In option #7 we basically overwrite our old work items with the new ones. There is a little jiggery-pockery to get everything to align, but it allows us to keep the continuity of both history, field data and work item ID’s.

The Main Event: Upgrading Process Templates (TFS 2005 + TFS 2008 + TFS 2010 + TFS11)

I have created these instruction for doping the upgrade on “any” Team Foundation Server environment and there will be extra “fiddly” bits depending on the version and what third-party tools you are using.

^{WARNING: Always test the process against in a test environment before you move forward with production. Make sure that everyone (and I do mean everyone) logs in a performs a few of their normal tasks against the upgraded process before you go ahead with a production migration. If in doubt then get in touch at http://www.nwcadence.com before you get yourself into a mess!}

1. Export old work item types

   The first thing I need to do is list out all of the work items that I have available so that I know which ones I might have to change. In this case I have the Agile 6.0 Process Template, so I have User Story as the main requirement item.

   witadmin listwitd /collection:http://localhost:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:"FabrikamFiber"
   

   With the following result:

   • Task
   • Bug
   • Code Review Request
   • Code Review Response
   • Feedback Request
   • Feedback Response
   • Impediment
   • User Story
   • Shared Steps
   • Test Case

   For each of these work item types that exist in the new template you will need to do a little bit of work, but not much. If you are moving from Agile 4.1, Agile 4.2 or Agile 5.0 you will not have the Feedback & Code Review items to worry about. However if you have customised any of the Work item Types, there will be some tinkering that you need to do.

   For each Work Item Type:

   witadmin exportwitd /collection:http://localhost:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:"FabrikamFiber" /n:Task /f:c:\temp\Task_FabrikamFiber_source.xml

   Save them somewhere you can find them and not get them confused with the new ones.

   
   ^{Figure: Save out the Work Item Type Definition}

2. Identify fields that do not exist in the new template

   In this case I am moving from the Task Work Item Type in the MSF Agile 6.0 Template to the Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 Template. There are a number of fields that do not appear on the Scrum template that we will likely at least want to keep the data for:

   
     
       Importance to business
       
   
   
   
   
       
       
     
     
       Initial value for Remaining Work - set once, when work begins
     
     
       The number of units of work that have been spent on this task
     
     
       The date to start the task
     
     
       The date to finish the task
     
   
   

   For every field that has a different “refname” from that which exists in the new Work item Type you will need to add it to the list of fields. This will guarantee that you will still be able to see the history from the old work item type.

3. Add old fields to the new Work Item Type

   This is very simple and entails adding the fields identified above to the new Work Item Type. This will allow TFS to continue to understand these fields even though you will not be displaying them.

   ^{note: But do not add them to the UI}

   ^{note: Even if you forget to add the fields you will NOT loose the data, it will just be hidden until you add the fields.}

4. Rename the Work Item Type

   If the new  work item type has a different name from the new one you will need to perform a rename first.

   
   ^{Figure: witadmin renamewitd /?}

   witadmin renamewitd /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:Agile3 /n:"User Story" /new:"Product Backlog Item"
   

   This is the point at which you will start to break things. Queries, Reports, Dashboards and the new Agile Planning tools all rely on the Work Item Type name.

   ^{WARNING: Always do this on a test server first before you ever touch production}

5. Update to the new Work Item Types

   This is real easy, perhaps too easy, and you should make sure that you have all of the fields and that you know all of the impacts.

   witadmin importwitd /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:Agile3 /f:"c:\data\Product Backlog Item.xml"
   

   ^{note: Document everything in a Script so that you make this a repeatable experience}

   ^{WARNING: Always do this on a test server first before you ever touch production}

6. Update Catagories.xml (TFS 2010+ only)

   If you are using TFS 2010 or above Microsoft added the idea of categories to make reporting easier to customise.

   witadmin exportcategories /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:AgileTest3 /f:c:\data\cats.xml

   Calling this will dump out the existing categories so that you can edit and import them. For any of the work item types that you rename you will need to update the name in this configuration file.

   < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
   
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
       
       
       
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
     
       
     
   

   You can see where User Story is listed in the Requirement Category and you can easily chnage and upload this. It is worth noting that using the “witadmin renamewitd” command will automatically make this change for you. Once we have make any changes necessary we can import it back into TFS and close that loop.

   witadmin importcategories /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:AgileTest3 /f:c:\data\cats.xml
   

   ^{Note: This is done automatically if you use the “witadmin renamewitd”}

   ^{Note: You can export the correct listing from a new clean template if you wish}

7. Update the Configuration files (TFS 11+ only)

   The Agile Configuration is what makes the new Agile Planning features in Team Foundation Server 11 come to life. There is also a Common configuration that will also need to b e set. In this case, because we are moving to a vanilla template we can just export both of them from an existing project and import them into the new project as is.

   • Agile Process Configuration

     witadmin exportagileprocessconfig /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:FabrikamFiber /f:c:\data\agileprocess.xml

     This produces a file that defines what is available on a couple of the agile pages including the Product and Sprint backlog pages.

     < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
     
       
     
     
     
     
     
     
         
       
     
         
           
             
           
         
     
     
     
     
     
         
       
     
     

   • Common Processing Configuration

     witadmin exportcommonprocessconfig /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /p:FabrikamFiber /f:c:\data\commonprocess.xml

     Which produces a file that defines what the states and names are for each of the work item types as well as formats for how things are displayed. If you want to work weekends, then this is the place to look as well.

     < ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
     
       
         
           
           
         
       
       
         
           
           
         
       
       
         
           
           
           
           
         
       
       
         
           
           
           
         
       
       
         
         
         
         
         
           
             
             
             
           
         
         
         
         
       
       
         Sunday
         Saturday
       
     
     

   And as I mentioned we are moving directly from one to another so we don’t need to make any changes, just import.

8. Update Reports in Reporting Services (TFS 2010 Power Tools+ only)

   There is a command available from the power tools that will allow you to call one command to upload the new reports. I like to drop all of the old reports into a “_20XX-[process]-reports” folder so that I can always see what we had before. You don’t want to delete any customisation, bot they will likely not work anyway until updated.

   tfpt addprojectreports  /collection:http://vsalm:8080/tfs/defaultcollection /teamproject:AgileTest3 /processtemplate:"Visual Studio Scrum 2.0"
   

   ^{WARNING: All out-of-the-box reports and any customisation will be inoperable until they are updated to take advantage of the new data}

9. Migrating Data to new Fields:

   At this point you have one of two choices. There will be data in field that have just had the reference name changed, like “System.Description” changing to “System.DescriptionHTML”, and we need to decide how to migrate it. Luckily the main fields, like “System.Title” have not changed so the work item will still be identifiable as it was before.

   1. Automated Migration

      You can create an application or a script to move data from one field to another. If you are using the API you can even head back in time to pull data from the past.

      Dim tpc as TfsTeamProjectCollection = New TfsTeamProjectCollection("https://localhost:8080/tfs/defaultcollection")
      Dim store as WorkItemStore = tpc.GetService(of WorkItemStore)
      Dim wi as WorkItem = store.GetWorkItem(21)
      Dim wiAtDate WorkItem = store.GetWorkItem(21, Date.Parse("2012-03-02 08:00"))
      Dim wiRevision as WorkItem = store.GetWorkItem(21, wi.Rev -1)
      

      Either of these options will allow you to repopulate data auto-magically and almost transparently to your users.

   2. Self service migration

      In the self-service option we let the first user to edit a work item manually do the migration.

      
      ^{Figure: You can select text from the history}

      You can have user peruse t6he history at their leisure and copy any data that they need back into the main work item. This allows for some really complex translations and stops you getting caught up in arguments with users as to what data they want and how it will be converted. Even two teams working in the same project can do it in slightly different ways using the MK1 Eyeball and MK1 Logic System to interpret the results much more effectively than you can.

