TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste? - Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

I have, for some time, tried to understand why …

  • The adoption of Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) and Team Foundation Server (TFS) has been slow with many of the development teams/companies who would/should benefit immensely from the technologies.
  • Many adoptions are of short duration or end with problematic implementations adding little value to the solution stakeholders.

Talking to the communities, customers and leads it has become apparent that in our environment (South-Africa)":

  • Most teams are either unaware of the TFS/VSTS capabilities.
  • Most teams are ill-equipped to investigate, implement and adopt the technologies in parallel to their already tight development milestones.
  • Most teams do not have the time or luxury to investigate technologies before they are shipped, often using products such as Visual Studio 2008 as a hammer, working no different to a Visual Studio 2003 or Visual Studio 2005 based environment. 
    hammer
  • [01/06] Most technologies ship well advance of technical books and official training material.

Through other polls and workshops we have established that the following material is preferred by the developers and technical leads in terms of products such as VSTS and TFS (listed in terms of preference from best to least):

  • Practical step-by-step guidance
  • Inside TFS|VSTS resource kit
  • Self-paced TFS|VSTS training material
  • Official TFS|VSTS Courseware

Still operating as a MVP, I am trying to compile a proposal to Microsoft to convince them of the value of creating a set of related “101” guidance documents before or as part of the VS2010 release, ensuring that teams can understand existing and new features, with the objective of rapidly and correctly adopting the new release and all its features over time.

Without documenting the envisaged content and proposed schedule at this stage, I would appreciate your one click vote at http://zohopolls.com/wschaub/tfs-vsts-101-pocket-guide-value-add-or-waste, which should be an indication whether we are smoking something weird or are on the right track.
guidance

Obviously the guidance papers, once matured, could be consolidated as a TFS|VSTS guidance pocket guide … but that is beyond the scope of this blog post.

Please cast your vote at http://zohopolls.com/wschaub/tfs-vsts-101-pocket-guide-value-add-or-waste and feel free to add additional comments to this post.

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Published Monday, January 05, 2009 8:15 PM by willy
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Comments

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Monday, January 05, 2009 8:48 PM by Willie Roberts

You will be proud to know that I am working my way through installing TFS Workgroup Edition as we speak. Must admit there is a lot of details on the web to deal with some of the gotcha's, especially when using SQL 2008. Will keep you updated with how it went.

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:54 AM by Steven van Niekerk

Definitely a great idea. Even if it is not shipped with the product it still has value.

Something to help setup and use the environment quickly without hassle is a huge boon. Especially with the insanely tight deadlines we run under.

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Tuesday, January 06, 2009 11:01 AM by Pieter Germishuys

Willy,

I'm so excited that you have raised this issue.

I think the problem with people migrating to any new technology or mostly from my experience is that people are ill informed.

They either don't know about the technology or are reluctant to move to a new set of tools because of fear of the learning curve or the upset it might cause if a vital feature is not included in the later releases of the product.

I personally feel that the people managing the MSDN Subscription of the companies should be the technical people who are actively involved with the Development team (Talking specifically about software dev companies here).

I think Microsoft should also spend some time and money in doing some research on which development companies in South Africa are using which Source Control software and why they aren't using VSTS if they aren't already.

Alot of new developers who aren't clued up are stuck with simple things such as using Source Safe and they don't know they can have Visual Studio Integration... which means they are spending more time managing their check ins/outs.

I think it's important to make these things well know and to make sure that the MSDN managers of development companies have a tight bond with Microsoft and are informed of the products and why it's a good idea to upgrade :P

Just my 10 cents ;)

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Tuesday, January 06, 2009 4:47 PM by Steven St Jean

I'm seeing exactly the same problems in the US.  No time to research so no time to migrate correctly.  I'm still hearing of shops that will take the new VSS over TFS for VC because it is "easy" to migrate and they know its capabilities (warts and all).  They are afraid of the dark but don't have time (or inclination) to turn on the light.  

The #1 reason I hear is that timelines are too short and they can't afford to be down while migrating.  A "staged approach" to TFS Adoption might be useful in these cases.

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Tuesday, January 06, 2009 9:20 PM by Chris Menegay

Hmm - I agree with the problem, but I don't many more people would use a pocket guide. People don't adopt because they are either lazy or they "don't get it" - a pocket guide won't change that.

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 3:21 PM by Dave Coates

I disagree with Chris Menegay. In my experience devs and leads have little time to investigate new technologies completely in order to make an informed choice. They are under pressure from management to deliver at lowest cost (especially if management does not have much development background) and management sees something like TFS or VSTS as 'just another version' of VS which they believe they can do without.

Sometimes the summarised information that is available is almost too summarised and either doesn't appear to have value to their devs or it seems like the holy grail and they try and implement without success because they didn't have the time to research all the little gotchas they didn't expect... I find that Microsoft offers so much (including MSDN), but it's difficult to find a balance between enough information to make a good choice or understand something, but not so much as to take you 3 days just to read through the pre-requisites and technicalities.

# VSTS Links - 01/07/2009

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:04 PM by Team System News

James Whittaker on New Year's Resolutions Tom Hollander on The Joy of Code Reviews Ayman Badawi on...

# re: TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste?

Wednesday, January 07, 2009 4:27 PM by Dale Alderton

I just think we get too many new versions of things too quickly. Especially if you're not early adopters like most big companies you only get around to looking at the new stuff after a year or two. Then while you're coming to terms with the new features, the next latest and greatest comes out with a whole new string of features. I think its a bit like Excel where 80% of the users use 20% of the features. Are all the new gimmicks really useful or just overwhelming?

# TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste? STATUS UPDATE

Friday, January 09, 2009 9:03 AM by Willy-Peter Schaub's Cave of Chamomile Simplicity

Thank you very much for everyone who completed the quick poll and especially those that have added precious

# Ranger Projects … submit the “101 - VSTS 2010” idea for the next poll?

Tuesday, February 03, 2009 3:26 PM by In search of simplicity, quality and tranquility in software engineering

Some time ago I suggested an idea “ TFS/VSTS - 101 Pocket Guide ... Value-Add or Waste ”, based on discussions

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