the MIT Team and as a Profiler you can expect product and sales training on a monthly basis. How did you progress from MIT to Business Development Group (BDG)? I made sure that my manager knew from the very beginning that I was keen to progress at Oracle and I was set very clear objectives to help me reach my goal.  My manager was very supportive and ensured I received all the training I needed. After I became a Team Leader of Profiling, I moved to an Iberia BDG position. How you feel your experience in MI has helped you in your current role? I truly believe that the MI position gives you a great overview of Oracle and this has really helped me in my current position.  I am the Sales Program Manager for IBERIA & Benelux and in my campaigns I need to target the right companies and the right job specs.  My time in the Market Intelligence team really helped me to understand how to focus and target my campaigns so I know I don’t miss any business opportunities! How would you sum up your Oracle experience? Oracle is a big organisation with big opportunities. With the right skills and with the great training programs that Oracle offer, the only limit is you! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected] You can find all our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Tags van Technorati: Marketing Intelligence,Benelux,Iberia,Profiler,Business Development,Sales Representatives,BDG,Business Development Group,opportunities,Oracle

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• Time Tracking on an Agile Team

  - by Stephen.Walther

  What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team.  First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

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• Using Gallio/Mbunit with TFS 2010 Team Build

  - by David Gardiner

  How do you configure a Team Build 2010 build process template to run MbUnit tests via Gallio?

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• Team Foundation Server Setup/Access

  - by Angel Brighteyes

  What I need: A TFS 2010 Setup that allows 2 application developers to access the TFS from remote locations. How it is setup: Server 2008 Standard 2g Ram 300g HD space SharePoint Server 2007, using SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008 Standard Team Foundation Server 2010 IIS 7 Sharepoint Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:80; TFS:80 TFS Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080; TFS:8080 Using DynDNS service to account for the dynamic ip address being used, this is a requirement for the moment until I can get a better isp package. Access using Local Accounts Server is not setup on a domain, or as a domain. Consequently I did not setup AD services. Problem: When logged into TFS using my credentials TFS\AdminUser through the DynDNS account TFS.DynAccount.Me I recieve the 'Red X of Death' on the Documents and Reports folder. When logged into the TFS through the local peer to peer network using the same credentials TFS\AdminUser I do not receive the 'Red X of Death' problem. Further Troubleshooting: When users 'Right Click' the 'TeamProject1' Click 'Show Project Portal' it tries to take them to http://TFS:8080 instead of http://TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080, which doing further research I am assuming that it is because team foundation server was setup with a local name of TFS instead of 'TFS.DynAccount.Me' as specified here in Visual Studio Magazines: The Red X of Death. Users can Access the Team Portal for SharePoint via http://TFS.DynAccount.Me/TeamCollection/TeamProject so it is not like we are dead in the water or anything. However, as most employees/staff are prone to do, they have expressed a great distaste for having to do it this way and just be patient until the current project is finished since we are under a very strict deadline. Is there a way to set this up differently, or change some settings someplace, reinstall it, point a CName record for our domain website to the DynAccount (e.g. TFS.OurDomain.com points to TFS.DynAccount.Me, which consequently does allow access to the http site without issues), or something. I really don't feel like after all the time and effort I have spent into, first the cost, second the bloody install, third learning SharePoint well enough, fourth the hours into days spent on this, fifth more troubleshooting, sixth employee headaches to just let it lay where it is at. I figure in my spare/off time I would keep trying to get this to work. So I really appreciate any help any one can give me. I know this is probably something really stupid simple that I will 'Face Palm' over, but at the moment the stress and frustration just has me beat. Thank you again, this community has always been a great help.

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• Configuring Team System Code Analysis via a FxCop rules file

  - by Ian G

  Is there anyway to configure the code analysis rules in Visual Studio Team System to match those in an FxCop configuration file and keep them in sync automatically? Not all the developers on the team have TS so keeping the rules we are currently running in an FxCop file is required so everyone can run the same set, but it would nice for those with to be able to run them in the IDE. We're introducing static analysis to an existing project so turning on everything now isn't a useful option. (We are not using Foundation Server for source control, if that makes any difference.)