   And that’s almost it! If this is TFS 2010 then you are done, but if it is TFS 11 then there are a couple of other things that you may need to do depending on the breadth of the changes. In my case I am mainly going to be moving from [insert out-of-the-box template] or [insert-frankin-template] to the Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 template so I need to tell the rest of TFS how I am going to be using the data.

10. DONE – You are now on a new Process Template with minimal baggage

Troubleshooting

I will try to catalogue any problems here, so add them in the comments and I will update!

1. TF400508: The current process settings are either missing or not valid.

   If you are on Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server (dev11 | TFS11) then you will need to reconfigure the Planning Boards to work with the new work item types. In this case I have renamed the “User Story” work item type to “Product Backlog Item” and it results in an error.

   
   ^{Figure: TF400508 is about Agile Planning boards}

   You forgot to update #7 above. Go back and do it now!

2. [TBA] Let me know what errors you find…

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

Updated 2012-04-02 – Patrick Carnahan fixed my code below to work with TFS 11 on both local and build server environments.

This brings us back to the purpose here. Lets take a standard API call to TFS:

TfsTeamProjectCollection collection =new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("https://mrhinsh.tfspreview.com/DefaultCollection"));
collection.Authenticate();

Figure: Simply connect to TFS

Before the cloud we had 3 options for authentication:

1. Run the code/application as a user with permission
2. Add the credentials to the credential store
3. Pass in explicit credentials to use

While this was just fine, what do you do in the cloud world where authentication was done using Windows Live ID. What do you do if you want to run a service, like the TFS Integration Platform, unattended? Well, up until now we had to log onto that unattended server and re-jig our Live credentials every two days when it expired.

Now while this is OK, but not ideal, for a while what about things like Build Servers running locally and connecting to the cloud or even just something as simple as writing Unit Tests that test an application you are building against TFS Service.

This happened to me the other day while I was working on the TFS Field Annotator that I was building.  I was trying to add some Unit Tests and I was running into authentication issues.

note: I know I am supped to ad my Tests first, but I am not quire there yet.

note: I am also aware that these are “Integration Tests” and not pure “Unit Test”

The authentication issues stemmed from the code above in the automated running scenario and resulted in and error…

Figure: TF30064: You are not authorized to access the server

So, why do I get this error when I am in a Unit Test and not connecting through the custom UI.  Well, in the UI the user is specifically selecting the Collection using the TeamProjectPicker dialog. This dialog does all of the Live ID authentication for us so if the user ticks the “remember me” box they don’t have to log in next time.

Figure: the UI authenticated us

That bring us back to the problem at hand. The UI is not involved with the Unit Tests. In fact I have abstracted the logic for the TeamProjectPicker into a collection selector interface so that I can run the Unit Tests without having the UI popup ever time I run them…

namespace TfsWitAnnotateField.UI.Infra
{
    public interface ICollectionSelector
    {
        TfsTeamProjectCollection SelectCollection();
    }
}

Figure: An Interface to abstract the UI work

Having this interface lets me have two implementation of a concrete class.

1. CollectionSelector – With the call to TeamProjectPicker UI

   namespace TfsWitAnnotateField.UI.Infra
   {
       class CollectionSelector : ICollectionSelector
       {
           public TfsTeamProjectCollection SelectCollection()
           {
               using (TeamProjectPicker tpp = new TeamProjectPicker(TeamProjectPickerMode.NoProject, false))
               {
                   DialogResult result = tpp.ShowDialog();
                   if (result == DialogResult.OK)
                   {
                       return tpp.SelectedTeamProjectCollection;
                   }
                   return null;
               }
           }
       }
   }

   Figure: Calling the TeamProjectPicker
   

2. MockCollectionSelector – With an explicit Collection to tests against and no UI

   namespace TfsWitAnnotateField.UI.Tests
   {
       class MockCollectionSelector : ICollectionSelector
       {
           public TfsTeamProjectCollection SelectCollection()
           {
               return new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("https://mrhinsh.tfspreview.com/"));
           }
       }
   }
   

   Figure: Calling TfsTeamProjectCollection explicitly

Now here in #2 we have a problem. How do we authenticate?

