Visual Studio Team System - Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) Forum

Required fields,workflows and form layout for Change Request work items in VSTS 2010 beta1

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 07:52:55 Z

Hi Can anyone give me a sample of creating a new Change Request work item type in MSF Agile v5.0 template? Which fields and work flows are required for a CR? I am asking because there are no CRs existing in our process template and I would like to customize it.

MSF vs. ALM

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 21:37:04 Z

I just want to know what the future of the MSF, the relationship with ALM and if ALM replaced MSF and why Microsoft learning stop and retire all Microsoft official courses related to MSF despite of there is no new courses.
Course: 1846 Microsoft Solutions Framework Essentials
Course: 2710 Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution

Thanks

We are volunteers, if the reply help you mark it as your answer. thanks!!
My Blog

Please help us improve the MSF guidance!

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:44:01 Z

Do you use one of the MSF process templates in Visual Studio Team System? (either MSF Agile or MSF CMMI).

We'd be very keen for you to take our survey on your experience of using the MSF guidance help pages. (This is the HTML content that discusses roles, work items, work streams, iterations and so on.)

We are looking to revise this guidance to make it better, and could use your input to tell us what's important to you.

Please take the survey here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/processblog/archive/2007/09/25/so-tell-us-what-you-think-about-the-msf-guidance.aspx

Let us know what you think! What's good and what's not good? The survey is open now.

thank you - Andrew

MS Agile Process Guidance

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:20:01 Z

I have recenty started at a new company, that uses MSF Agile for SCRUM

On starting I have been told that beacuse that they use SCRUM there is no need for documentation.

How do I correct them?

scrum for team system reports and msf for cmmi

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:48:09 Z

Hi,
My project is using VSTS 2008 and MSF for CMMI currently. I want to use scrum for team system reports such as burn down, trend charts etc together with CMMI template Is this possible? Can we use another template's reports without changing our current template? How?
Cheers,

Associating Scenarios to Tasks in MSF for Agile

Wed, 16 Sep 2009 02:24:01 Z

Hi Guys,

I have the following questions:
Which Task field do you use to relate it to the Scenario it came from during the disaggregation exercise at the beginning of the iteration?
Why the Scenario WI does not contain a field to capture the user acceptance test related to it?
Which Scenario/Task field can I use to set the priority? Rank??

Thanks a lot in advance

Jose D. Parra

Vision Document

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:22:23 Z

While we await new agile templates, can anyone post an actual vision document for an MSF Agle Project?

case stdudy required for MSF Templates

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 08:59:57 Z

Respected fellows
hope u all are fine
i am new to MSF so i am facing problems filling MSF templates, so if there are any resources , materials or links related to case study of msf so please send to me.
i will remain thankfull and gratefull
wish u best of luck

Difference between Role, Advocacy group, and constituency?

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 08:55:08 Z

I need a specific definition according to MSF for the following:

1. Role
2. Advocacy Group
3. Constituency

Need help for conceptual design and Functional Design in Microsoft solution framework?

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 09:08:39 Z

Hello Dear Friend.

Hope you all friends are fine, and enjoying the best of your lives.
i am facing a problem that i am in a training center where the owner made me a team lead to a group of 5 people, A big problem is that i am new to MSF and also new to live development, very recently i did my bacheor degree. we have the MSF version 3.0 templates but they are so tought that after a lot of study i get to some points of the topics but still i am very nervous all about the Documentation process.
with lot of struggle i and my team did the envisioning process,
would any one please can provide us case study for MSF.
also
i need a brief elaboration of the Conceptual design and Functional Design.
In each documentaion there are topics which we have already done, for example objective, system requirement and many more
i will remain very thankful
Best of luck

MSF for CMMI and Check-Ins

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 02:45:41 Z

I'm currently investigating MSF for CMMI and I'm unclear as to what work item types it is "acceptable" for a developer to check changes in against. Should there always be a Task a work item or can a developer check changes in directly against Requirements, Change Requests, Bugs, etc.? Are there any work item types that a developer should not check changes in against?