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• Automated builds of BizTalk 2009 projects using Team System 2008 Build

  - by Doug

  I'm trying to configure automated build of BizTalk 2009 projects using Team Foundation Server 2008. We have a staging server which has BizTalk 2009 installed. I ran the Team Foundation Server Build Setup on this server, and it can build non-BizTalk projects OK. However, BizTalk projects fail to build. I suspected something was amiss when "Deployment" was not a valid build type! I tried copying various things over from a developer PC which has BizTalk and Visual Studio 2008 installed, but still couldn't get it to work. I don't really want to install Visual Studio on the staging server, but without it the "Developer Tools and SDK" option in the BizTalk install is greyed out. I guess I need this in order for BizTalk projects to compile. So, my question is can a BizTalk 2009 server be used as a TFS build agent to build BizTalk projects without having Visual Studio installed. If the answer is no, what's the smallest part of VS that can be installed to get this to work? Thanks in advance.

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• Problem building with MSBuild on Team Build

  - by mrwayne

  Hi, I have recently upgraded from TFS2005 to TFS2010 (and sub-sequently the team build server). I used to be able to get a team build on one of my solutions to work pretty easily, (see structure below) Solution |_Web Site | |_Bin | |_Other Files |_Project 1 |_Project 2 |_Project (n) Now, i can no longer get a build working correctly as it doesnt appear to build all my projects any longer (i've had to create a new build definition). Either that, or its not building the projects in such an order that when it hits project X, that a project it depends on (Project A), has not yet been built, and as such fails. I'm just basically trying to build a web site (not web application project), with some Dependant / linked projects. Why must it be so hard! Everything builds fine in the IDE. If i even open the solution copied to the build server under the 'Sources' directory, i am able to build it fine in the IDE on that server. No such luck with MSBuild though. Thoughts?

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• run Watin in silent mode, using Team City

  - by user331416

  I what to run may watin tester in silent mode and how I can get Team City to run my tests ?

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• Limited user premissions in team foundation server

  - by Alex James

  Can I setup Team Foundation Server in such a manner that every uer have only access to some source code files?

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• How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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• Should we hire a new developer now, or wait until the code is refactored to make it suitable for a team environment?

  - by w0051977

  I support and develop a large system that uses various technologies e.g. c++,.net,vb6 etc. I am a sole developer. I am debating whether now is the right time to approach my manager (who is not a developer) to ask if another developer can be recruited. I don't have any experience working in software teams. I have always been a sole developer. The concerns I have are: There is still a lot to do. Training another developer would take time and distract me from my duties. The company does not invest heavily in tools e.g. source control The code in this system needs to be refactored to introduce concepts such as interfaces, polymorphism etc, which are supported by methodologies such as Agile (I inherited the system about 12 months ago). I am gradually trying to refactor the code. I believe I have two options: Approach my manager now Wait until I have had time to refactor the code so it is more suitable for a team environment. Which option is best? I am hoping to hear from other developers who have been in my situation.

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• Enforce link in Team foundation server bug work item for duplicates

  - by Tewr

  We have just started out with Team Foundation Server 2008 / Visual Studio Team System and we are pleased to find how we can export and modify work items to our needs. However, this last thing that would make the setup perfect for us has proved somewhat difficult: We have exported the Bug work item type and have made modifications to it to appear differently to different groups of users. We do, however, see a potential problem in non-developers reporting bugs which turn out to be duplicates. We would like to enforce that users who close a ticket with resolved reason:duplicate also creates a link to the bug which is perceived as the first bug report. I have looked at System.RelatedLinkCount, and put the rule <FIELD type="Integer" name="RelatedLinkCount" refname="System.RelatedLinkCount"> <WHEN field="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ResolvedReason" value="duplicate"> <PROHIBITEDVALUES> <LISTITEM value="0" /> </PROHIBITEDVALUES> </WHEN> </FIELD> However, when I try to put anything in that scope, the importer tells me that System.RelatedLinkCount does not accept the rule, no matter what I put, but the rule above shows what I am trying to do (even though the most preferable rule would also check that the bug that I link to is not a duplicate as well, though this is overkill :P) Has anyone else tried to enforce rules like this in work items? Is there another approach to solving the same issue? I am thankful for any thoughts on the matter.

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