The only way to do so up until now was to save your Live ID credentials in the Windows Credential Store, but they would only last for 2 days before they expired.

So what happens on the build server?

I would have to log onto the build serve every 2 days and reset the credentials, and my only notification would be that my tests started failing, and thus my builds. Not a good thing.

In a self-hosted TFS instance I can just create some AD credentials and hard code (or put them in a config) them. But in the Hosted Build Service world I have no such option. I don’t even know where my build server is, let alone logging onto it. So the lovely folks on the product team, encountering the same problem themselves, came up with a solution.

You can connect to your TFS Preview instance as an Administrator and load a set of service credentials that you can use to connect unattended.

IAccessControlService acs = _SelectedTeamProjectCollection.GetService();
ServiceIdentity defaultServiceIdentity = acs.ProvisionServiceIdentity();
// Save these values off to use for non-interactive login
Username = defaultServiceIdentity.IdentityInfo.Name;
Password = defaultServiceIdentity.IdentityInfo.Password;

Figure: Retrieving a non-interactive login for your TFS Preview service

Now, it would be a pain in the ass to have to spin up this code all of the time, so I created the TFS Service Credential Viewer that will do the heavy lifting for you.

Figure: We can load out credentials from the remote instance

Now I can copy and past them into my MockCollectionSelector to allow it to connect unattended.

namespace TfsWitAnnotateField.UI.Tests
{
    class MockCollectionSelector : ICollectionSelector
    {
        public TfsTeamProjectCollection SelectCollection()
        {
            // This is constructed with the userName and password from the previous code block
            ServiceIdentityCredentialsProvider provider = new ServiceIdentityCredentialsProvider("Account Service (XXXXXX)", "XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX");
            return new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("https://mrhinsh.tfspreview.com/DefaultCollection"), provider);
        }
    }
}

Figure: CollectionSelector for TFS 2010

namespace TfsWitAnnotateField.UI.Tests
{
    class MockCollectionSelector : ICollectionSelector
    {
        public TfsTeamProjectCollection SelectCollection()
        {
            return new TfsTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("https://mrhinsh.tfspreview.com/"), new TfsClientCredentials(new SimpleWebTokenCredential("", "")));
        }
    }
}

Figure: CollectionSelector for TFS 11

Now that I have my credentials I can run my tests again…

Figure: Green, all of my tests are now passing

Woot, they all pass… now to write some more.

Conclusion

If you are using a Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) framework to tests your scenarios (SpecFlow works well with Visual Studio 11) then you will need to load your service credentials so that we can test without having a user enter credentials…

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

last time I looked that was a 4? Why is it a 6? Who changed it?

if you have, then the TFS Field Annotate is for you. Connect to TFS, select a Work Item and see the history on a single field.

The TFS Field Annotator shows you just the changes to a particular field. So like the Source Code Annotate it gives you line level tractability with ease.

Download TFS Field Annotator

The following prerequisites are required:

• Visual Studio 11 | Visual Studio 2010 (any version)
• .NET 4.5

If these components are already installed, you can launch the application now. Otherwise, click install below to install the prerequisites and run the application.

install or launch via clickonce

How it works

Once you have connected to Your TFS 2010 or TFS 11 Collection you enter a Work Item Id to load all of the available fields and

Figure: See who changed what more easily

Troubleshooting

If you are using Windows 8 Consumer Preview you will not get an automatic launch of the application due to an extra security check for applications that come from the internet.

1. Click or Press “Start” and Scroll all the way to the right
2. Select the TFS Field Annotator
3. When the security dialog pops up click “More Info”

   
   Figure: Select More Info
   

4. Click “Run anyway” to launch the application and add it to the safe list

   
   Figure: Just run it anyway… no sweat…

5. Done

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

The TFS Service Credential Viewer connects to your Team Foundation Service account on http://tfspreview.com and using your credentials it retrieves credentials that you can use for an automated service to connect and authenticate correctly.