Loading all the work items for a project

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:20:36 Z

Can we load a field with all the work items for that particular project when we open a new work item?

Thanks
Praveen

Rational Integration

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 20:21:52 Z

We are just beginning a fairly large project and are planning to use VS.Net 2005; however, several people on the project team have had experience with Rational Rose and Rational RequisitePro, we are used to that environment, and we have naturally had no experience with the VSTeam capabilities. We are in a quandary as to whether to use all the features of Team System and/or Rational products which we have experience and confidence in.

Here's a few questions - I hope someone out there is in a similar dilemna and is willing to share thoughts and ideas on this.

Microsoft seems to have no requirements management tool similar to Rational RequisitePro - what is the Microsoft strategy in this area? Is there any plan to provide any level of integration with RequisitePro or other Requirements Management Tools?

Rational has said they're not going to support Visual Studio.Net 2005 with the Rational Rose XDE version, so that leaves open the question...Do we use a stand-alone version of Rose for modeling in order to integrate with RequisitePro without any integration with VS.Net or use the VSTeam system capabilities for modeling without any integration with a requirements management tool?

The fundamental questions I'm trying to understand is how do the Rational tools fit with the Microsoft tools strategy... So far it doesn't look like they fit together very well at all...maybe that's intentional that both companies are competitive with each other in this area?

Any thoughts and suggestions on this would be appreciated...

Thanks,

Chuck Cobb

Is there any MSFv4.0 documentation templates like MSFv3.0?

Fri, 20 Apr 2007 03:35:52 Z

Not sure what happened to the post from Anonymous on the 16 of April, but here goes the answer anyway: currently we don't have a similar set of templates. We are working on getting a fully fledged set of projects to be shipped as examples in an upcoming version.

Regards,

Clementino Mendonca - MSF Champion

MSF Templates for V4

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 20:54:54 Z

A few months ago, I had copies of the document templates for Agile development. I am speaking of the document templates entitled "Vision Statement", "Business Requirements", "Conceptual Design", "Functional Specification", "Development Plan", etc. These document templates were Microsoft Word .doc's with the formating (headers, page numbers, section titles, etc) in BLACK and the instructions and examples in Blue. (e.g.

ntroduction to the Template

Description: The Development Plan describes the solution development process used for the project. This plan compliments the functional specifications t

The versions I had were a copyright of 2005. Someone at my shop overlaid these with the documents apparently for MSF 3 copyright of 2002. I've attached the notice below.

The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication.

Where can I get the latest and greatest? Are the VSTS2008 compatible templates available? I would expect a copyright date later than 2005.

I've asked this question before and have been directed to the Guidance Screens that are loaded on the SharePoint for a TFS project. The documents I am looking for are not the Guidance Screens from the SharePoint.

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Now Available!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:22:50 Z

We are very happy to announce immediate availability on the Microsoft Download Center of Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. You can find the download here.

Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 Now Available!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 21:23:56 Z

We are very happy to announce immediate availability on the Microsoft Download Center of Service Pack 1 for Visual Studio 2008 and the .NET Framework 3.5. You can find the download here.

Sample docs - what would you like to see? (Agile)

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 02:19:44 Z

The VSTS process team is currently thinking about what Sample docs to include in a future version of an Agile template.

Currently we are considering this list. We'd be very interested to hear any comments on things you'd like to see - either within a doc, or other docs we should add. Or tell us what isn't so useful in an Agile setting:

Vision document and solution concept
Project start-up checklist
Personas defined
Design artefacts capturing design decisions and directions chosen
Data model & Use cases
Risk plans connected with risk work items
Threat models
Logistics / roll-out plans (Operations)
Test plans
Triage meeting notes - decisions and justifications
Iteration retrospective – meeting notes and documented learnings/changes to team working
Stakeholder matrix

One of our goals is "broad applicability", which means the docs above extend beyond what you'd expect from "pure agile". We want to support customers who are transitioning to agile or adopting agile practices into an existing framework.

