Announcing Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack Beta

We are excited to announce the release of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack Beta to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscribers.

Integration between Project Server and Team Foundation Server is a huge leap forward for organizations that want to bridge the gap between the Project Management Office and software development teams using Team Foundation Server. The feature pack further strengthens Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management Solution by enabling these teams to work together more effectively while not getting distracted or overwhelmed by each other’s’ detail. It enables teams to work together more effectively by:

• Providing executives with insight into portfolio execution, alignment with strategic objectives, and resource utilization of their software development projects by leveraging the quantitative data stored in different systems.
• Bridging the impedance mismatch between the Project Management Office and Application Development by facilitating better coordination between teams using disparate methodologies, like waterfall and agile, via common information and agreed upon metrics.
• Enabling development and project management teams to use familiar tools to collaborate and communicate project timeline and progress such as Microsoft Project, Project Server, SharePoint and Visual Studio.

Please check out Brian Harry’s post: Portfolio Management: TFS <-> Project Server Integration in Beta for more details on this exciting new solution and try it yourselves!

Key resources

• Beta content for the feature Pack is available on MSDN and as a Compiled Help file (please remember to right-click on the file, select Properties and then Unblock to see the content)
• Recent demo at Tech.Ed Europe last November: Application Lifecycle Management - Microsoft Project 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010, Better Together
• Ask a question: Team Foundation Server and Project Server Integration Forum

Questions and Answers

Q. How does this Feature Pack differ from the out-of-the-box Team Foundation Server and Microsoft Project add-in?
A. The Microsoft Project add-in allows project managers to use Microsoft Project to connect to Team Foundation Server to collaborate and participate in the planning and execution of software development projects. The Feature Pack enables integration between Team Foundation Server and Project Server and allows planning and status information to be synchronized between the two systems.

Q. Are there any prerequisites or dependencies for this Feature Pack?
A. Dependencies are:

• Team Foundation Server 2010 + SP1 beta
• Visual Studio 2010 + SP1 beta
• Project Server 2010 or 2007

For a detailed description of dependencies and prerequisites please check the beta documentation mentioned above.

Q. Do customers need to apply this Feature Pack to Team Foundation Server or Project Server?
A. The Feature Pack must be applied to Project Server (2010 or 2007). The Team Foundation Server 2010 SP1 beta must be applied to Team Foundation Server 2010. Check out the documentation for more details.

Q. What MSDN Subscription level is required to download the beta?
A. This Feature Pack will only be available to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN subscribers (go to your MSDN download center, you should find the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server Integration Feature Pack as an available download). An organization must own at least one license of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN. With that one license, the software can be downloaded and installed and then all users with access to either the Project Server or the Team Foundation Server products that are integrated can benefit.

Q. Can I use this release in production?
A. The beta comes with a “go-live” agreement. If the user agrees to the terms in the pre-release license agreement then they are eligible to use the environment in production. As usual we recommend testing out this beta release in a test/staging environment prior to any product rollout.

Q. When will the final version be ready?
A. Pending your validation, it will ship sometime in the first half of next year (2011).

Christophe Fiessinger
Senior Technical Product Manager, Microsoft Project
http://blogs.msdn.com/chrisfie