Download TFS Service Credential Viewer

The following prerequisites are required:

• Visual Studio 11 (any version)
• .NET 4.5

If these components are already installed, you can launch the application now. Otherwise, click install below to install the prerequisites and run the application.

install or launch via clickonce

How it works

Once you have authenticated as a TFS Collection Administrator to your hosted TFS Collection we use the Access Control Service to provision a service identity that you can use for unattended connections to Team Foundation Service (TFS Preview).

Figure: A quick #1, #2 to get your credentials

http://youtu.be/Fkn6V0_zz28
Video: How to get your credentials

Troubleshooting

If you are using Windows 8 Consumer Preview you will not get an automatic launch of the application due to an extra security check for applications that come from the internet.

1. Click or Press “Start” and Scroll all the way to the right
2. Select the TFS Service Credential Viewer
3. When the security dialog pops up click “More Info”

   
   Figure: Select More Info
   

4. Click “Run anyway” to launch the application and add it to the safe list

   
   Figure;

5. Done

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

If I recall from our training, you suggested teams could burn down their sprints using points or hours.  In your view is there a “better” answer in your opinion (pros/cons)?
-Pete

The first thing that we want to do is define explicitly what a burndown represents and the reason that we are creating one; i.e. what actions might we want to take. Only then can we decide what we want to measure and which is best for us.

What is a burndown?

During Sprint Planning the Development Team forecast what work it thinks it could do (selected a number of PBI’s from the Product Backlog) and created a Plan to complete them. This is known as the Sprint Backlog and it should have some measure of Remaining Work that allows the Development Team to see what they have left to do. As the Sprint Backlog (the Plan to complete the forecast PBI’s) evolves as more is known over the course of the Sprint the Remaining Work can vary and we need a way of visualizing trends so that the Development Team can take the necessary action.

A burndown is a visual representation of the Remaining Work in the Sprint Backlog as it varies over time.

What might we find?

So in order to identify actions we need to look at some things we might identify as a problem.

• We get a flat burndown
  
  Figure: What does a flat burndown mean?

  This might be because we just forgot, or it might be representative of a tooling issue or even a team issue that exists.

  • Action: Update our Remaining Work

  • Action: Get better at filling it out in time for the Daily Scrum

  • Action: Raise an impediment to the Scrum Master to improve the tools

  • Action: Raise an impediment to the Scrum Master to help the Development Team improve

• We get a perfect burndown, but delivered nothing
  
  Figure: All of the Tasks were complete

  This is likely to be because we have too much work in progress at any one time. We have 10 Stories in progress and get to the end of the Sprint with all of our Stories 90% complete.

  • Action: Raise an impediment with the Scrum Master for review at the Retrospective

  • Action: Limit work in progress

    “Given an ordered list of user stories, you’re either working on the top item, or else you’d better have a good reason not to. You don’t proceed with another story until your current story is done.”
    -The Task Burn Down Trap: everything finished, nothing done

• We will not get done on time
  
  Figure: When will we be done?

  This can be because we do not know everything at the start of the Sprint. Can a lawyer tell you exactly how long your case will take and what it will cost? No, so why would you expect something like software to?

  • Action: Speak to the Product Owner and decide what can be removed from the Sprint Backlog to still allow the team to be done.

These are just some ideas of what might be found and are not indicative of all possible options and there are other lists of Bad Smells of the Sprint Backlog that you can find online.

Let me reiterate, that along with the Three Questions that are part of the Daily Scrum a Burndown is just a tool to help elicit communication and understanding within the Development Team. It is not a whip for a Project Manager to crack.

What burndown is right?

So to answer the question of wither to burn down Story Points, Hours or even Test Cases I would argue that we need them all! I want to see if my tasks are on track, but I also want to make sure that I am delivering Stories as well.

