VSTS RTM: The Journey, Part 2 - Pondering (Eco 1 & 2 Complete)
Looking at quick reference poster "Team System" on http://www.drp.co.za/default.asp?id=technologies/content_technologies_t, we have completed steps 1 & 2 of the VSTS Ecosystem or "snail" as we like to refer to the diagram.
Before we delve into the "fun" parts of VSTS and TFS, I decided to give the VSTS models some further consideration and unfortunately have to agree with one of my colleagues that the VSTS Team Architect is not a very useful package and if we decide on this, VSTS Team Developer is not of much use either. Huh? Let me first define the context of this statement, which is probably the opening of a can of worms best left untouched, as it will evolve into a licensing thread.
Context: We are located in South-Africa where the IT professional is often not specialised in one specific field, but spans a number of competencies. This means that a resource could be a programmer today, an analyst on another project and an architect tomorrow, only to revert to tester a few days later. Obviously it is rare that a resource spans all solution stakeholder roles, but the border between analysis/design and development are common. The latter is where my concerns are based on and the statement that VSTS Team Architect and VSTS Team Developer, as separate products, are probably not adding much value.
Why? Looking at the next steps of the VSTS Ecosystem ... or snail ... we notice that we have the luxury of modelling our solution ... GREAT STUFF ... and looking at VSTS packages the architect will probably use VSTS Team Architect. He then hands over the completed models to the technical team lead who, together with his team, will do some class modeling and construction of the code. Looking at the VSTS Packages these resources will most likely use VSTS Professional, especially considering the upgrade paths of MSDN.
So what is the problem? The technical lead will make the painful discovery that he has no modeling capabilities in VSTS Team Developer, other than the class modeler. He now needs to ask the architect to give him images or printouts ... so why do we not go back to the whiteboard and Visio if this is the case? In our context where the technical team lead may also be a developer and the architect, we theoretically need both editions on the same machine. We will not even delve into the fact that code profiling does not appear in VSTS Team Test, an environment where profiling of code would probably add immense value.
The answer? Buy VSTS Team Suite for all technical team members and this challenge vanishes. Unfortunately the challenge now shifts to the project sponsor who has to add zeroes to the budget to cater for the increased licensing costs of the Team Suite. Therefore this answer is probably not going to find much favour in our community ...
Bottom line ... We do not have an answer yet and will take it up with the VSTS team again. Watch this space and brace yourself for an exciting journey through the can of worms, sorry through the world of licensing.