Please - let us know what you think about the above sample docs. What would you like to see? What should we include, or avoid? What's useful?

Andrew

IT Architecture & Planning (ITAP) Advisor

Sat, 16 May 2009 14:51:25 Z

Anyone knows if the MSF certification would give someone an edge landing a job with Microsoft as a IT Architecture & Planning (ITAP) Advisor. Obviously, there are many other requirements for such a job, but would this help? Do you know of other certifications that might help?

MSF Agile Adpotion

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:32:40 Z

Dear All,
I want to know a rough number about MSF Agile Adoption. I noticed that the MSF Forum is not active, this makes me worry about how wide it is adpopted compared to Scrum and other Agile Methodologies.

tareq Muhammad

Why is the estimate field missing from the warehouse?

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:59:42 Z

In the CMMI template we're missing this field. I'm stumped as to why? It's got remaining work and completed work but not estimated work.

Is my only option to add my own estimate field?

Looking for a Legend or guide to CMMI Diagrams

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:59:31 Z

The various workstreams have a diagram associated with the process.

Although some things are fairly apparent, I hate to assume anything when making such bedrock processes.

Is there a guide to reading the diagrams? Is there an name for the diagram method?

Some things specifially, the diagrams show a given process as a large box with empty circles on the inputs/outputs of the process as well as within the process.
Some dots are black though and the meaning is unclear. Is this displayling logic, or some other signal?
Some interface dots are not within squares, but either triangles or semi-circles, do they have meaning?

I'll take any answers, but would prefer a document spelling out everything.

TIA,

Ray

Implement a Development Task, one task?

Sat, 04 Apr 2009 01:29:26 Z

This workstream is written for one task, singular but I think anyone can easily realize that many items such as design reviews can be done on multiple tasks at one time. The issue we're having is with design. It seems arbitrary to associate designing software with a single task. For instance, I may initially realize I have to build a component out of analysis as a solution to a requirement. As I get further into analysis I realize that there are a few problems to solve so I break down the task accordingly. These "solutions" will likely become a set of related classes spanning multiple tasks. Design (at least in OO) is about object responsibility and interaction. My point here is that I may have 3 tasks that needed "thinking about design" all at the same time. I'm writing about detailed design, not architecture. Unfortunatly the design activity is written in such a way that some of our developers insist design must take place on a per task basis.

My question is, is the guidance specifically trying to associate design as a per task activity and if so, for what reason? Or should it be interpretted with some flexability. Obviously we'll do what's best for us, I'm just looking to understand the original intent of the guidance.

Thanks!

Please clarify Identify Inconsistencies for REQM 1.5

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 23:12:39 Z

We're trying to understand this activity and how corrective actions, etc... could be taken. Is this activity incomplete? Should it supply some kind of checklist to look over beyond just the two reports and I'd expect it to say we create tasks for corrective actions. We may have a hard time convincing the appraiser on this one.

Confusion about Create Solution Architecture, planning and build tracks, please clarify

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 22:05:09 Z

We see the planning tracks as stuff you do to prepare for future iterations and the build track as stuff you generally do in the iteration, even if it's just pre-launch.

Our confusion lies in where Create Solution Architecture is executed. We figure that you need requirements for architecture (of course...) but if your incrementally updating the architecture each iteration you need to know which requirements will be worked on.

Thus we came up with the idea that Create Solution Architecture might come between "Select Iteration Backlog" and the "Iteration Analysis" activities in Plan an Iteration. This however seems odd that build track activities would come before planning track activities.

Another thought is that the architecture could be based on all approved requirements regardless of whether they've been assigned to an iteration.

Please help me clarify this. If you can give an example of the activities that neighbor that workstream I'd really appreciate it.

How do I allow someone to create a team query but not modify the work items?

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:16:06 Z

It seems like giving permission to someone to create team queries also grants them access to publish new work item types, fields, etc...

Does anyone know how to seperate these permission and offer one without the other?

Any Good Books on the Subject?

