Accentient - Team System

New Team System book available

Richard Hundhausen — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 15:37:32 GMT

The book Managing Software Development Projects using Visual Studio Team System/Application Lifecycle Management is now available. The book was written be a fellow Team System MVP in Brazil, Ramon Durães. The book is in Portuguese.

Table of contents:

Application Lifecycle Management
Team Foundation Server
Development Methodology
Work items
Team Foundation Server Version Control
Architecture
Development
Tests
Database
Visual Studio Team System Web Access
Reports
Team Foundation Build

Read more about the book here (in Portuguese) or here (English translation).

Nice job Ramon!

Download Microsoft Expression Studio 3 Trial

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:55:46 GMT

It’s released, but not yet available for MSDN subscribers. That said, you can download the Trial Edition and get your hands on it. My understanding is that you can product key activate it later, when it shows up on MSDN.

Click here For more information on Express Studio 3, including a top 10 list of features. I’m most excited about #7 …

Team Foundation Server Integration – share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration.

First Look: Visual Studio Team System 2010

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:07:25 GMT

Join us tomorrow (Tuesday, June 23rd) at 2pm MST for the following webcast:

First Look: Visual Studio Team System 2010

Microsoft has been working hard on their next generation of Visual Studio Team System. The 2010 version will deliver new capabilities for everyone on a project, including architects, developers, project managers and testers.

Since beta 1 released, the experts at Accentient have been hard at work, putting it to the test, and demonstrating it to our clients. We would like to share some of this insight with you.

Join us for a tour of the marquee features and improvements found in Visual Studio Team System 2010:

Separate and improved install and configuration process
Team project collections
Architecture explorer
UML support
Hierarchical work items
Improved test case management
Source control branch visualization
Workflow-based build
Test and Lab Manager
UI testing

Whether you’ve already adopted Team System, or have been waiting for the critical “third version” to be released before you commit to trying it, you should attend this webinar, see it firsthand, and get your questions answered.

There are a few seats left. Please be sure to register to attend.

ClearCase and ClearQuest Integration and Migration Bookmarks

Richard Hundhausen — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 17:12:10 GMT

Last week I gave a presentation on integration and migration options for IBM ClearCase and ClearQuest. Here are some bookmarks to some various tools and articles that came up:

I hope this helps anyone who is looking into to this.

SoCal Team System

Richard Hundhausen — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:58:37 GMT

Finally, there’s something to do in Southern California besides surfing, celeb-watching, and working on your tan. Mike Vincent, a VSTS MVP, has taken the lead on setting up this new user group.

The kickoff meeting is this month, June 23rd and I’ll be presenting a grab-bag of topics on best practices. Time permitting, I’ll show a bit of VSTS 2010 beta 1.

So, if you are in the SoCal area, be sure to come to support this user group, and attend the first meeting.

http://www.socalteamsystem.org

Deploying GDR (R2) Databases

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:45:00 GMT

As I was explaining how the Build > Deploy process is radically different this week, a question came up about licensing restrictions around the vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility that ships with the GDR. Here’s a quick history lesson:

The Pre-GDR Way

The Build process analyzes the target connection and then assembles all of the various .sql scripts into one large .sql script. The resulting script would contain CREATE or ALTER statements depending on what it found when it studied the target connection. The script also contains other custom scripts and variables you want to define. The problem is that this Build process requires access to that target environment. This was not always a possibility – either the developers didn’t have permissions, or ISVs didn’t have physical access to their customer’s datacenters. Finally, the Deploy process would then just execute the big .sql script against the target connection, which could be done using VS, SSMS, SQLCMD, etc.

The GDR Way

The Build process generates a .dbschema file which represents the current schema definitions of the database project in a single, easy-to-handoff XML document. This document has accompanying scripts and manifest files as well. The Deploy process then creates the .sql script and (optionally) executes it. The Deploy is now the only connected operation and it can be performed from Visual Studio or by using the new vsdbcmd.exe command-line utility. The major difference is that Build doesn’t need access to the target database, only Deploy does. This rocks, because now you can just give the .dbschema file to that department’s DBA or that customer’s datacenter admin, etc. and only they need access to the target to generate the proper script and to execute it. Problem solved.

… but question raised: what about the licensing of the vsdbcmd.exe file? Can the developer or ISV just give it to their respective user to deploy the changes?

The answer (thanks to Ted Malone, SQL guru and VSTS MVP) is YES, as explained in this article by Gert Drapers.

BTW - GDR R2 is available so you should download it now!

Inside the Microsoft Build Engine

Wed, 14 Jan 2009 16:00:39 GMT

There has been a vacuum of really good, actionable information on MS Build and Team Foundation Build for developers. I’m pleased to report that this is no longer the case! Inside the Microsoft Build Engine, by Sayed Ibrahim Hashimi and William Bartholomew, fills the void with a book that serves well as both a learning guide and a reference tool. Here’s the product description:

"The build process when code gets assembled to see how and how well it works is a critical step in software development. Developers had few options for customizing the build process before Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008, but the Microsoft Build Engine (MSBuild) enables developers to customize each step during a build. MSBuild is extensible and uses an XML file to describe each step, allowing the build master or developer to easily change and augment how projects are built. This book offers hands-on guidance for customizing MSBuild, and provides a cookbook of examples on Web deployment, automated releases, and other essential topics. It also covers Visual Studio Team Foundation Build, the build engine in Visual Studio Team System."

