Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server

• Quality assurance. Predicting the number and severity of bugs in the software you
are producing is difficult and as a result schedule estimates and costs are usually “best
guesses”. These estimates traditionally take into account contingency measures, the
amount of which usually depends on how confident the project manager is about the
current health of the project.
VSTS is designed to help address many of these traditional problems faced by project
managers. It does so by providing a set of integrated tools to help teams improve their
software development activities and to help project managers better support the software
development processes.
Project Management Features in Team Foundation Server
The key project management features provided by Visual Studio Team System include:
• Process management. Team Foundation Server process management includes
Microsoft Solution Framework (MSF) process guidance as well as process templates
that set up new team projects with work item types, reports, a project SharePoint
portal, and source control settings.
• Security and permissions. New projects contain default groups and permissions that
map to common development team roles.
• Centralized work item management. Work items including bugs, risks, tasks,
scenarios and quality of service (QoS) requirements are centrally recorded, managed,
and maintained in the TFS work item database. Centralizing their storage makes it
easy for all team members to view and access them.
• Microsoft Office Excel® and Microsoft Office Project integration. By using the
Office Excel and Office Project integration features, project managers can continue to
access the work item repository and schedule information by using tools they already
know.
• Metrics and reporting. TFS provides a reporting service which transforms
operational data such as work items, build results, and test results into metrics stored
within TFS data warehouse. Predefined reports allow you to query a variety of project
health and quality metrics.
• Project portals. For every team project, TFS creates an associated project portal that
uses Microsoft Windows SharePoint® Services. You use the portal to manage
project-related documentation, and to quickly view key reports and assess project’s
current status.
Benefits
The project management features of TFS provide the following benefits:
• Centralized management
• High traceability
• Integrated project planning and scheduling
• Improved process control
• Improved team communication and cohesiveness