Process Guidance in VSTS
Recently, I gave a talk on agile development and VSTS. I explored the process guidance integration found in VSTS within the context of Agile development, specifically Scrum. This feature alone makes it worth adopting team system. I installed the Conchango scrum plug-in to VSTS for this demo.
If I were to list down what makes this feature so compelling, it would look like this
- ability to 'bake-in' artifacts being used by your company into visual studio tops it.
- ability to connect work items (ex. sprint backlog item) and check-in policies to version control is a close second.
This way, there is transparency into the whole development process. if what you're checking in is not a work item, this is, in Lean Development terms, a "waste". Managers would have 'real-time' view to what is done and what is not done by looking at the work item list and seeing how much work has been committed against it.
I've barely scratched the surface in this aspect alone and already, I'm seeing a lot of value.
The only 'snafu' in the whole demo was that the burndown charts were 'broken'. Well, it is partly my fault. I installed the beta 3 version of the plug-in to the RTM version of Team Foundation Server when the docs specifically stated it is tested against the RC version of TFS. Oh well.
It was also very encouraging to hear from participants who were already practicing some form of agile development.
My next project is to come up with a proof of concept on a customized process guidance for my client. More on this as it happens.