If you have anything to do with automated builds using Team Foundation Server, this book is a must-have. I know this for a fact because I had the opportunity to serve as a technical reviewer for the book.

How to Disable the Team Members feature of the October 2008 Power Tools

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:02:38 GMT

Some Team System users are complaining about problems with the Team Members feature included in the Team Foundation Server Power Tools – October 2008 Release. For team projects with many members, the load time can be excessive. Other problems have cropped up as well. For instance, one user reported that their Windows Communicator freezes during long TFS operations like “get latest”. Although the Team Members plug-in has some very useful features, you may find that it’s more trouble than it’s worth for your particular situation. In this case, you have two options:

Option 1: Disable the Team Members feature. In the Visual Studio, navigate to Tools –> Options –> Team Foundation Server Power Tools –> General, then set Team Members to False.

This does not remove the Team Members node from your team projects in Team Explorer, but the node no longer does anything. Also, some of the Team Members start-up logic still executes. If this continues to cause problems for you, then try this more drastic fix:

Option 2: Registry hack. This is a more complete way of disabling the TeamMembers feature, but it cannot be done in the Visual Studio IDE. Using the RegEdit utility, navigate to:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\PowerTools

Add a new String Value named TeamTrackerHidden and set its value to True.

This setting tells the Team Explorer to not load the Team Members plug-in. This will cause the Team Members node to appear as a folder with a red X on it, which is mildly annoying. However, this option will definitely eliminate any issues you’re having with the Team Members feature.

(Thanks to Bill Essary @ Microsoft for providing these work-arounds)

A Visual Studio Mystery - The Case of the Missing Menu Items

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:01:14 GMT

Recently I was working with a client who installed the Team Foundation Client 2008 on his workstation, and subsequently decided to install Visual Studio 2008 Development Edition. The installation completed normally, but when he launched Visual Studio he quickly discovered that some important things were missing.

For instance, the File menu was missing the New Project item. It was as if the we were still looking at the Team Foundation Client, and that the installation of the Development Edition had somehow failed. At first this was very puzzling until a sharp developer suggested that we look at the Settings (Tools –> Import and Export Settings)

Sure enough, Team Foundation Client had installed and automatically selected the setting called Project Management. Although the Development Edition installation added a few more settings, it left the selection unchanged. Once we changed the selection to something more appropriate, all the normal menus became visible. Mystery solved!

Another TFS Blogger

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 07:09:55 GMT

Kevin Hick, a talented .NET developer who has done extensive work customizing Team Foundation Server at HBOS in the UK, has started a blog to share some of his more interesting TFS discoveries with the rest of us. You find his blog here. If you work with TFS you’ll want to add Kevin’s blog to your reader.

New Visual Studio Team System 2008 VPC Images Available

Richard Hundhausen — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:16:02 GMT

Brian Randell recently announced the availability of new Visual Studio Team System evaluation VPC images. These virtual machines are very handy sandboxes that contain Team Foundation Server and Team Suite, all setup and ready to go. You can use these virtual machines not only for evaluating purposes, but also for learning about Team System and experimenting without worrying about messing up things.

These virtual images are set to expire in December 2009, providing a full year of use. The set consists of four versions:

VSTS “all-up” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Virtual PC/Virtual Server image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)
VSTS “all-up” Hyper-V image (6 GB download, expands to 15 GB)
TFS “only” Hyper-V image (3 GB download, expands to 8 GB)

Use the links above to navigate to the download pages for these virtual machines. But, if you prefer not to download eleven massive files one at a time, you can use Free Download Manager to queue up and download all the files automatically.

The text file below contains a list of the files to download for each virtual image. Simply copy the list for the image you want, then paste the list into Free Download Manager using Ctrl-Shift-V.

Team_System_2008_SP1_Trial_Image_Download_List.txt (5.93 KB)

Script for creating workspace and initial folder structure in TFS

Richard Hundhausen — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 23:47:02 GMT

At a client site this week, and having to generate the same initial folder structure for many team projects, so I thought I would create a script (.BAT file, no PowerShell sorry).

Below is the script, but here are a few details to point out:

I assume that my workspace name and local folder name is the same as the team project
I put my local workspace folders under a common D:\Workspaces folder
You can set the team project name easily by tweaking the SET line below
I could have, and should have parameterized the folder root, TFS, comments, etc.

Hope you can make use of it:

@ECHO OFF

SET TeamProject=Sample

ECHO Create folder Structure
ECHO.

D:
CD\
MD D:\Workspaces
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\DEV"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\QA"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Code\PROD"
MD "D:\Workspaces\%TeamProject%\Documents"
CD "\Workspaces\%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Drop existing workspace
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /delete /noprompt /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Create workspace mapping
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workspace /new /noprompt /computer:TFSSRV1 /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /server:TFSSRV1 "%TeamProject%"
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /unmap $/
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" workfold /server:TFSSRV1 /workspace:"%TeamProject%" /map $/"%TeamProject%" D:\Workspaces\"%TeamProject%"

ECHO.
ECHO Adding folders to version control
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Code /recursive /noprompt
"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" add Documents /recursive /noprompt

ECHO.
ECHO Check in
ECHO.

"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE\TF.EXE" checkin /comment:"Created by Richard Hundhausen" /noprompt /recursive "D:/Workspaces/%TeamProject%"

PAUSE

Visual Studio Team System Announcements today

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 20:25:04 GMT

Microsoft published more information today about Visual Studio 10 and .NET 4.0. Click here to read the Press Pass and here to read some additional information.

