Once we identified most of the items (stories) in our backlog, we started to prioritize them. In our first pass, we adapted a technique that Mike Cohn teaches called Theme Scoring . I say adapted because we didn't identify a small number of themes and rank them using this technique. Rather, we identified...

In the past, we managed our work by defining the topics that we need to write, and then estimating and prioritizing the work to write those topics. Before VS2010, that worked really well. We documented the features that the product team created. As they created new features, we added topics to the backlog...

I have posted a couple of series on how we plan content work for Team Foundation, one in 2007 Planning the Sprint Tracking Work Items Reporting Status and the other in 2009. How we Track Content Work Managing Technical Reviews in TFS and SharePoint Reporting...

I've just posted the Team Foundation schema files for process templates and work item types on Code Gallery: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/TFSchemas/Wiki/View.aspx?id=25933 . You can drop the schema files in Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Xml\Schemas and Visual Studio will validate your...

When you upgrade your server to Team Foundation Server 2010, you will have a wealth of new features available. Generally, you don’t have to do anything except start using those new features. For example, you can use the new types of links between work items, such as parent and child links, immediately...

I've been working on streamlining some content in an effort to make it easier for you to get the information that you need. The first place I did this was in the Team Foundation SDK, in Extending Team Foundation and Extending Work Item Tracking . I'm looking at doing the same thing for Extending Visual...

There's a new version of Sandcastle on codeplex . It supports .NET 4, and it builds MSDN-style API Reference topics that are compatible with the new Microsoft Help Viewer that was delivered with Visual Studio 2010. I'm on the inside looking out, but that seems like a good thing if you're trying to build...