The Hours Burndown

This burndown is good for helping the Development Team identify how much work is remaining in the Sprint and if they are likely to still be able to meet their Sprint Goal.

The Story Point Burndown

Good for allowing the Development Team to see if they are actually getting things Done, verses completing all of the Tasks.

The Acceptance Tests Burndown

Also a good indicator of what is going on from a delivery perspective. If you are on track for Hours, and Story Points but you have only completed 50% of your Acceptance Tests and you have 2 days left on your Sprint, what does that tell you about your quality.

Conclusion

You will need to experiment with your Scrum Teams to see which burndown is right for you, but I would suggest that you want to be able to plot all of them so that your Development Team’s have all of the relevant information for their Daily Scrum to  help them identify any issues as early as possible.

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

Figure: Warm sunny Park City, Utah

Little did I realise that the Big Yin (Mr Starr) had a few surprises for me. The first surprise was that this was a team of Java developers and that I would be leading an Agile Engineering Practices Workshop as part of the engagement. But that was not all…no, David left the best one until I was well and truly committed…

I knew that I would have to spin up on the Professional Scrum Foundations course but that was just a mater of course, but the real sledge hammer came in the form of 68 students… um…no, that is not a type, it was 68 students over two runs of the two day course. Phew, but this is going to be fun…

Figure: 32 people make a crowded room

I had not taught the Professional Scrum Foundations (PSF) course from Scrum.org before but David did a walkthrough at the last Face-2-Face and I had spun up on the course before. I was really excited as I think that this is a fantastic course. I had only the beginnings of an understanding of how good this course is before I taught it, but now this is the one course I would recommend for any agile or Scrum adoption.

It is by far the most well thought out course that it has been my pleasure to teach. It may just have been the awesome students, but I think that David has excelled himself here and whomever gets custodianship of the course next has large boots to fill.

On of the main goals of this course is to give teams practical knowledge of what they can achieve when they work as a team using Scrum. Thus there is a backlog of work that we actually ask students to work though and produce product by the end.

They initially don’t think that they can build anything in 30 minutes, but as they go through the sprints they suddenly find that not only can they build something in 30 minutes, but that if they work together they can do anything. I don’t tell them anything about “how” I want them to complete the backlog and I leave them to figure it out.

Figure: What can you build in four 30 minute Sprints?

At first all but one team was building a home grown solution and finding difficulty in dealing with the bottleneck of having one or two programmers to a team. By the end of the second Sprint all but one team were using WordPress… Why?

The power of the Review & Retrospective!

Some of the power in these events is the understanding and cross pollination of good ideas. If you hear about a good experience that another team has encountered then you are likely to at least consider replicating it. Conversely, if you hear about a Sprint peppered by pain and suffering you are likely to want to know what not to try and do!

Figure: Don’t be a Jackass

So, don’t be a jackass and learn not just from your own mistakes, but the shared mistakes of your organisation.

All in I think I had 13 teams so you can imagine the differences of skills and knowledge that were involved. Some teams has Scrum boards.

Figure: The wonderful board of Team Jack@$$

Some teams stood up during their Daily Scrum.

Figure: One team decided to Stand up during the Daily Scrum

Other teams were always asking the Product Owner for more information and some Product Owners spent all of their time grooming the backlog. Only one team had both.

Figure: Ask the Oracle…ehm… Product Owner

At the end of the course, for the last sprint I had two curve balls to throw. The first was an integration exercise that really makes them sweat, the other was to introduce some common team dysfunctions. During Lunch I solicited a few moles to play the roll of the “hero” or the “absentee product owner” among other. All of these dysfunctions were not only noticed, but we spent some time looking at how this impacted the teams and what they did about it. All of them self-organised around it and non of them failed to deliver.

Figure: Working together to achieve the goals

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Utah and I look forward to going back and helping these fine folks out again. It was an eye-opening experience teaching so many, and I cheated a little for the TDD demonstration of the Engineering practices workshop and I did all of the demos in c#. While it felt a little bit like cheating, I did have 7 or 8 people following along, even one in Perl.