Oh, and for SA customers, some really interesting news has come out that will impact you in just a few days:

Microsoft also announced that VSTS 2010 will provide a unified VSTS Development and Database product. As a benefit to existing Software Assurance (SA) customers, those who currently own Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition or Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition will receive all the following products starting Oct. 1, 2008, for free:

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Development Edition

• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Database Edition

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Software Developers

• Visual Studio 2005 Team System for Database Professionals

Team Foundation Server for Microsoft Access developers

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 20:45:33 GMT

I was invited by INETA to speak at the Pacific Northwest Access Developer Group (a.ka. the Seattle Access Group). Now, Access developers are typically "teams of one", but I thought that any team developers or consultants attending the meeting would get the ALM story and features of TFS. They did.f

As it turns out, the steps to integrate Microsoft Access 2007 with TFS aren't all that difficult:

Install and configure TFS to allow the developers to connect
Install the MSSCCI provider on each developer's desktop
Install the Access Developer Extensions on each developer's desktop
Create and configure the Team Project, version control folders, and workspace(s)
Follow the guidance on using Access with Source Control (you can ignore the references to VSS).

Remember: you can't View, Compare, or Annotate any Access objects under source control, with the exception of code (modules, macros).

Thank you to those of you who attended my talk. You can download my presentation here.

VSTS Profiler Improvements in SP1

Richard Hundhausen — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 22:08:35 GMT

As you know, Visual Studio 2008 and Team Foundation Server 2008 Service Pack 1 was released earlier this month. Most of SP1 was about bug fixes and performance, but it seems that the profiler team snuck in several new features as well:

Adding support for instrumenting 64-bit managed C++ applications
Improved instrumentation experience with pre-compiled web sites
Shipping the 64-bit performance SDK (VSPerf.h, VSPerf.lib)
Ability to load a previously saved filter on non-English VS installations

Here is a link to the VS2008SP1 readme and a page listing all of the SP1 downloads.

Electronic Scrum Boards

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:44:32 GMT

While at TechEd 2008 earlier this month I attended a presentation by Colin Bird where, among other things, he presented the next generation of the Conchango Scrum For Team System process template. According to Colin, Conchango will continue to offer a free version of their scrum process template. But, they will also be offering for the first time an "enterprise" version that they will sell for a yet-to-be-determined fee. This enterprise version will contain an exciting new feature: and Electronic Scrum Board. This WPF application simulates the cork board and index cards that many scrum teams use to track the progress of their sprint. Each row represents a Product Backlog Item (also called a User Story) that describes a specific feature to be implemented, while each card represents a Sprint Backlog Item that describes a specific task. The columns on the board represent the various states for a Sprint Backlog Item.

I took this shot while sitting next to David Starr in the presentation, who also took a snap with his camera phone.

When a card is dropped onto a row the board, it is automatically linked to the corresponding Product Backlog Item, and it's State is also updated automatically. This is sooo much more convenient that the current method of updating work items, and the board methaphor makes it much easier to visualize the overall status of the sprint.

I also happened to be part of the same lunchtime discussion of Electronic Scrum Boards with Jeffrey Palermo that David blogged about. I respect Jeffrey's opinion very much, as well as Dave's reaction to Jeffrey's comments. But my take on the topic is slightly different.

As I recall, Jeffrey was not thrilled about the Electronic Scrum Board because a physical cork board works just fine. The cork board is simple and easy to use. It's highly visible to the scrum team and its stakeholders. Why go to the trouble and expense of implementing an inferior solution?

I get it. But I also beg to differ. First, let's assume that an organization has decided to use Team System work item tracking because it offers rich reporting of current and historical data, as well end-to-end traceability resulting from linking work items to changesets to builds to build verification tests. Now, if a scrum is using both work item tracking as well as a cork board, then the same information if being maintained redundantly. This being the case, it's almost certain that the work items will be out of sync with the cork board some if not all of the time. With two conflicting views of project status, which one is authoritative? Which one do you believe?

Also, the cork board works great if the scrum team is co-located in one open space. Having all team members together in one location is ideal, but the reality is that a growing number of teams are geographically dispersed - sometimes in different parts of the world. For these teams, the cork board offers a poor solution.

Similarly, project stakeholders are often not in the same physical location as the cork board, making it difficult if not impossible for them to benefit from the information the cork board contains.

For these reasons, I believe that the Electronic Scrum board offers a superior solution. It not only shows current status, it also automatically maintains work item history. Analysis of this historical data can calibrate future estimates, enabling better sprint planning. Also, an Electronic Scrum Board offers a far more practical solution for teams that are not co-located.

Finally, I find it curious that scrum teams are in the business of creating automated solutions for others, but some of these same teams are loathe to give up their cork boards for an electronic version. Doesn't that seem just a bit ironic?

Version Control with 2008 SP1

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 23:33:12 GMT

I am a simple man. All I ever wanted was drag and drop for source control. That folder chooser dialog was a bear. Now we will get it with Visual Studio 2008 SP1. Thank goodness. From the web site:

Simplified the user experience through cleaner "Add to Source Control" dialogs, drag and drop support to the Source Control Explorer and a much easier to use "Workspace" dialog for working folder mappings.
Version control now automatically supports non-solution controlled files.
Various changes to the Source Control Explorer such as a new checkin date/time display column, local path hyperlink support and en editable source location field.

