Changes made to team projects and default process templates during upgrade of Team Foundation Server

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When you upgrade your server to Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS), several changes are made for all team projects defined on the server. A few features have been deprecated.

This topic describes changed and deprecated features. To learn more about new features added since TFS 2012 to support planning and tracking, see What’s New in Planning and Tracking.

Changes introduced with the upgrade to TFS 2013

  • Access level: The access level feature sets for Standard and Full Access have changed. See Change access levels for details.

  • TWA navigation and links: The navigation within TWA has changed to support the addition of portfolio backlogs and persistent sprint backlogs.

  • Team administrator permissions: Many features that were previously changeable by anyone on the team now require them to have permissions assigned to team administrators. These include adding team members, adding team favorites, customizing the Kanban board, and adding members and events in a team room. To add a team administrator, go here.

  • Process template names: The names of the default TFS process templates have changed. They are now associated with the version of TFS that they are released with. The new names correspond to:

    • Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2013

    • MSF for Agile Software Development 2013

    • MSF for CMMI Process Improvement 2013

  • witadmin: Using the witadmin command for process configuration has changed. The following witadmin commands have been deprecated along with their corresponding configuration files (AgileConfiguration and CommonConfiguration):

    • exportagileprocessconfig

    • exportcommonprocessconfig

    • importagileprocessconfig

    • importcommonprocessconfig

    Now, one process configuration file (ProcessConfiguration) is managed with witadmin exportprocessconfig and importprocessconfig commands. See Import and export process configuration

Changes made to the default process templates

The following summary describes the changes made to the default process templates that are provided with TFS from their previous versions:

Changes introduced with TFS 2013.4

The following changes were made to the work item type (WIT) definitions of the default process templates that TFS provides:

  • Scrum: Removed the Backlog Priority field from the bug and product backlog item definitions.

  • Agile: Added the Story Points field to the bug definition. Removed the Stack Rank field from the user story definition.

  • CMMI process template: Added the Size field to the bug definition. Removed the Stack Rank field from the requirement definition.

Changes introduced with TFS 2013.3

The following changes were made to all the default process templates that TFS provides:

  • Added the Test Plan and Test Suite work item types (WITs)

  • Added the Test Plan Category and Test Suite Category

  • Added the Test Plan and Test Suite WITs to the Hidden Types Category

Changes introduced with TFS 2013.2

The following changes were made to all the default process templates that TFS provides:

  • Added the Shared Parameter work item type (WIT).

  • Added the Shared Parameter Category.

  • Added the Shared Parameter WIT to the Hidden Types Category.

  • Updated the minor version numbers for each process template:

    • Scrum: <version type="6B724908-EF14-45CF-84F8-768B5384DA45" major="3" minor="9" />.

    • Agile: <version type="ADCC42AB-9882-485E-A3ED-7678F01F66BC" major="7" minor="19" />.

    • CMMI: <version type="27450541-8E31-4150-9947-DC59F998FC01" major="7" minor="9" />.

Changes introduced with TFS 2013

The following changes were made to all the default process templates that TFS provides:

  • Added the Feature work item type (WIT).

  • Added the Feature Category.

  • Replaced AgileConfiguration and CommonConfiguration with a single file, ProcessConfiguration.

    ProcessConfiguration supports these additional features: portfolio backlogs, color assignment to WITs, tags added to the default columns on all backlog pages.

  • Removed the build templates from the build plug-in. You now access build templates through the user interface Use the Default Template for your build process.

  • Updated the following Reporting Services reports: Backlog Overview (Scrum), Stories Overview and Stories Progress (Agile), and Requirements Overview and Requirements Progress (CMMI). These updates reflect changes required with the introduction of the Feature portfolio backlog work item type as described in this blog post: Update your Overview and Progress reports to support the Portfolio backlogs.

    To update your team project with the latest reports, see Upload reports to a team project.

  • Updated the major and minor version numbers for each process template to 9 (for Scrum) and 19 (for Agile and CMMI).

    • Scrum: <version type="6B724908-EF14-45CF-84F8-768B5384DA45" major="3" minor="7" />.

    • Agile: <version type="ADCC42AB-9882-485E-A3ED-7678F01F66BC" major="7" minor="17" />.

    • CMMI: <version type="27450541-8E31-4150-9947-DC59F998FC01" major="7" minor="7" />.

To access the new WITs and other new tools, see Configure Features wizard.

Changes introduced with TFS 2012.1 and 2012.2

Each of the default process templates that TFS provides has been updated to support additional regressive transitions. These transitions, shown in red in the following illustration, support moving items back to the backlog when they were incorrectly set to done or resolved. Now when you inadvertently drag a work item on the Kanban board or the task board to a resolved or closed state, you can drag it back to an earlier workflow state. The following work item types now support any-to-any workflow transitions:

  • Visual Studio Scrum 2.1: Bug, Product Backlog Item, Task

  • MSF Agile 6.1: Bug, Task, User Story

  • MSF Scrum 6.1: Bug, Task, Requirement

Typical forward transitions

Scrum workflow states - forward states and reasons

Atypical regressive transitions

Scrum workflow states - atypical backward flow

To apply the changes to your existing team projects, you need to replace the WORKFLOW sections defined for each of the updated work item types with the new definitions. You can do this by modifying the work item type definition. See Upgrade your 2012 team project from RTM to Update 2.

To obtain the latest versions of the default process templates, you must upgrade your application tier server with Quarterly Update 1. You can obtain the upgrade from the Microsoft download site: Quarterly Update for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012.

To learn more about the update, see the Microsoft blog post: Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 2012 Update 1 now available.