Not to say that all offshore projects fail, I have both been a contributor and leader in projects that have been a great success and those that have been complete failures. Each project had its own reasons for failing and were defined by the business (e.g. why are you sending it offshore to begin with...

Today the Team Foundation Server team announced the release of version 1.2 of Team Foundation Power Tools (formally known as Power Toys). What are the Power Toys you say? They're extra functionality delivered out of band for Team Foundation Server including some really useful stuff (get changes for changeset...

A few things before we get started: You will need the HTML Help Workshop installed September CTP of Sandcastle My September CTP Sandcastle Targets File (attached) This file needs to be copied to your %programfiles%\MSBuild directory Next you will need to make some modifications to the...

Based on a past post, I have an external targets file you can place in your $(MSBuildExtensionsPath) folder (attached in zip). You can call it like this: < Import Project = " $(MSBuildExtensionsPath)\Sandcastle.targets " /> < Target Name = " AfterCompile " > < CallTarget RunEachTargetSeparately...

First, we created a cmd file to do the build for us. Syntax for calling the file is Build.cmd "PathToBinaries" "Name of the documentation" (more on this later) @echo off PUSHD %1 "%programfiles%\Sandcastle\ProductionTools\mrefbuilder.exe" *.dll /out:%~dp0\reflection.org /dep:%windir%\Microsoft...

Yay! I'm on the front page of Channel9 with an interview about using Visual Studio Team System in MSIT's Legal group. Full link for your reference: http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=220125

In order to effectively execute an IT strategy a roadmap must be created to contain and identify what common areas exist for the business' solution that could be leveraged by other systems in the enterprise or organization; or which capabilities the solution can leverage. Typically architects will...

I find it difficult to manage many Shared Queries in the work item tracker of VSTF. Sometimes I want to save my ad-hoc query for distribution to a small set of people (maybe just a peer even), but find no way to really make that easy except for sharing the query with the entire team. Even there, you...

First I want to start out with some observations: The Business expects IT to provide a technology advantage with the right capabilities at the right price at the right time A business strategy alone is not sufficient for IT planning Business rarely asks for IT infrastructure capabilities Every business...

Expanding on my previous post on accountability , fostering alignment across the enterprise is really driven from multiple angles: market opportunity, technology opportunity, capability and business operations--all which create a business strategy. In that are 5 main tenets: effectiveness, competitiveness...

I used to work with a developer, an agile methodology evangelist, who would often tell me stories about agile methodologies applied to industries other than information technology. In a specific instance, I recall him telling me a story about a Japanese auto factory that implemented the LEAN methodology...

Version 1.0 of the Visual Studio Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider has been released to the web ! This is very exciting for me--the MSSCCI provider allows the integrated use of the new version control system available in Team Foundation Server from products that did not support it OOB such as: ...

Buck Hodges has a post in his blog outlining various tips for improving performance on Verifying LAN settings are correct Not running tf.exe on the app tier Batching TF.exe requests in a command file http://blogs.msdn.com/buckh/archive/2005/12/12/503015.aspx Tim Noonan has also provided some...

I received a comment on my blog asking about the differences between TFS Trial and RTM. Here are some highlights: Bits are 99.99% identical Trial has the same process guidance version of MSF (4.0), however, there are some known issues that exist with broken links in the Trial version of TFS...

Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (Out May 17) Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is written for a software team that is considering running a software project using Visual Studio Team System (VSTS). It is about the “why” of VSTS: its guiding...

The packages for MSF for Agile Software Development Process Guidance and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement have just been posted to the Microsoft Download Center. These processes are in use by Team Foundation Server and are available for free download. Enjoy!

Conchango has released a process template add-in for Team Foundation Server. It's free and gives you work item templates and nifty reports. More information on Thom Robbin's and Rob Caron's blogs SCRUM add-in download: http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/default.aspx

Darren Jefford  has just published a post describing his tool to graphically edit Work Item Types in Team Foundation Server utilizing the VSIP add-in Domain Specific Languages (DSL).   http://blogs.msdn.com/darrenj/archive/2006/03/20/555821.aspx  for additional information about the tool, http...

There has been much excitement over the RTM of TFS, however, you cannot buy a pretty boxed copy as of yet. You can, however, download a 180 trial of team foundation server along with Visual Studio 2005 to evaluate the tool for your company, or you can order the Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite trial which...

John Lawrence asked in his blog entry " What features would you like for a command line work item tracking tool? " I use a custom tool i've built now to help with tracking progress against work items defined in project server. Since I can delegate tasks easily from VSTS, I like to use that, but...

Scenario: Another user has locked a file for checkout, but is no longer available to check the file back in and now you need that file.   Unlocking the file   First you will need to get a list of the workspaces for that user. This can be done with administrative rights from the command line as...

Some information is out on the web about a bug that exists when creating a project that results in an error message similar to "The identity [Project Name]\Project Administrators is not a recognized identity" (to resolve that issue see James Manning's blog entry: http://blogs.msdn.com/jmanning/archive...