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 19:15:06 Z

I have just recently started evaluating TFS and its possible impact on our company's SDLC processes. I have become familiar with the process editor and how to make changes to templates in order to make existing templates more closely match our procedures. However, I was wondering if there were any good books specific to creating/modifying process templates for TFS. Anyone have any recommendations?

Thanks,

Scott

Velocity Series

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:28:34 Z

Hello,
In MSF for Agile Process Guidance, I noticed that the Y-Axis in the report is (Number of Scenarios X ROM), however when I create a new project in Microsoft Team System and open the project portal --> Process Guidance I noticed that they Y-Axis is the (Number of Bugs). This is a bug?

tareq Muhammad

What is the "Requires Test" for? Unit or other?

Fri, 30 Jan 2009 18:45:42 Z

We're trying to understand the utility of this fields. Is it for unit tests? If so it doesn't match up well with non-development testing. Is it to inform testers that a task is testable in rare situations? That sort of makes no sense either because in all situations you could report a bug to test against if not a requirement. We're thinking of removing this field, but I'd appreciate any insight before we do.

Project Management templates are empty

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 09:13:17 Z

Hi all.

I have downloaded the last MSF for Agile Software Development Process Guidance. But unfortunately I have an empty templates in Project Management folder: Development Project Plan.mpp, Project Checklist.xls, Test Development Plan.mpp. All these files are an empty documents.

Is this correct and process guidance include only empty files or may be I have some problems wiht install.

Thanks.

Add Inactive as a State for MSF Agile Development process template?

Mon, 05 Jan 2009 15:19:30 Z

Where is the right place to post suggested improvements to the MSF for Agile Software Development 4.1 process template?

I found doing "Daily Standup Reports" difficult with this process template out of the box. Any report will show all your tasks. I could narrow it by setting the Iteration Path, but that only narrows it a bit.

We made a change by adding "Inactive" as the initial state for a Task. Now I can create a meaningful report that shows: 1) Any "blocked tasks" (i.e., Issue == "Yes"), 2) Completed Items in the past day (@Today - 2) and 3) Active items (State == "Active"). The addition of the Inactive state makes this meaningful report possible.
That is - that reports shows blocking items, what I did yesterday, and what I plan to do today.

So in text form, here's what the workflow looks like:
Transition To Inactive: Reasons: New
Transition From Inactive to Active: Reasons: Resume, Start
Transition From Active to Inactive: Reasons: Delay
... The rest are out of the box... (Example: Transition Active to Closed: Reasons: Deferred, Obsolete, Cut, Complete)

This simple change made this process template far more usable.

Please let me know the right place to post this suggestion.

Thanks,
Karl

MSFWinBuild does not work and throw error: "Namespace 'some-uri' does not contain any functions."

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 00:58:27 Z

Hi,
I was using GuidanceGenerator 2.0.21 to customize agile-guidance.guidance file but having worked on all day long I truly believe that this is a futile way to update the customize process guidance. There are so many cross references and fixing those are nightmare,,,my task is to write process guidance and not fix the references!

So, I decided to use the older tool to customize process guidance, MSFWinBuild. But this tool throws exception when it's doing xsl transformation saying:

Namespace 'some-uri' does not contain any functions.

Have anyone seen this problem before? Do you know how to fix it? I have a feeling that it's something to do with xsl but I've never done xsl before. I would appreciate any help.

Thank you.

Modifying-Adapting the MSF Sample Templates

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 09:21:04 Z

Hi,

Do I have the right to modify-adapt the Sample Templates from MSF?

Thanks,
Yousef

What should happen on iteration 0?

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 00:23:09 Z

I understand that long projects should be split on multiple iterations but I have some doubts. Should I devote the first iteration (iteration 0) to just envisioning and planning or all the phase is the process model has to be accomplished on all iterations?

I had used scrum for some time and before doing sprints (iterations) a backlog (scope document) has to be prepared and each sprint is expected to build some of the items in the backlog. However I haven’t found proper documentation about a similar process on MSF.

in which class is the Estimate/Remaining/Complete Fields bound?

