Drilling into Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Elements

Visual Studio Team Foundation Server enables the framework for the rest of VSTS. Elements include work item tracking, a project portal, metrics warehouse, source code control, build automation, MSFT process guidance and integration services. The processes include MSF for Agile Software Development (for lighter, more iterative strategies) and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement (for more structured, rigorous approaches). These processes are customizable with fields, forms, states and rules using the Process Template Manager wizard and the CMMI template is a superset of the Agile template. A Project Creation Wizard helps to launch projects and a "process editor" lets users frame projects in the context of best practices.

The principal feature for Project and Change management is the Work Item. Work Items represent types of work to be managed including Tasks, Scenarios, Bugs, Risks. Work Items can be managed either in Microsoft Excel or in Microsoft Project. Within work-item tracking there is extensive linking for collaboration and reporting purposes with regards to code artifacts, bugs and overall project progression and notifications.

The WSS-based project portal provides a single place to go for combined, high-level project information along with web access to work items for team members and others needing visibility into that data. This reporting capability is based on WSS Web Parts. A SQL Server 2005 based metrics warehouse automates data collection and provides OLAP reporting with trending, aggregation and drilldown analytics to better inform managers and team members about project status (which is built on SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services).

Team Foundation Server (TFS) incorporates both source code control and build management. Source code control is closely integrated into the Visual Studio development environment from check-in through to code completion. The product enables parallel development and notifications. Scripted build automation is executed nightly. Reporting is coordinated across both source and build management and these products are integrated with the other Team System products (and across Team System roles). These source code control capabilities were developed separately from Visual Source Safe (VSS) which remains available as its own product. This new repository is backed by SQL Server 2005 and can therefore manage large source repositories. The Source code control system can also be used over a wide area network as it uses Web Service based communication with the server. In addition, Microsoft partners provide integration to other IDEs beyond Visual Studio. A new SCM feature available with TFS is 'shelving' which enables the developer to check code in that is not complete but does not have that change introduced to the build. It is essentially a private branch to store work in progress that can be later completed and merged into the build branch.