The SDL team originally shipped a TFS template for doing the Secure Development Lifecycle activities (SDL) on top of TFS. You gave great feedback that you wanted to see this integrated into the existing TFS 2008 Agile template, so that you could use these activities as part of overall development process.

The SDL team published their template and it’s available here:

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=c4b44860-cfba-494a-ba43-13c4aecf86af&displaylang=en

The next question I hear is of course, will there be a template for TFS 2010. For that I’d say stay tuned… :)

This morning TFS released the GDR patch for TFS 2005 users who want to connect to a TFS 2010 server.

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=22215e4c-af6f-4e2f-96df-20e94d762689

You can find more info about the patch here:

https://blogs.msdn.com/team_foundation/pages/compatibility-update-for-team-foundation-server-2010-rc.aspx

The drive for developing this patch was entirely your user feedback. After long debate, we originally decided to ship only a patch to get a great experience connecting 2008 clients to the TFS 2010 server. However, you guys told us loud and clear you needed 2005 as well. :) Thanks for the feedback. Here is the link to that 2008 compat patch as well, for convenience. :)

https://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=cf13ea45-d17b-4edc-8e6c-6c5b208ec54d

Thanks!

Steph

Some of our MVPs in France really are passionate about scrum. They wanted to use a digital surface for their team’s task planning. They are using TFS as the back end.

So, they decided to build a team task board and team planning tools on top of Microsoft Surface, with TFS as the back end. https://labs.access-it.net/en-US/Projects/TFS/TeamTable

They have a couple nice videos up on the site. I chatted with the team while they were here for the MVP summit, very passionate developers. :) They don’t have any plans to productize this right now. It was cool to see as an example of the kinds of tools teams are building on TFS.

Thanks,

Steph

Many of you have talked with us about the new Enterprise SharePoint (sometimes called “MOSS”) dashboards. I wanted to get a note out to you about the setup. I want to be completely honest with you. It’s hard, and it’s going to take some work and some time. Do not expect to get this up in an hour, or even a couple hours. The TFS configuration is going to be relatively straightforward, but SP will take some time.  I’ve done the setup myself end to end, so have a ton of people in the product team, right up to the Product Unit Manager Lori Lamkin.

We really wanted to make the experience as straightforward and easy as we possibly could. For this release, we’ve put a ton of work into the docs. You’ll find step by step instructions from us here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee462863%28VS.100%29.aspx

We’re actively monitoring every single issue in the forums and our mail DLs, and we’ve also got a sticky forum post that catalogs every question we’ve received, and the answers.https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsprerelease/thread/8d7d1e45-5644-49d5-88ec-b5ca4f217a70

For the long term, we’ve been talking with the SharePoint team about how we can together improve this for you (and also really make the integration awesome). It’s terribly painful to have to doc an experience like this. Certain types of enterprise configuration will always be complex, sure, but I think it’s the job of product teams to make the experience as simple and easy to use as possible for you. We would all love to hear your feedback, please don’t hesitate to contact us via the forums or directly in mail if we can help.

The plus side is that once you get them set up, the dashboards are pretty cool. These are a few screenshots from this morning off the demo server that Aaron Bjork keeps running for all the demos he gets asked to do. :)

Agile Guidance

The first thing you’ll notice is that when you connect to guidance, it’s up on MSDN. Those of you who are loyal TFS fans will remember that in 2008 the guidance was hosted on SharePoint. Moving it up to MSDN cut 40% off project create times in TFS by elimiinating a huge file copy. It also allows us to publish updates off-cycle pretty easily using the MSDN system. Finally, we’re now in a tight partnership with our own doc team (all this guidance used to be written through the product teams and P&P without the doc team’s involvement). I think this partnership has really resulted in some great readability, solid content and alot better flow from WHY you’re doing something into exactly HOW to do it in TFS… would love your thoughts. [ TFS 2010 MSF for Agile Guidance]

The next thing you’ll notice is the agile content is, well, completely agile. We really want to follow and learn from the agile movement, and do our best to create fantastic tools around the right experience. We got a ton of feedback on 2008 that you wanted a template and guidance that was “truly agile” – pulling the core concepts from agile development, and showing teams how to implement with TFS.