I am not a big fan of installing a beta SP on may dev laptop, but I gotta tell ya, I did it for that feature alone.

Attendee-Driven Presentation

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:47:06 GMT

I've seen Test Driven Development work, so why not adjust it slightly and have the attendees (who own the requirements after all) drive the presentation? Today, at the in-between conference (a.k.a. Microsoft Community Summit 2008), I did just that. I had the attendees drive my four hour presentation. I did this in the Open Space room, and it not only fit with the theme of that room, but it worked great!

As the attendees arrived, I handed them 3-5 3x5 cards - the cool ones from 3M that you can sort, stack, and stick to surfaces.

Here are the topics (backlog items) that they came up with:

How do you customize work item types?
(What) team size to justify the usage of Team System?
What's new and improved in VSTS 2008 vs. VSTS 2005?
Continuous Integration (x 3)
What performance degradation (can occur) from extensive branching?
Integration with external tools (e.g. Mercury Quality Center, Doors)
TDD
Multiple builds running at the same time
How to limit CI build to only trigger when for certain check-ins (by location)
Best practices
How to customize Code Analysis
What makes VSTS more beneficial than VS Professional?
What is Team Foundation Server?

And my personal favorite:

I'm here to see if you're a good presenter because my company is thinking of bringing you in for a day to teach the team.

For those of you who attended my talk, here's a link to my notes and my worst practices presentation.

Installing a TFS Production Server - Meeting Notes

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:34:13 GMT

I just had a meeting where we discussed setting up a TFS 2008 production server and I went through the system requirements with our system administrator. The focus was on groups needed in Active Directory, what software is needed on the server, things like that.

Here are some camera phone shots of the whiteboard during this discussion. Wow.

What's the takeaway from all this? PLAN YOUR IMPLEMENTAION DELIBERATELY. Stand up a research VM and play with it before you decide how you want to set up a production system.

Groups and Accounts to Create and Administer

Things to Install on the Server

Rosario April CTP Available for Download

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:41:10 GMT

Now that Team Foundation Server 2008 is out, the Visual Studio Team System product team is totally focused on the next version, known as Rosario. If the current release rhythm continues, Rosario is likely to be released in 2010 (Visual Studio 2005 was released in November 2005, and Visual Studio 2008 was released in November 2007).

The latest version of Rosario is now available for public download on the Microsoft download site. This version is called the April Community Technology Preview (CTP). It's called a CTP because the product is still under development. The CTP gives the development community an opportunity to see what's been produced so far and provide feedback. It's not called a Beta because the bits have not been as thoroughly tested. For this reason, Microsoft recommends that this CTP release not be used for any sort of production development.

The product team has made impressive progress so far. Rich Hundhausen and I got a sneak preview of this CTP a few weeks ago, and what I saw blew my socks off! Whereas the new features in Team Foundation Server 2008 focused mainly on improvements to build and version control, the main areas of focus for Rosario are project management, design and test (Although I'm interested in all things Team System, I'm somewhat partial to project management).

This April CTP is the third CTP release for Rosario. To see the features included in each release, as well as a slick way to download the beast, check out these posts from Jeff Beehler:

Multiply your team's voltage by working in parallel

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:26:17 GMT

My final talk at VSLive! San Francisco this week was on one of my favorite topics - parallel development. In other words, dealing with the real-world situations where multiple developers are coding away on the same project, and even the same file.

The first order of business was to have a few of the ex-Visual SourceSafers lay down on my couch so we could discuss their phobias and irrational urge to run to their "safe place" - a.k.a. locking.

In all seriousness, we discussed the two locking models of TFS and then explored the many wonderful benefits of not using locks by default, known as shared check out. Most in the audience agreed that the benefits of not blocking each other with their routine development (for example, not locking .csproj files when somebody adds a new file) greatly outweighs the detriment of having to deal with a conflict that requires manual intervention. Of course, arguments can be made either way.

I pointed out that there are four situations where conflicts can occur that may require auto/manual merging:

CHECK-IN - the most obvious; somebody else may have just checked in competing changes just before you
GET - you may already have pending changes on one or more of the files you are trying to download
MERGE - by definition; when you merge changes from one branch to another, the chances are good that you will have to resolve conflicts
UNSHELVE - not so obvious, but this is basically like a GET, just coming from another location in TFS; unfortunately, Team Explorer doesn't know how to handle the detection/resolving of these types of conflicts, so look to the TFPT UNSHELVE power tool for help

Finally, we looked at setting up a source control folder structure that will support your teams promotion model (a.k.a. staging environment). I proposed a simple structure, that looks somewhat like this:

Some explanations

Code holds code artifacts - C#, VB, SQL, WiX, etc.
Documents holds snapshots of the SharePoint site archived at the end of each iteration, release/version, build, etc. (whatever your term is)
Active development occurs in "Current", which you could name "Dev" or "Main" (although I prefer "Main" for integration)
Under the "Current" folder you'll have folders for each high-level application/component in the system, including common, database scripts, build definitions, and even setup projects
"Branches" are just that - QA, UA, RC, Release, and private branches (Bridges), etc.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here.

Should you Migrate to Team Foundation Server or just Integrate with It?

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:16:38 GMT

That was the topic of our discussion today at VSLive! San Francisco. Unfortunately, in the short amount of time (75 minutes) we didn't get too deep into all of the tools and techniques, but I did get my point across: I feel that Team Foundation Server (TFS) can do it all, and you should strive to migrate your source/revision control system, requirements and defect tracking system, document managing system, automated build and deployment system, and even your custom process workflow over to TFS.

