- New Overview for all TFS Migration / Integration Tools
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I assume most of our major enterprise customers are not all-Microsoft shops and/or are not running all-MS tools. Our goal is to make developers successful with the very best tools, not to lock them all to our tools. (Of course I want our tools to be the very best, :) but it’s important to meet customers where they are and give them flexibility.) Most large enterprise customers ask, “can I get some help migrating my existing tool X to TFS?” Another very common one is “I have another branch/department/… using another tool – is there a good way we can work together?
Matt Mitrik and Bill Essary yesterday helped publish a new page on MSDN summarizing all of the tools and service offerings for TFS Migration and Integration. This page is available on the Team System Home page, the TFS home page, and the Team System Downloads page. You can also find more information on Matt’s blog here: New Migration and Integration Solutions Page on MSDN.
Thanks Matt for the helpful information!
Steph
- Stephanie Saad Cuthbertson
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Technorati Tags:
PersonalNormally I like to post about Visual Studio VSTS and TFS related information. Feel free to skip this one as it’s not about the product. I thought I’d just address questions from folks who were asking about the name change on the top of the blog to “Stephanie Cuthbertson”. I got married this year, in February. :)
Quick FAQ for the top questions I’ve been asked:
- Yes, you can still use old email address – SSAAD@Microsoft.com. The alias is not changing.
- Yes, Saad is now the middle name
- I cannot pronounce “Cuthbertson” either yet. :)
A couple folks have asked how we met. A few years ago when I went over to borrow some snow camping gear from one of my best friends here in Seattle for a church trip out on the Pacific Crest Trail. This really sweet-heart guy helped me carry stuff to my car. Turned out he was also really smart and thoughtful and… well, I ended up married. :) Here’s a couple quick pictures of Cory…
After a bike trip through the Santa Cruz mountains & in Hawaii:
And the wedding:
So there you have it. :) Back to VSTS!
Steph
- TFS Web Access – How Far Does it Scale?
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This is one I’ve been meaning to post for awhile.
If you’ve ever wanted specifics on how far TFS Web Access scales, Hakan Eskici published a great whitepaper detailing scale limits on 2008. Here’s a link to that whitepaper:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/F/8/1F8FF5A6-C1EE-4702-ABFD-118B662C0CAE/Team%20System%20Web%20Access%202008%20Scalability%20Limits.pdf
Hope it’s good reading!
Steph
- Free Hosted Trials Team Foundation Server
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This cool update came across my desk last week. We are now providing free hosted trials of Team Foundation Server through partnership with TeamDevCentral. This is a good low-cost way to test-drive TFS and evaluate the feature set yourself.
The six-week TDC trial includes: multiple accounts so you can experiment with different roles and collaborate within a project. And up to 4 hours of guidance and/or support for the trial.
Here’re some more links to get you started if you want to check it out:
Hope that is useful!
- Compatibility for TFS 2010
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Several of you emailed that the link to TFS 2010 Beta 1compatibility information was incorrect. Thanks for the quick feedback.
Here’s the correct link: TFS Beta 1 Compatibility. I’ve also corrected the online post.
Thanks!
Steph
- TFS Beta 1 Information
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Dev10 Beta 1 has shipped! We are really excited to have you trying our Beta and giving us feedback.
The TFS team has pulled together some really nice content to help you get ready for TFS 2010 and also delve into Beta 1. I’ve been reading through all the posts this morning, and I wanted to aggregate the list for you as I thought it might be helpful reading.
We’re always interested in what other content would be helpful to our community and we gauge that to determine how much energy to invest in information like this – I’d love to know feedback on whether this is helpful, or if you’d like to see additional info from us.
BTW, here’s a quick and easy link to the Beta if you didn’t have it already… [ TFS Beta 1 ] and [ VSTS Beta 1 ]
Thanks!
Technorati Tags:
TFS,
VS2010,
VSTS2010Stephanie
- Great TFS Videos
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A customer asked me this morning for some demo videos to show TFS to his team. As I was pulling together these links, I thought it might be info you’d value. Here is a short list of a few sites where you can find great video demos of TFS. This includes our own revamped TFS site as well as some partner sites I really like.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb507749.aspx#tfs
http://teamsystemrocks.com/tutorials/
http://www.digeratitech.com/tfstraining.aspx
Thanks!
Steph
- Team System Website Overhaul – What do you Think?
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As I bet many of you have noticed, we’ve been systematically overhauling the VSTS website. You’ve probably noticed slow but steady changes over the past several months. Alot of you gave feedback that we needed better content here, and we agree. Thanks for the great feedback.
