Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is the cornerstone of great software. ALM combines best practices in business and software engineering. ISVs who use ALM tools get to market quicker with higher quality software. Microsoft offers Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS), a team collaboration platform that combines a team portal, version control, work-item tracking, build management, process guidance, and business intelligence into a unified server.

A series of workshops will help you understand and implement TFS to help simplify and accelerate the software development process and improve quality for teams of all sizes. ALM Catalyst Live Workshops are a series of two-hour interactive workshops; repeated over a period of sixteen weeks giving you the flexibility to fit with your schedule.

The ALM Catalyst Live Workshops are designed to enable development teams and achieve these key goals:

• Understand the potential of Team Foundation Server
• Identify gaps in how you may be using Team Foundation Server
• Create higher-quality, applause-generating software—with less time and stress

Topics covered include:

• Keeping Projects on the Rails (Reporting). Status reports shouldn’t be time sinks for teams to create and understand. This topic will demonstrate how Team Foundation Server reports can be easily prepared, keep a project on track and serve as critical decision-making tools to deal with inevitable project changes. Finally, this section of the workshop will feature a few typical “disasters,” preventable with TFS.
• Avoiding Unpleasant Surprises (Deployment).  Software deployment should not be a dreaded task in the development process. By utilizing automated builds in Team Foundation Server, participants will better understand the health and organization of applications throughout the project, preventing the end-of-project surprise (the “bad kind”). This topic will demonstrate the benefit of automated builds and the calamities they can avert by dynamically assessing build quality.
• Quality Matters (Testing).  Quality is everyone’s responsibility. Development teams should integrate quality checks throughout every phase of the development process rather than relegating it as the final, pre-deployment task. By utilizing Visual Studio Team System to manage testing tasks, test types, test automation and test results, quality is always front-of-mind with all team members. This topic will demonstrate how to fully integrate the software development lifecycle with quality assurance.
• Making Process Stick. Strong process speeds development and increases software quality. When implemented properly process enables development teams and minimizes “workarounds” and inefficiencies. This topic will demonstrate a smoothly implemented process methodology in Team Foundation Server, customized for an organization and embraced by the development team.

For more information about the workshops including schedule, see ALM Catalyst. The sessions are provided daily over the next 16 weeks.

Microsoft partners who have earned the ISV Competency may already have a version of Team Foundation Server that you can use in your development efforts. ALM Catalyst Life Workshops will help you fully utilize this resource in ways that fit your development style. If you are not a Microsoft ISV partner or want to learn more about partner benefits, see the Microsoft Partner Program Independent Software Vendor (ISV) page.