Figure: Utah was nice, but it is good to be home

Well it is so long to Utah, another state ticked of my list, and I hope to be back soon…

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

Did you know that you can use it at home on both commercial and open source projects of your own!

MSDN subscriptions are licensed on a per-user basis.  One person can use the software to design, develop, test, or demonstrate his or her programs on any number of devices.  Each person who uses the software this way needs a license.
-MSDN Licencing

That’s right, the MSDN that you company bought you entitles you to run Windows, Office & Visual Studio in production at home. Its a licence for YOU and not just for them.

 
Figure: Over 11 terabytes of data on MSDN

I was talking to Mark Groves at the MVP Summit and I had a double-take when he mentioned that most developers don’t know that you get a take-home licence with you MSDN. I was surprise because I have know and taken advantage of this for the better part of 8 years, and I was even more surprised when he mentioned that Scott Hanselman was also unaware of this. This is an awesome benefit to being a Microsoft developer and I can’t believe that it is not more well known.

Figure: You get Azure time as well

On top of that you get a number of other benefits. You get the Azure time above and you also get the ability to run an almost limitless number of development boxes as well. Basically for a developer with MSDN you can almost run “whatever” at home and be fully licenced and I have never encountered anyone who has maxed out their instances.

The thing that I tend to find that is not done is the assignment of MSDN licences that a company has bough to the individuals that are using it. What companies really don’t understand is that no matter how many MSDN licences that they own, they are not licenced to use any of it unless they are assigned to individual Live ID’s.

MSDN subscriptions are only offered per individual, there are no “team” subscriptions or sharing of subscription benefits.
-MSDN Licencing

In most companies that I do work for the operations team hoards the MSDN’s so those pesky developers can’t download on the network. But this, my dear ops guys means that you are using software illegally within your company, so get over it and assign those  MSDN subscription to those that they were bought for!

Did you EVER have an MSDN? Another of those little known things about an MSDN is that it is perpetual. That is that you can use forever the software that became available when you received your MSDN.

In most cases, MSDN subscriptions come with “perpetual” use rights—the ability to continue using the software after the subscription has expired, even though the ability to download software and product keys ends when the subscription expires.
-MSDN Licencing

You just don’t get anything new

And just in case you were worries about buying licences for your business acceptance testing (BAT) then:

When software development projects are nearing completion, an MSDN subscription license also allows your end users to access the software to perform acceptance tests on your programs.
-MSDN Licencing

MSDN has one of the most flexible licencing terms in the industry and you should be using it to its full potential and not leaving it on a shelf! It will make some of your developers more valuable if they can exercise the tools in their spare time and the others just will not take advantage of it.

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

You can’t stack rank hierarchical work items?

If you want to continue to be competitive in the world of modern software development you need to be able to effectively order (stack rank) a list of well understood items. This could be at the PBI (or Product Backlog) level or it could be at the Task (or Sprint Backlog) level but I need to be able to do that ordering by moving things about… how do I do that with a tree?

Figure: How do you order a tree?

No really! Lets look at a couple of specific questions:

• What do you expect to happen when you reorder “PBI 3” above?

  
  Figure: If you said they all move then you get a prize

This has to be the expected out come because of that pesky parent / child relationship.

• What would you expect to happen when you drag “PBI 8” to be between “PBI 1”  and “PBI 2”?

  
  Figure: Was that what you expected?
  
  If you said that it would move to the right location then you also get a prise, but what do you think happened to the parent relationship with “PBI 3”? Thats right, it was removed as that item can no longer exist as a child or “PBI 3”…

  Note: You can keep the relationship by creating it as a “related” relationship, or you could add a custom one.

So what is the expected behaviour when you discover a PBI that is too large (for whatever reason) and you want to break it down into two smaller ones. Once you have broken a PBI down into two smaller ones that encompass all of the things we need to make the larger one what purpous does it solve… have we not just replaced it? Well then, lets remove it.

