Planet SCM

If you're new to Team System, or if you're ready to use Team Foundation Server for more than version control, you should consider attending the Team System preconference course taught by Brian Randell at PDC 2008: Get More Out of Visual Studio Team System 2008. Brian has been in and around Team System since the early days, and he knows his way around Team Foundation Server.

Get More Out of Visual Studio Team System 2008

Presenter(s): Brian Randell

This preconference will focus both on implementing best practices and avoiding worst practices when working with Team Foundation Server and the suite of client tools. Throughout the day you will cover end-to-end life cycle management. Begin with guidance on defining your team project, source code control, and project classifications system, tips for customizing your process templates and using work items to drive your teams progress. From there you will learn effective techniques for getting your builds set up and running, using quality practices and tools including unit testing, web testing, test publication, profiling and load testing. We close by covering how to move forward once a major milestone is complete. This session assumes familiarity with Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Client Tools; each section of the session will provide practical guidance so that you are getting the most of VSTS and you leave prepared for changes coming in future releases of Team System.

About the presenter(s):

Brian A. Randell is a senior consultant with MCW Technologies, LLC. For over 20 years, Brian has been building software solutions and educating his fellow developers. Brian spends his time teaching Microsoft technologies to developers, working with new and emerging technologies like Visual Studio Team System 2008, and consulting worldwide for Fortune 500 companies like Microsoft, state and local governments, and small businesses. Brian enjoys helping people get the most out of their software. He does this through training for Pluralsight, and speaking at events such as VSLive!, Tech•Ed, and the PDC. In addition, Brian shares through the written word. Brian currently writes the Team System column for MSDN Magazine. He is the author and lead instructor of Pluralsight’s Applied Team System and Applied Windows SharePoint Services courses. You can reach Brian via his blog at http://www.mcwtech.com/cs/blogs/brianr.

PDC2008 | Agenda | Pre-Conference

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Interested in sharing your process template? Would you rather use one someone else created? Check out the Templex project on CodePlex, which will serve as a library of process templates for use with Team Foundation Server.

Set your templates free! Share and discover Team Foundation Server process templates and other goodies here.

This CodePlex projects serves as a repository for open source Team Foundation Server (TFS) process templates, work item type definitions and report definitions. TFS uses process templates to configure new team projects. Each process template includes the following:

• TFS Security groups and permissions
• Initial set of Areas and Iterations
• Work item type definitions
• Initial set of work items
• Work item querys
• MS Project Mappings
• Version control permissions and settings for check-out and check-in
• Project portal document library settings, including an initial set of documents
• SQL Reporting Services report definitions

Once a team project is created, the following configuration items can be imported, exported and modified:

• Work item type definitions
• Work item queries
• Report definitions

Templex - The TFS Process Template Library

via Microsoft ALM process templates site set up.

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Brian the Build Bunny rocks. :) Great job, Martin!

I'm always keen try new and novel ways to keep in touch with the status of my software projects.  Fortunately, Team Foundation Server provides many ways to do this.  While the Build Wallboard is fun if you have a spare monitor and machine lying around, I wanted to experiment with some inexpensive dedicated devices, and so Brian the Build Bunny was born.

Martin Woodward: Brian the Build Bunny

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The final article of the Global Bank: A Scenario for Visual Studio Team System 2008 series is now available.

From the overview:

Are you wondering what you can do in Visual Studio Team System 2008 that you couldn’t do before? We’ve created a series of articles to show you. In this series, we'll explore how Global Bank uses Visual Studio Team System 2008 to help design and implement a new online service.

Global Bank: Adding New Services to an Existing Web Site

The first article in the series. Follow along as Alan creates the list of requirements for the new service and Ken uses these requirements to design the system.

Global Bank: Updating an Existing Database to Support New Services

The second article in the series. See how Alice implements the new table and stored procedure that are required for the new service.

Global Bank: Coding the New Service, Part 1

The third article in the series. Follow along as Martin begins coding, debugging, and testing the new service.

Global Bank: Coding the New Service, Part 2

The fourth article in the series. See how Martin uses unit testing and profiling to test the accuracy and robustness of his code.

Global Bank: Testing the New Service and Fixing Issues

The final article in the series. Follow along as Ellen uses web tests and load tests to check the performance of the new service.

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After Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server shipped, we released a Team Foundation Server Language Change Package to make it easier to migrate an English installation of Team Foundation Server to a localized version that shipped some time after the English version. Since English is the first version available, some people choose to install it instead of waiting for a localized version. If you installed the English version of Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server in anticipation of moving to a localized version, and you want to show your interest in having a Team Foundation Server Language Change Package for 2008, respond to this survey.

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Head over to the Team System User Education blog to get a look at a sample of what David Chesnut is calling scenario topics (from an earlier post: Team System User Education on Scenario Topics), and be sure to give him some feedback with your thoughts.

Sample Help File for Scenario Topics

If you have trouble viewing the CHM file, see: Viewing Downloaded CHM Files.

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