That said, there are certainly situations where existing systems must be used. I identified two categories of such legacy software:

Politicalware - somebody important in the organization bought or built the system and you there are strong feelings about migrating away from it
Guiltware - the organization spends oodles (that's a lot) of cash on said software, maintenance/support, training, etc. and they haven't seen their ROI (and they may never see it)

I don't know what to tell you about the above situations, except that running in parallel (not good) or integration (better) would be an option. That lead us to the discussion of building custom software to do one-way and two-way synchronization with said systems. We briefly walked through the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit (found on CodePlex) and I demonstrated the TFS to TFS Migration Tool (also found on CodePlex) which uses the toolkit.

I see Team Foundation Server as yet another great "grassroots" platform. Just like .NET was for the developers, TFS is for the team. So, I say get it installed no matter what, even if just for source control, which is the no-brainer. Once it's in-house, then work on migrating the work items, automated builds, and other systems over sooner, rather than later, so you can enjoy the end-to-end traceability, product quality reports, and process quality reports.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here (you'll need to download the SDK and CodePlex toolkit and tool separately).

What's your VSTS worst practice?

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 01:07:41 GMT

For those of you who joined me at VSLive! this week in San Francisco, I had fun sharing many worst (or un-preferred) practices I've run into over the years. My talk broke them down into several areas: TFS installation, TFS configuration, team projects, work items, and version control. Hopefully I didn't make anyone feel tool uncomfortable when I highlighted your practice on the big screen!

Actually, it was all in good fun. By highlighting Team System worst practices, we were able to define Team System best practices and preferred practices.

If you'd like to have a look at my slide deck, you can find it here and my demo files here.

Feel free to let me know about any other worst or worster practices you may know of.

TFS Global Lists Can't Be Deleted

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:18:31 GMT

Seriously. They can't.

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=259259&SiteID=1

You may delete specific values, but not the list itself. This means you can effectively "zero out" a list by deleting all of it's items.

I don't quite understand why this would be a good feature, as it doesn't really stand up for a test of trace-ability. I just deleted a Team Project whose work items referenced a global list, so there are no references to the list in the system anymore.

Perhaps one way to mitigate this would be to use abstract list names? List A, List B, etc. Then you could re-purpose a list later by giving it new values. Nah.

So, what's the take away? Be very careful about the Global Lists you create in your Team Foundation Server. They will be with you a long time.

Lightweight Scrum Process Template Updated

Wed, 26 Mar 2008 07:17:04 GMT

Mike Azocar, a fellow Team System MVP, reports:

We released LWS version 2.1 today. This version includes a new process guidance and SharePoint template as well as many work item enhancements. You can download it at
www.codeplex.com/vstsscrum

Mike also indicates that they will soon release a version that will work with the Project Server connector.

Managing Global Lists in TFS

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:37:39 GMT

Having just inherited a TFS installation to manage, I received a request to add some values to a global list. I got a little nervous about this when I saw that the server had many (MANY) global lists in it already and I wanted to be very careful not to break anything during this change.

Of course the first thing I did was consult the master book on the subject of TFS, Rich's Working with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2005 Team System. This was a great start to groking the whole Global List thing.

The steps needed to do this are pretty simple and documented well from Microsoft. The step to export your current global lists is to use the glexport command line tool. From the Visual Studio command line prompt (this works fine on a client), do this:

glexport /f AllGlobalLists.xml /t myTfsServerName

Credentials used are the local login credentials. This gives me one big file containing all the global lists in the server. Now the question I had was this, "Should I edit this master global lists file and import the whole thing, or should I just try to import changes to one list?" Obviously I wanted to work only on the one list I needed to change, but what effect would it have if I pulled out all the other lists from the file and uploaded just a single list in a smaller XML file?

I was scared to death of deleting all the other lists in the file. I saved a copy of the master, and then took out all the global lists except the one I was interested in, changed the values, and ended up with something like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><gl:GLOBALLISTS xmlns:gl="http://schemas.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/2005/workitemtracking/globallists">  <GLOBALLIST name="Teams
- Product Backlog">    <LISTITEM value="Team
A" />    <LISTITEM value="Team
B" />    <LISTITEM value="User
Experience" />    <LISTITEM value="Team
C" />  </GLOBALLIST></gl:GLOBALLISTS>

So, on a wing and a prayer I ran this command:

glimport /f TeamList.xml /t myTfsServerName

And guess what happened: It worked great! All of my other lists were intact and my new team names showed up just fine. So I learned 2 things in this little exercise.

You can import a single global list XML file into your TFS server without affecting other lists.
glimport and glexport work just fine on a VS2008 client talking to a 2005 TFS server.

Teamprise 3.0 Ships

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:42:13 GMT

Martin Woodward has done his magic again! For those of you who don't know Martin, he is the primary developer of Teamprise, a fantastic suite of client applications that gives Java developers cross-platform access to Team Foundation Server from the command line, a stand-alone GUI or an Eclipse plug-in. In his blog, Martin announced the release of Teamprise 3.0, updated to take advantage of the new features in Team Foundation Server 2008. This release contains some many impressive new features including check-in policy support, recursive folder compare, single sign on support on windows clients, and gui support for version control undelete and destroy commands. Perhaps the most impressive new feature is the full Team Build integration and the brand new Teamprise Extensions for Team Foundation Build, which allows developers to use Ant scripts with Team Build - amazing! Even better, Teamprise Extensions for Team Foundation Build, including source code, is available free of charge to everyone.