You’ll notice an introduction by Jeff Sutherland, one of the fathers of Scrum. Mitch Lacey, one of the top TFS scrum trainers, was also a huge contributor. And finally, Ken Schwaber helped us with great review. A good part of the TFS team had training with Mike Cohn during the product cycle, and we learned a ton. I personally think alot of Jeff, Mitch, Ken and Mike – they all bring a pragmatic, effective approach to Scrum, and I think it works for teams. One thing that’s really important to me personally is that we in TFS are bringing the very best to our customers, tools and practices that we’ve tried, and we believe in. I actually still think TFS has a huge ceiling here in terms of what we can do better, but I’m excited about the start and glad to hear feedback.

In terms of the rest of the content – you’ll notice the project management section is entirely about Scrum and TFS 2010. In Beta 1 this content was more generically agile, but our customer feedback was that you really wanted the specifics on how to practice Scrum with TFS.

You’ll also find a whole section on how to implement different agile engineering practices in TFS 2010 - heavily informed by XP and others:
 

CMMI Guidance

I’m also really happy with the broad updates to the CMMI Guidance. David Anderson, who wrote the original TFS CMMI guidance, helped us with a great update. Both the template and guidance are updated from CMMI 1.1 to the current CMMI 1.2 version. Link to TFS 2010 MSF for CMMI

There are also extensive changes throughout the content to better explain CMMI concepts and link them directly to how to practice CMMI in TFS.

We particularly wanted to include a great description of the process married with a great overview of how to do it in TFS – here are a few examples in gathering product requirements and handling change management in TFS 2010. (All of the pictures in this post are hyperlinks to the actual guidance for you to check out.)

Hope that is useful.

Thanks!

Stephanie

I was asked this morning for the deck from this year’s TechEd EMEA. I thought I’d post it here online in case you find the slides useful.

Here is the link to the TechEd EMEA 2009 slides: How Microsoft Does Development.

Thanks!

Steph

As a customer of TFS, what you’ll notice in a few months is that you’ll be able to distinguish process templates which we (TFS) have certified. They’ll all carry this logo:

And we’re going to create a special section for them on the page where all the partner TFS Process Templates are showcased:

The certification itself is awarded by the TFS product team. Valentina Keremidarska is the engineering head of the program today. She’s also the dev lead over the entire TFS Process area, including all our shipping templates.

Overall the certification is designed to ensure that the template:

• Does “no harm” to your system and other deployments
• Implements appropriate features
• Planned and tested for high-quality server deployment
• Appropriate training and customer support

If you’re really interested in the details, specifically we check for:

• App Isolation
• Compliance (privacy policy, geopolitical compliance, …)
• Security
• Appropriate Licensing
• Appropriate content (WITs, Queries and Reports)
• Compatibility with TFS server versions (compat check on install so you can’t accidentally install a template on the wrong server version)
• Safe error-free install and uninstall
• Full support for all TFS supported platforms and configurations
• Meets appropriate performance benchmarks, especially reports
• Reliability (preservation of all user data and all standard checks)

On the customer support side, companies that certify also provide:

• Reference customers and case studies
• Appropriate training
• Support

If you’re a partner or interested in becoming a partner and interested in the certification, contact Terry Clancy (terrycl@microsoft.com) or Catherine Crim (ccrim@microsoft.com), they can connect you with more information. Certification is open to all VSIP partners.The full overview of the certification program and requirements is posted at www.mstoolspartners.com – in future you can always get the most recent version there.  If you are a VSIP member and do not have access to that site please email v-liwhit@microsoft.com to arrange access.

What I like about the program is I think you’ll be able to have a higher confidence in the tested quality of TFS partner templates, and hopefully that’ll give you a better selection. As always I love to hear feedback and suggestions for how we can improve.

Thanks,

Stephanie ]]> https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/stephaniesaad/new-overview-for-all-tfs-migration-integration-tools Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:15:48 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/stephaniesaad/2009/07/14/new-overview-for-all-tfs-migration-integration-tools/ 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

Normally 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

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:

https://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