You can see the updated site here: Team System site. Sharon Elkins is driving the site improvements, with lots of feedback from all of us. Here’s a quick summary of some more great stuff she has on the docket:
- Social Media – new blogs page that surfaces posts by product cycle scenarios
- Video Portfolio – new gallery of videos that offer a more comprehensive learning channel
- Process Templates and Tools revised
- Partner Products & Services revised
- Rangers – build out new page that acts as a portal to all Ranger activities
- Getting Started section created
I know she (and all of us) would love to hear what else you’d like to see from the product teams. She’s put up a handy link here: http://blogs.msdn.com/selkins/archive/2009/02/04/team-system-web-site-feedback.aspx. If you have time, take it for a spin and tell us what you like – and we can do better. :)
Thanks!
Steph
- TFS Redmond Product Team to be at the Down Town Seattle User Group April 8th
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If you’re living in the greater Seattle area and are curious about any of the new TFS features planned for 2010, come find out! Chuck Sterling just reminded me that John, Ben and Matt will be doing an informal session of info and demos in downtown Seattle this Wednesday.
Where:
Seattle Down Town User Group @ Safeco Center
1191 Second Ave (2nd & Seneca)
1st Floor, Alki Room
Seattle, WA 98101
When:
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
5:30 – 6:00 PM – Mixer, group kickoff and speaker introduction
6:00 – 7:30 PM – Presentation
7:30 – 8:00 PM – Spillover time and raffle
Add to Outlook
Title
New Features in Visual Studio Team System 2010 Foundation Server (TFS)
Abstract:
One of the nice things about being so close to Redmond is easy access to the development team. In this case we have having at least three of the Team Foundation Server development team John Nierenberg, Ben Amodio and Matthew Moloney come and show off the next version of Team Foundation in this informal all demo session with the local product team members.
- Great Article from Jeff Levinson on why to Upgrade from 2005 to 2008
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One of the questions I often get from customers is, what are the primary benefits of the upgrade from 2005 –> 2008. I know we have published alot on this from the product team, but it is always good to get an outside perspective.
This article from Jeff Levinson recently came across my desk – I thought it was a great outside perspective on the benefits. Here is the link: http://blog.nwcadence.com/2009/01/29/compelling-tfs-features-to-upgrade-from-2005-to-2008/
Happy reading!
Steph
- New Team System Community Page(s) on MSDN
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I’m happy to report that Team System posted a new community page to our MSDN site today! We hear from our community that it’s been difficult to quickly find great community content. We have a fantastic and very active community. I hope this makes it easier.
Team System Community on MSDN
I’d be curious to hear what you think. Is this better? What else do you want to see? You can also give feedback directly to Sharon Elkins, who owns this page.
- How MSIT Does Development
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MSIT is our internal IT department at Microsoft. I’ve had alot of interest generated from all the talks about their development process, and several people have asked me if we have any whitepapers with further details.
I checked in with MSIT, and they have written quite a bit of contenton their experience with Visual Studio Team System. I liked this whitepaper here, titled “Using Visual Studio 2008 to Improve Software Development: Deploying VSTS 2008 Team Foundation Server at Microsoft.
Barbara Yamauchi who is the primary contact for all our dealings with MSIT passed along a ton of other resources as well. I’ve included them here in case they’re useful for you.
Thanks!
Steph
Resources from MSIT
Overview
Visual Studio Team System 2008 Visual Studio Team System 2005 Visual Studio 2005 | |
- How We Use TFS at Microsoft – Additional Decks from PDC and TechEd EMEA
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I’m just catching up on a few things from the Heathrow Airport. It seems there was alot of demand for decks on this subject. I promised audiences to post copies of the decks for additional events this fall. Please hop right on your delete key and delete this if you don’t need yet another deck on this subject. =)
For those of you who specifically requested the decks, I’ve posted information below. Because these audiences have different interests, the talks covered slightly different material. I’ve posted outlines for each so you can find the right deck to fit your needs.
TechEd EMEA: “Team Foundation Server: Lessons Learned Through Dogfooding”
Link to deck: [ Team Foundation Server: Lessons Learned Through Dogfooding ]
Goal of talk: specific and detailed data on best practices used by the major internal dogfooding teams: Developer Division, Windows, Office, MSIT
Agenda Slide:
Cool Facts about Microsoft Development
Getting started on a release
Planning
Gathering Requirements
Development
Driving Quality
Branching in Large Teams
Builds
Tracking and Reporting
Trustworthy Transparency
Top Tracking Metrics - MSIT
Top Tracking Metrics - Developer Division
Migration and Interoperability
PDC: “Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server: How We Use It at Microsoft”
Link to deck: [ Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Team Foundation Server: How We Use It at Microsoft ]
Link to video: [ Video recording in WMV ] [ Link to PDC session site for other formats ]
Goal of talk: overview of internal usage best practices, focused on how internal usage has influenced the VS 2010 feature set (heavily demo focused)
Agenda Slide: Problems to Solve:
Trustworthy Transparency
Planning and Tracking
Driving Quality during Development
Branching in Monster Teams
Legacy Interop
Errata (or “Can You Find the Math Error in This Deck?”)
