DEV306 Team Foundation Server for Successful Project Management

Adam Cogan

• Wed 9/16 | 14:20-15:35 | Ballroom 1
• Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) are the best tools for Microsoft developers to have successful projects and smooth software development processes. In this talk the Chief Architect from SSW will show you:
• The right way to use work items
• The way to complete a work items and how to send a "done"
• How to use templates for your standard work items
• The extra work items that developers always forget
• How TFS handles repetitive tasks
• What is good and bad about Excel and Project integration
• What you can use from the built in reporting as well as the Project portals available on SharePoint
• The important reports to give to your Project Manager
• The metrics to bother with
• Chief Architect, SSW
• Adam Cogan is the Chief Architect at SSW, a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner specializing in custom .NET, SharePoint and Business Intelligence solutions. At SSW, Adam is also a Team System MVP and Microsoft Regional Director.

Correct Process

• Don’t give away freebie consulting/analysis of work: charge for scoping.
• Confirm the Ball Park
• Present the $ with the Plan: not a round figure. 
• Ask for a signature

Kicking off the project

• Choose your methodology (Microsoft, CMMI)
• Problems with Work Items in 2008 – extraneous fields in the templates. 
• Solution – roll your own
• Good news – VS2010 Agile template is better

Reference

• www.ssw.com.au
• Rules to Better Project Management with TFS (Creating and Managing Release Plans)

Conchango Scrum

• Developed in collaboration with Ken Schwaber (co-founder of Scrum)
• Scrum Task Board
• Lots of reports
• Code churn
• Velocity
• Burndown
• Plasma slide show

Talk to the Customer – Requirements workshopping

• Collecting User Stories - INVEST
• Independent: each feature is unique
• Negotiable: technology independent
• Valuable
• Estimable
• Small (<80 hours)
• Testable (if you can’t test it, you haven’t defined it sufficiently)
• As A <some role> I want <some goal> so that <some reason>

Demo

• Using Excel to manage work items
• Team Tab, New List
• Decomposing work items into Tasks