Work item state diagram in TFS

It happened lot of times in the past years and of course it will happen again, for many of us…do you remember the correct workflow for every work item in TFS ?
Is it Done or Complete the next state? 😉

Here are url of some work items’ life cycle:

• Product Backlog state diagram
• Bug state diagram
• Task state diagram

and here are all others work items in TFS Scrum
Scrum Process Template for Visual Studio ALM

source: Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server

Better be ready next time 😉

Technorati tags: TFS,Scrum,State Diagram

Instant Team Foundation Server 2012 and Project Server 2010 Integration How-to [Instant] by Gary P. Gauvin

Eccomi qui appena letto questo libricino su TFS e Project Server: Instant Team Foundation Server 2012 and Project Server 2010 Integration How-to [Instant] by Gary P. Gauvin.

Sono poche pagine, neanche 50, ma cariche di aiuti e informazioni; un libro essenziale e pratico.
L’autore ripercorrre i passi necessari per attivare l’integrazione fra TFS-Project Server (e Sharepoint), sia in caso di nuova attivazione che di upgrade;
c’è anche una requirement-checklist sui componenti e versioni corrette, e sui componenti extra che facilitano la gestione ed ovviamente sono “caldamente consigliati” (es Active Directory, Backup).

L’esposizione è chiara e semplice, una guida passo-passo, con tanto di indicazioni precise, a menu-checkbox-campi da selezionare/cliccare, per tutta la procedura.

Ci sono anche molte note che chiariscono i piccoli errori che possono essere commessi (es: non mettete lo spazio fra …) e che, in passato, ci richiedevano di tornare sui nostri passi per risolvere piccole&grosse “noie” che si presentavano di volta in volta.

C’è anche una sezione riguardante la configurazioni di permessi e sicurezza per utenti, service account e accesso ai database, che infatti è segnalata come “Must know”. 😉
E’ presente una tabella richiesta/intervento che aiuta a capire quali sono i punti di intervento (TFS, Project Server,…) in funzione della esigenza.

Infine, è presente una sezione con script Powershell e link per approfondimenti su argomnti ed applicativi citati nel libro.

Una piccola nota a margine: mi sarei aspettato una sezione di troubleshooting, anche non esaustiva;
tutte le indicazioni presenti nel libro lavorano nella direzione di ridurre le occasioni di errore, ma forse per sarebbe stato utile un aiuto nell’analisi delle problematiche per orientare il lettore nella giusta direzione di ricerca&soluzione.

Buona lettura

Technorati tags: TFS, MS Project

Kanban for skeptics by Nick Oostvogels

Someone says: well, if you can’t play Scrum, play Kanban!
because that someone means of it as Scrum’s fallback.

But, it’s not!
Kanban is not just WIP limits, and this book gives you a deeper knoledge of Kanban’s way, the idea behind, estimates, measurement, teams, cooperation … where everyone is involved in end-to-end process.

Here are some bold points:

• bug:
  As soon as this happens, the team should have a natural reflex to drop what they started on and fix the feature immediatly. […] In Kanban bugs causes the flow to be interruped and the people to get stuck because of the WIP limits that are reached
• team members reassignent:
  Kanban simplifies this issue significantly. By letting a team work on one continuos flow, they don’t need to be reassigned over and over again

• stakeholders’s focus:
  if stakeholder can focus onn the products, and not on the resource planning,they can make better economical decisions[…]it’s now a business decision based on the needs of the customers and the organization

• silo:
  the answer[…] is to create cross silo functions who’s task lies in creating alignment and controlling the end to end process.[…] Teams get busted out ot their silo thinking by becoming part of an end to end process

last one:

It is a strange idea that by measuring flow instead of setting deadlines, work will be done efficiently. Kanban create awareness on the importanceof every phase in the process. Instead of pushing each individual phase to go faster, we optimize the whole.

source: Kanban for skeptics

source: Kanban for skeptics (article on InfoQ)

Technorati tags: Agile, Kanban, Scrum

The Scrum Primer

Living these holidays a good way: reading books! 🙂

Going again the Scrum road, because of this book The Scrum Primer (available here)
New to Scrum? short eperienced?
this book helps you understand better what Scrum is for, also strenghtness and weakness compared to your context.
It helped me clearing couple of foggy areas I always wanted to know more about,
in example: do PO is a lone person? or is it better if shared among some people? … being a PO is a job that comes with great honor but greater responsibility, “life” of product backlog, when&where priorities can changes, dev team duties, sprint’s length, sprint review (it is not just a demo), definition of done (remember potentially shippable product) … and much much much more I don’t want to reveal 😉

There are also some areas I’d read more details about: sprint review, sprint retrospective, daily duties of scrum master, cooperation among the whole scrum team …

More than just the usual blog post, article, etc … this short ebook worth a couple reads 😉

thanks to Fabio Armani for sharing this ebook 🙂

source: The Scrum Primer (by InfoQ)
source: Scrum Primer (via linkedin)

Technorati tags: Agile, Scrum

Microsoft TFS 2010-2012 and templates (Scrum, MSF Agile) … useful TFS 2010-2012 links

If you are looking for TFS templates, MSF Agile and Scrum, you’ll find lot of info of course.
Furthermore, recently TFS Service has been release, with its Scrum 2.1 and MSF Agile 6.1 templates.

Here is my short bookmarks list, hoping it saves your time:

• Team Foundation Server Service
• TFS 2012 certifications
• What’s new in the Visual Studio Scrum 2.1 Process Template?
• Implementing Scrum Using Visual Studio 2012 lok to bottom links (Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 process template (RTM) | ScrumRobot (for TFS2012 RC))
• Useful TFS Links 🙂
• How are tests handled by Scrum using TFS 2012?
• TFS 2012 Scrum 2 – Best configuration for Areas, Iterations, backlog iteration, sprint iteration
• Migrating Scrum for Team System 3.x to MS Scrum 2.0
• TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown
• TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown– Planning w/ Agile (Part II)
• TFS 2010: MSF Agile vs. Visual Studio SCRUM 1.0 Smackdown — Planning w/ Agile (Part III)
• A Scrum comparison of the MSF/Agile and Visual Studio Scrum templates (MSF/Agile 5.0 VS Scrum 1.0)

🙂

Technorati tags: Agile, Scrum, TFS