For more information, see Martin's announcement.

FinalBuilder 6.0 to integrate directly with Team Foundation Build

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 16:52:57 GMT

Last year I posted a note about how to integrate VSoft Technology FinalBuilder with Team Build. I really like FinalBuilder and think it's easy to use, compared with having to hand-jam the XML of MSBuild.

With the upcoming version 6.0 of FinalBuilder, this integration becomes a snap, even including a Visual Studio add-in for configuring Team Build.

Read this article for more information.

Installing Team Edition(s) on your Team Foundation Build server

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:25:57 GMT

It's generally known that if you want to run any tests, code analysis, or database project build/deployment that you need to install one or more Team Edition of VSTS on your build server. What's not so well known are the licensing ramifications around these scenarios.

Fortunately Jeff Beehler, Team System Chief of Staff, has posted on this subject.

To summarize:

If the users creating the builds are licensed users of the edition in question (or Team Suite), that license extends to Team Foundation Build and you don't need to purchase an additional license. One way to think about it is: the people that are using the Team editions need to be properly licensed which in turn ensures the that the build machines are covered as well. Users who merely queue (execute) and review the automated builds are only required to have a Team Foundation Server CAL.

Design for Operations

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 22:38:13 GMT

Have you ever had a production application in the data center act up, and you spend countless hours hunting down the source of the problem? If so, then then you might be interested in a new project on CodePlex called Design for Operations (DFO).

For years now engineers have been designing physical products with ease of manufacturing in mind. Called Design for Manufacturability (DFM), this technique takes fabrication and assembly into consideration early in the design process. DFM has a significant impact by improving the cost and quality of a product. Well, a variant of the technique has finally found its way to the world of software. Called Design for Operations, this technique allows software architects and developers to design their applications with built-in, real-time health monitoring, giving the operations staff much better operational information and improving the quality of service. According to William Loeffler, a Microsoft program manager:

It’s a recent effort from patterns & practices to provide tooling for architects and developers with a means to model their application in terms meaningful to operations. Once modeled the tool can be used to create a Health Model for the application and once the Health Model has been completed at the architect and development roles the tool can be used to generate platform instrumentation as defined in the model. All that’s necessary for the developer is to call the generated API within their solution for each instance of instrumentation. The tool will also generate a Management Pack for System Center OpsMgr 2008 from the model that matches the generated instrumentation.

For more information see:

http://www.codeplex.com/dfo

Hopefully DFO will become mainstream in the software development discipline, in the same way that unit testing has become popular.

How maintainable is the code in the Enterprise Library?

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 22:41:06 GMT

Since first seeing the Code Metrics feature in the Development Edition of Visual Studio Team System 2008, I've been on a quest for bad (read: unmanageable) code. Rather than face the tool towards my code, I thought I would pick on Microsoft.

... and it looks like the EntLib has a maintainability index between 77 and 89.

Thanks to Ajoy krishnamoorthy for actually doing the hard work on this.

Team System just made the keynote demo

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:54:29 GMT

10:35 AM (Los Angeles)

A fictitious developer, from the fictitious company "Fourth Coffee" is demonstrating the new, agile development features in Visual Studio 2008. She's showing off how to manage team development projects (a.k.a. team projects and work items), giving her tasks to make some changes to her code. Mostly she is showing off the split-screen editor, synchronization of code and designer, integrated design tools, and the new JavaScript debugger.

Oops, she just called it "Team Services" as she closed out her work item. Well, we get the idea. :-)

Adding TFPT.exe to your PATH

Richard Hundhausen — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 21:59:52 GMT

I know. I know. This doesn't sound like a very interesting post, but it saved me time, and hopefully it can save you some too.

When you install Visual Studio 2008, Microsoft creates a "Visual Studio 2008 Command Prompt" shortcut, under that program group.

I like to take this shortcut and drop it on my Quick Launch toolbar:

The problem is that when you install the Team Foundation Server Power Tools (or other new command line utilities) you need to put them in the path.

Well, if you look at the file the shortcut calls, it's vcvarsall.bat, but don't bother editing that file because it calls vcvars32.bat, but don't bother editing that file, because it calls vsvars32.bat. If you go ahead and edit that file, you can find where the PATH is getting set, and add the Power Tools path to it:

@set PATH=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\Tools;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5;C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\VCPackages;C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools;%PATH%

Transcript from VSTS Panel Discussion at US Tech-Ed 2007

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 22:23:16 GMT

Man, I need to keep a closer eye on the work product over at .NET Rocks. I had meant to link up this transcript last Summer, but I dropped the ball. Apologies.

So, what this was was a VSTS panel discussion at Tech-Ed in Orlando last June, with Mike Azocar, Steven Borg, Doug Seven, Joel Semeniuk, and the hosts Richard Campbell and Carl Franklin.

Here's the panel (with Barry Gervin running the microphone)

And some of the audience (you can see Rob Caron and Mickey Gousset in the back).

There's some pretty good questions in there, especially those asked by yours truly!

Creating and Customizing TFS Reports

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 19:09:53 GMT

I just came across this download at Microsoft. It provides an introduction to the concepts and step by step instructions for creating and customizing TFS reports.

The zip file contains instructional PDF documents as well as several sample reports.