I have found two errors since these were given. I sincerely apologize! I wanted to be transparent here as I know the TFS community is a very active and engaged one. I have already corrected all the decks on the download links.
- Developer Division # of Source Files is 17,503,713, not 373,328, 986. If you look closely at the slides, you’ll notice that I reported there are more source files in DevDiv than the total for the company. =) Noone actually caught this error, but I found it myself while preparing for another version of the talk at TechEd EMEA. I’m not sure how this one worked its way in. Unfortunately, we added a funny slide that says, the # of source files would wrap the earth 2.6 times! They would certainly wrap Developer Division 2.6 times, but we don’t have that many! I have confirmed all the other data on the slides, including the 7 Terabytes of data for the DevDiv server.
- The reason TFS invested in a second HP Quality Center Connector for TFS is because we had already begun development on the internal version when the Juvender 3rd-party version was released. At PDC I was asked why there are planned to be two versions of this connector. My original answer – due to customer demand for an MS version – was corrected by the team. As I said at PDC, the newly announced MS version is currently in pre-release. Contact JimLamb@Microsoft.com if you would like to submit your name for inclusion in the pre-release.
Best wishes,
Steph
- Agile Development with Visual Studio - Slides
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If you’re curious to get an overview of Agile Development in Visual Studio, here are some slides that may help. I gave a talk this afternoon at TechEd EMEA that covered the full set of Agile features in VS scaling from Visual Studio Express all the way up to Visual Studio Team System.
Here is a quick overview of the agile feature set in 2008 and in 2010 from the talk for your reference:
Visual Studio 2008:
C# / VB Refactoring
Database Refactoring
C# / VB Unit Testing
Database Unit Testing
Annotation
Static Analysis
Code Metrics
Checkin Policy
Test/Build Integration
Continuous Integration Build
Build Notifications
Agile Planning
Agile Reporting
Agile Guidance
Team Site
Many Partner Templates:
Scrum Templates (Conchango, others)
FDD Template (Cognizant)
XP Template
Comprehensive library: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/aa718795.aspx
Other Partner Integrations:
VersionOne
Rally
GreenPepper
Others
Visual Studio 2010 (Features in the Current CTP):
EVERYTHING From 2008 +
Test Driven Development
Test Impact Analysis
Gated Checkins
Buddy Builds
Distributed Builds
NEW Agile Template WITH:
Parent-Child Hierarchy
Excel Planning Workbooks
Even More Reports
New Sample Docs and Templates
New SharePoint 3.0 Team Site:
Includes Team Wiki and all other SharePoint 3.0 features
**Planned for Beta: Agile Dashboards w/MOSS-based Excel Services Reporting
For people from the session who wanted the deck, I’ve posted it here for reference: [ link to ppt ].
All of the 2008 demos were done using a simple tictactoe solution. If people are interested in this source, I’ll clean it up and post it back to this site.
All of the 2010 demos were done from the 2010 CTP: [ link to ctp download site ].
Thanks!
Steph
- How Microsoft Does Development (with VSTS)
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This morning I am in Las Vegas giving one of the keynotes for VSLive! The conference organizers thought it would be really cool to talk about how Microsoft does development with VSTS.
I get a ton of questions about this and I also know I like to pick up decks and demos from some talks, so I posted both the deck and the demos from this morning.
Diana Kumar, who actually manages a big chunk of our internal deployments, did all the live demos. Several were off our production servers - so, since we can't give you the source :) she built you guys some really cool Camtasia recordings with voice overs so you can follow along.
Deck: How Microsoft Does Development with VSTS
Demo 1: Shutting down the VS 2008 Release + New 2010 Reports
Demo 2: Agile Planning/Tracking and Excel Reporting in VSTS 2010
The talk covers both development in the product teams and also our own IT department. We covered a bunch of topics:
- Requirements Traceability in MSIT
- Top Metrics that MSIT tracks
- Trustworthy Transparency – allowing teams to innovate w/o losing central control
- Branching Strategies
- Driving Quality: Builds
- Driving Quality/Predictability: Development Process
Here’s a couple of thumbnails of the real reports from shutting down VS 2008 that Diana showed in her demos:
Hope the deck and demos are useful.
Thanks!
Steph