Figure: Good example, Mark the parent story as removed

This only makes sense as I have all of the relevant information in the two new PBI’s.

Figure: Now I have no “PBI 3”

If I look at the history for that “removed” PBI I can, and I will, be able to see all of the history including that the links to the children still exist. This means that you can still query and see what those relationships were without them interfering with the backlog any more.

Figure: I can still have my tractability

Let me jus say that I am not suggesting that you do not use linking, there are many links that are and should be available. Which of those links are good to use,  provide value and make sense  for both the team and your product owners:

1. Tasks with a Parent / Child relationship with a PBI
   
   You need for your team to be able to keep track of the work that they are doing to achieve a single PBI and this is that. There are other options, but this is the best one.

   
   Figure: Good example, You can have Task as a child of
   
   
   Figure: Bad example, do not use PBI’s as children of other PBI’s

• Test Cases with a Tests / Tested By relationship with a PBI

  You want to be able to trace from code to requirements to bugs all with the relevant tests that make sure that we built the correct thing.

  
  Figure: Good example, You can show what your PBI is Tested By

• Bugs that have a Tests / Tested By

  I would expect this to be a no-brainer as you can’t have a bug unless you can prove that it exists. Bugs have “steps to reproduce2 after all and in the post MTM world this is the result of a failing Test Case.

  
  Figure: Good example, Bugs have test Cases too

I a using the Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 template (default) so while you can make things more complicated, this is about as complex and the expected common cause use cases go with Work Items. There are other artefacts links to support things like Test Results, Code Reviews, Feedback Results and others, but they are tool bits not really that user configurable.

Figure: Bad example, nesting Work Items is very unwieldy

I am always interested in finding out what other scenarios there are out there:

Do you agree?

What reasons do you have for using hierarchy’s?

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

Figure: Go-Live with Visual Studio 11 with our help

With the success of the Scrum Health Check we are expanding the family of Health Check offerings. We will come in and help your teams understand what they need to do to move to both Visual Studio 11 & Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Server.

This will be a short half day  engagement to get you ready. So get yours now, wither you are moving to 11 now or just wan to make sure that you have not done something that will be a problem later.

We can help you make sure that you will be able to:

• Upgrade your server from TFS 2010 to TFS 11
• Enable new features in your Team Projects
• Take advantage of Team support
• e.t.c.

Let us help you get the most out of the tools…

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …

Figure: The new installer is clean

There has been some comment on the colours, or lack there of, in the new UI, but to be honest it works. It may be a little drab for the first wee while, but once you get used to it you begin to love it. It a user interface for every day use, not occasional use.

Figure: Installation is painless with no configuration

lets face it, you don’t need to configure the install and now that the team has paired it down to only 1.6GB we can have it all and not worry about space.

Figure: All components get on there but it may take a while

It took a little while, perhaps 30 minutes.

Figure: Shucks, another re-boot!

I don’t know why, but it did not have any extra bits to do so hopefully they will be able to install without a reboot if you already have .NET 4.5 as I did.

Figure: Pick your layout

You get a bunch of first run layouts with Visual Studio 11 and you even get a “code only” minimal one for web development. But I like the “Visual Basic” layout. Note that this is not picking a language it is just picking a layout of Visual Studio IDE. You can customise everything later.

Figure: Sigh, and another progress bar

While Visual Studio configures itself you need to wait, but only for a few minutes…and then…

Figure: The new UI

I really like the clean new UI. Colour is now for accent and not just for splashing around the place (although that is a running joke at the MVP Summit) and almost all things that have colour you can click!

Figure: Connecting to Team Foundation Server

I LOVE the new team Explorer, but it will take a little getting used to…

Remember that there is Go-Live for Visual Studio 11!

Go on… be a kid again!

-Do you want to move to Visual Studio 11 Team Foundation Service NOW? Microsoft is providing a Go-Live licence (that means that it is supported in production) and you can use it today! For help moving forward contact info@nwcadence.com …