VSTS Web Access Power Tool - CTP released

Richard Hundhausen — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 16:14:32 GMT

Microsoft has released a new version of VSTS Web Access Power tool. This release is a Community Technology Preview (CTP) of what will ultimately be the 2008 version of the VSTS Web Access Power Tool.

Built against the TFS 2008 object model - In previous versions of Web Access you had to install Team Explorer 2005 on any machine you were installing Web Access on. With this version, you will now be installing Team Explorer 2008 instead. In some future version, Microsoft hopes to remove the requirement to install any version of Team Explorer.
Custom control support - added support for web based work item custom controls and have included a folder of documentation and samples on how to create them.
Build queuing - added UI for the new TFS 2008 feature of build queuing. You can start new queued builds and view the build queue (in addition to the preexisting abilities - like viewing build details).
Localization support - added support for localizing the web interface. Microsoft will also be localizing text for the final 2008 Power Tool release.
Bug fixes & Performance improvements - Microsoft has received a number of reports and done more testing on the current version of the Power Tool, and has fixed everything thus far.

This release (and the final 2008 release) can be used with either a TFS 2005 or a TFS 2008 server. In either case, you will need to install a TFS 2008 Team Explorer on the machine you install Web Access on. Since TFS 2005 did not support build queuing, that functionality will not be available when this and future versions of Web Access are used with a 2005 server.

You can download it here and read more about it at Brian Harry's blog posting.

Microsoft P&P Releases Team Development with Team Foundation Server Guide

Richard Hundhausen — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:33:42 GMT

Microsoft's Patterns & Practices group recently released the final version of the “Team Development with Team Foundation Server” Guide. This guide has been in beta for the last couple of months.

It shows you how to get the most out of Team Foundation Server to help improve the effectiveness of your team-based software development. Whether you are already using Team Foundation Server or adopting from scratch, you’ll find guidance and insights you can tailor for your specific scenarios. It's a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, Team System team members, and industry experts.

Some quick facts:

496 – Total number of pages
18 – Total number of chapters in this guide
11392 – Total number of downloads of the Beta version of this guide
8 – Number of attempts to get the Adobe build to work to generate the guide in .pdf format
60 – Number of external and MSFT contributors and reviewers

Download the guide from CodePlex.

Books required for going back to school

Richard Hundhausen — Thu, 30 Aug 2007 15:12:04 GMT

Ah yes, late August, time to go back to school - even for us adult geeks.

Fortunately, David Starr has provided us an exhaustive list of must-read books, organized by developer, tester, project manager, and executives.

... nothing specifically on VSTS however. I'll have to bug him about that.

Team Edition for Software Architect Power Tools - August 2007 CTP

Richard Hundhausen — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:41:29 GMT

The great news just keeps on coming from Microsoft. After a flurry of Team System announcements and downloads recently, we have yet another set of Power Tools to play with.

These tools are designed specifically for the Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Architects and provide the following capabilities:

View class library projects on the Application Diagram (AD)
View references to class library projects as connections on the Application Diagram
Create class library projects from the Application Diagram
Create references to class library projects from the Application Diagram
Synchronize properties between class library projects and their representative applications on the Application Diagram
Create and use class library applications and references on the System Designer (SD)

Fantastic. We haven't seen much out of the Architect tools, except for the SDM SDK in quite some time. I'm looking forward to it.

Download the CTP here. Note: you will also need to download Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2.

If you have any feedback on these tools, please visit the Architecture & Design forum.

Power Tools for DBPro are just around the corner!

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 16:39:29 GMT

Gert Drapers, the PM for Database Professionals announced that the first set of Power Tools should be released by the end of this week. With that in mind I wanted to blogging about some of the cool new features. Today's blog is on the new Regular Expression builder.

This allows you to choose your regular expression and and preview the result of the expression! Very cool. Here's a tip to add to the list of regular expressions:

Navigate to the AppData\Roaming Folder (this will be different depending on what O/S you're using - for Vista it's C:\Users\%Username%\AppData\Roaming) and you'll find a file called RegExHelperConfig.xml.

Add a new record (for example, to add something simple like area code) with the following:

You can also add a new element which shows up when you click the Insert Element button by inserting a record in the syntax element section of this same file. Then you can distribute this file to all of your developers and they'll have the updated contents!

I believe that at the end of september (I didn't get an exact date from Apress) a Second Edition of Pro Visual Studio 2005 Team System will be released with approximately 100 new pages of content devoted just to the Database Professionals Edition of Team System.

The future of Team System: Rosario CTP - Available now!

Richard Hundhausen — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 20:36:19 GMT

Not only did Microsoft just recently post Beta 2 of Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) a few days ago, but yesterday Microsoft made a CTP of the next generation of Visual Studio Team System (codename Rosario) available for download. Craziness ... which do I spend my time with? It's like having two mistresses to pick from.

Anyway, here are the details, if you want to start playing with Rosario: (keep in mind that it won't ship until some time [6,12,18?] months post Visual Studio 2008, so at least 2009):

Read Jeff Beehler's blog posting
Read the Rosario Overview whitepaper
Download the VPC images (8+ files, 700mb each)
Download the Rosario documentation
Visit the MSDN newsgroups dedicated to Rosario
Visit the MSDN homepage for Rosario

Finally, and most important, provide feedback to the team using http://connect.microsoft.com.

Speed up your Team Builds

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:17:09 GMT

Over the past few years, a few of my clients have deployed Team Foundation Server Proxy to improve the performance of their remote/distributed teams. It boosts network performance by caching copies of source control files in a remote location, local to the developer needing the files but away from the main source control location. In short, the proxy helps each user avoid a costly download of the files to their workspace across the slower connection.