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 07:35:16 Z

hi guys, i couldnt find them in the http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.teamfoundation.workitemtracking.client.workitem_members(VS.80).aspx

anyone got a idea?

regards

Yang

Senior Java Junior C#

What's the state change for a requirement when it's approved?

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 18:06:18 Z

Accepted = assigned to the current iteration. How do you track which requirements are approved? Obviously the requirements must be approved to be baselined which is seperate from assigning to a current iteration.

Bug in MSF Agile Process Guidance Build 100.4 - Broken Workstreams Link

Tue, 23 May 2006 16:16:58 Z

Workstreams links on the work item pages are broken in MSF Agile build 100.4 (MSFforAgileSwDevPG-50727.147.01.zip). When you click Workstreams link for any of the work items in the compiled version, it takes you to the overview page instead.When you do the same thing in the Source\ProcessGuidance.htm, it displays an empty workstreams page.

to freeze the size of the shape window in Microsoft Visio 2003

Fri, 14 Oct 2005 07:49:38 Z

Hi,

    I have a web application where i use visio drawing control and my custom shape (stencil) window.

    The problem i am facing is that when the shape window that gets loaded in I.E browser.Itz dockable and a float window exists.

    Can anyone give me a solution to freeze the shape window size(I.e it should be allowed to float or it should be docked) in my web application.

Thanks in advance

Regards,
Sashi

Real World examples of Agile

Sun, 17 Aug 2008 14:14:25 Z

I am looking fro some real world examples of Agile project in particular MSF 4.0 for development methodology combined with Scrums for management.

Background

Currently our company uses the water fall model, but new developments I believe are better suited to Agile. To this end I am trailing out Agile on a new project. The project is for a data centric application, with a multi deployment model. It is written VS2008 Vb.Net we are already design it to be test driven and starting to use NUNIT. I know Team system is supposed natural option but I find it difficult to justify based on the fact that most Open source seems to do a better job if less integrated and they have moved some functions from VS2008 into VSTS and now want us to pay for it. I can’t complain too much as VS2008 is fantastic tool

Anyway we are struggling with documentation , types required and level of detail required to keep the process streamline but also repeatable/ supportable. When looking there are hundreds if not thousands of articles on Agile and loads of templates, but I can’t find any real world examples,

This is after 2 years of looking , lately the team has made it real priority to find examples but to no avail.
being a Microsoft partner we have asked Microsoft directly but they can’t pin point any
We have downloaded various trial software with supposed examples , but it is always templates.
We have bought books that have said they have examples. I have hassled the authors.

I was hoping that end to end examples would be available, groups/people say they are working on them but it appears that they have been working on them for years. I thought competitions were held for best developments and I could get the examples from them.

I understand that you make agile your own and you have to tailor it to suit your needs, so examples are not useful but I need to see

- types and level of details that go into docs

- how information cascades from requiremenet,UAC, design to unit tests code etc.

- how you provide traceability

- how you provide auditable solutions, that show you have to external auditors how review and approval was performed.

For example I really hate documentation use of modelling diagrams and class digrams, properly source code is my aim but what should it look like. I really don’t want to repeat the mistakes and pitfalls others fall in. ( I am really afraid we will fail not because of Agile but because we don’t have a complete project, sceptics reviewing it will find too many holes. )

I hope this makes sense.

Process Guidence customization

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 11:25:20 Z

Hi All,

I am trying to customize the MSF for agile process guidence.

I downloaded the latest version of Guidence given in the link. But when i try opening workitem.xml (Or any other file) in infopath 2007 )... I get an error saying that "Infopath cannot open the following file, The form template associated with this could not be found" . In the Details it says that This form is associated with a URN-based form template, which cannot be found on your computer.

now i am editing the xml in infopath 2003 with sp2.. its working.... but when i use the msfwinbuild tool to build it, i am getting an error "error building master XML file"

Can someone please help me with this?

Thanks & Regards,

Sagar