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We recently ran into a problem whereby all of our build definitions started failing, mysteriously. We had a few developers investigating what was occurring and we did see that we were having issues with namespace mismatches. This issue baffled us as we’d not made any changes to our build server. After...

“Get an inside peek into internal Microsoft development practices as Chris Adams documents his team’s move to Agile using Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010, starting out with the Microsoft Solutions Framework Agile v5.0 process template and eventually switching to the Microsoft Visual Studio SCRUM 1...

In this final post for this series, I wanted to outline how Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 is alike and differs when doing planning compared to MSF Agile v5.0 .  As I pointed out in my post last week , MSF Agile v5.0 ships as a process template with Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and has a lot of out...

In my earlier post , I focused on bringing to light that MSF Agile v5.0 vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 had differences and one was just in their use of terminology.  Whether it was user story or product backlog item (PBI) the usage was very close minus one to two differences.  Today I’d like to...

With the introduction of the new Microsoft Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 template, software development & project managers are now given multiple options for Agile that is supported by Microsoft. The “Agile” terminology is vastly over used by many and most agile teams, when examined closely...

I recently was perplexed as we have a rather volatile TFS setup where users are often added to the system and taken out often.  Beyond that, we use Work Item Template (WIT) security scoping to say what users can do what and when.  For example, we have a group of engineers who are approved to...

As the leader of your agile project, you’ve been tasked by management to keep your project running and ensuring that you can accurately ascertain what work is completed vs. what is still not completed.  In my previous post, Soup to Nuts – TFS 2010 Agile Iteration Backlog Workbook utilized in the...

We recently ran into an issue when we were trying to add iterations, or change existing dates for an iteration,  to a project in TFS Dashboard.  The TFS Dashboard , made by Telerik , uses dates provided in the file created by Work Item Manager (WIM) and stored in TFS (if selected.)  This...

If you are like us, we have a huge investment in Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 that includes many groups and many teams.  Fortunately, we are the only team doing development and our project are different from the rest of the organization which is using TFS for work item management. By default...

As you know, our team spends a lot of time running software development projects such as the MDT 2010 Update 1 UDI feature set . We are a very agile team with a few PMs, couple of test, and a handful of developers. I manage this team of 8 and I’m very keen on setting the vision, the expected end-state...

It seems that many people will get the first iteration backlog workbook working and then they will copy & paste it for future iterations. This is what we started doing until we found out just how messy this really is. The Agile iteration backlog workbooks are very useful for Agile (and SCRUM) teams...

As you may know, my engineering team migrated off of the Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) and over to a full enterprise edition of SharePoint Server 2010 (MOSS) in order to utilize the deep integration between TFS & SharePoint. This process is one that, as I’ve mentioned in past blog posts, has...

With the release of Visual Studio 2010 RTM, we embarked on upgrading from RC1 to RTM. This was a rather seamless process with no “unexpected” hoops to push through though I did recently encounter an issue with some of the customized linked reports I built. As shown in my post TFS 2010 – Using Stories...

We recently had a need to add some additional service accounts to run services as we had a single service account that was getting used in a bit too many places. During this exercise, we decided to change the service account that our TFS 2010 services were run under and this went off without a hitch...

If you are an agile team, you are going to love TFS 2010 and especially it’s crucial dashboard capabilities that help you better plan and track your time. Software estimates are an art more than a science and it is one of the keys to growth for an individual developer at Microsoft. In short, accurate...

As you’ve seen in my post previously , there are some great ways to enhance reporting in TFS 2010 through the use of Windows SharePoint Services (WSS). This is very important for obvious reasons such as communicating with organization leaders on the status of your projects, especially when you are using...

As we build out our dashboard to show our progress on our software projects, we quickly enjoyed the luxury of the new TFS Dashboard views that utilize Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS) web part Page Viewer.  This web part connects to a URL on the TFS application tier called tfsredirect.aspx that...

I’ve recently had the pleasure of digging more & more into the TFS 2010 and I’m guilty of drinking the kool aid here – it is a great product. I’ve not gotten the opportunity yet to dig deeper into a few key new scenarios (like Lab Management) but that isn’t far away. Nonetheless, I have been driving...

We use TFS 2010 for our work item tracking, source control, and build services.  Beta 2, which is the currently released version of TFS & Visual Studio 2010, is nice and a very strong upgrade for those using 2008.  I’ve spent a lot of time getting familiar with TFS, a lot more than in the...

We’ve recently in our group migrated to TFS 2010 Beta and in order to support this, we’ve had to make some changes to our local machines to successfully connect to projects hosted on our TFS 2010 server.  In today’s blog, I wanted to do a quick demo of how to correctly connect to the TFS 2010 server...