So why wouldn't this work for Team Build?

In today's VSTS chat, I asked if anyone had done this. I should have expected that Buck Hodges would have, and even blogged about it.

View the latest VSTS customer evidence from Microsoft

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 19:10:42 GMT

Still trying to decide if Team System is right for you and if you can afford it. I would say you can't afford *not* to have it. Check out this list of case studies from other companies and teams who agree with me.

Thanks to Rob Caron, for putting together this consolidated list of the "top" Visual Studio Team System case studies. They support a wide range of propositions by showcasing real customers who have gone through the adoption process and have great stories to tell.

Visual Studio Team System Web Access Power Tool - Available for Download!

Richard Hundhausen — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:06:19 GMT

Microsoft just released their Team System Web Access Power Tool (formerly known as TeamPlain). This is a Web interface to Team Foundation Server.

If you have team members that don't want Visual Studio/Team Explorer installed on their desktop, but they still want to participate with the project lifecycle, this is a great, web-based approach to getting everyone connected quickly/easily. Here are some of the features:

Add new work items or edit existing ones
Work with any type of work item, including custom ones
Add new work item queries or edit existing ones
View, download, upload, check-in and check-out documents on SharePoint team portal
View reports, export as PDF or Excel
Browse source control repositories, download files, view changesets, diffs, histories, and annotated views
View build results, start or stop builds
Search for keywords in work items
Authentication Modes: Integrated Windows Authentication or Forms Based Authentication (Recommended to use with SSL)

Read more about it in Brian Harry's blog posting.

Using Project to enter "Resources"

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:09:59 GMT

Don't get me started on Project... OK. Get me started... I hate how MS Project refers to People, your TEAM, as "Resources". :-( However, I'll keep my mouth shut, since I want to mention a one thing related to Team System.

First, if you're entering work items in Project you'll have to enter the "Resource" name as a string, and you won't have a drop down to select from (until you have entered the name at least once). This is in contrast to Excel, where you get a drop down of all the available people to assign the task to. It's frustrating, but there's a reason. Project supports assigning multiple "resources" to a task, while TFS supports only one person on the Assigned To line (by default).

Welcome to the VSTS MVP Program - Martin Danner!

Richard Hundhausen — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 16:51:30 GMT

Yet another Architect MVP has bitten the dust, to join the cooler crowd over here under the Team System MVP banner.

Martin Danner is an experienced developer, project manager, and consultant in the software and information technology field, Danner has an extensive history in the software engineering field. He worked as a senior software engineer at Micron Technology, where he developed applications for the Web and PC, and he managed a group responsible for configuration management and software quality for all corporate software systems. Danner has also worked as a software engineer, developer, and consultant for Northrop Corporation and Price Waterhouse. Danner earned a bachelor's degree in engineering from California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. He is a Microsoft Solution Architect MVP, a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer for the .NET Framework (MCSD.NET), as well as a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP).

It wasn't too long ago that Jeff Levinson defected from the Architect MVP camp. What is going on over there?

Plug-in to Get Latest on Check-out

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:37:09 GMT

Sela has created a great little plug-in to VS 2005 that will warn you when you're doing a check-out if there are later revisions of any of those files on the TFS server. Download it here.

Project Server 2007 VSTS Connector released

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 20:38:25 GMT

This week Microsoft released the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server – Project Server 2007 connector as a CodePlex project. The project has been up for a few weeks, but is now being broadly advertised.

The TFS-PS2007 connector is designed to integrate the project management capabilities of TFS with Project Server 2007. It's been developed by the Visual Studio Team System Rangers in response to significant customer demand for a connector solution. Future versions of Team System will have native integration with Project Server, in the meantime this Connector solution is the best way to integrate the two Microsoft products. This solution builds on the previous PS2003 VSTS Connector, published on GotDotNet.

Process improvement comment by Randy Eppinger

Sun, 03 Jun 2007 04:26:31 GMT

In the process improvement goal setting post a few days back, I stressed the importance of making your goals specific (and thus measurable). Randy Eppinger made a good comment, and I felt to make it a bit more public, I'd copy that comment to a new post.

That's good advice. I find it helpful to do both. We create high-level objectives of the sort you listed like, "Reduce the number of bugs being released", "Assimilate new team members more easily". Then we create a list of milestones related to one or more high-level objectives. One or more team members takes ownership of achieving milestones which are more specific like, "Research and purchase a good book on unit testing techniques", "Create a Continuous Integration build for all code branches", "Create the Visual Studio 2005 section of the coding conventions document".

His comment reveals something that I missed. It's definitely possible to have both types of goal statements! In fact, setting concise, specific milestones is an excellent approach. As long as there is a visible, specific, MOTIVATING goal to move toward, you'll have more success in your process improvement. Thanks, Randy!

Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file - download

Wed, 30 May 2007 23:43:53 GMT

If you're building web applications using Team Build, you'll often get an error saying that the Microsoft.WebApplication.targets file is unavailable. In theory, upgrading to Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite SP1 on the build server should install it for you. But I've now had two cases where it just didn't seem to work. finding it online is pain in the rump, and I'm always forced to find a machine that has it to copy it from. Thus, as a service to the community (and my future sanity), here's a copy for you to download. Enjoy!

Microsoft.WebApplication.targets (4.28 KB)