I recently posted that Conchango posted the beta for the second version of their scrum plug in for Team Foundation Server 2008. I have been using the new process template for my TFS/Scrum presentations and wanted to list a few of my favorite features:
- Use of Iterations for designating Sprints: Previously you entered a sprint number into Product Backlog Items (PBI) and Sprint Backlog Items (SBI) to designate what sprint they corresponded to. There was no real validation and it was a tenuous link at best. Now the TFS Iterations are used and it provides a more solid approach.
- User Stories in Product Backlog Items: The PBI template now supports the User Story motif with a specific field for the user story text and another for the acceptance criteria. Not that you could not have done this before, it is now just built in.
- Much Improved Project Portal: The project portal is much cleaner than the previous version and I love the built in Wiki. It would be nice to have the ability to add a link directly to Wiki items, but you can do this with Hyperlink links if you really want to.
- Bug Work Item: We created our own "Bug" work item in the previous version. Having a built in item for this makes reporting much easier out of the box.
I have also enjoyed several of the improvements to TFS 2008 including:
- Easier Build Type Creation: A new wizard makes creating a build type much easier. Things you used to have to man handle the XML build script to accomplish are now simple options in the creation wizard.
- Queued Builds: I hated getting the pop up telling me another build was already in progress and having to sit and wait for it to finish.
- Out of the box Continuous Integration (CI) support: What used to be several steps that included touching event subscriptions, filters, and web services is now a few options on the build creation wizard.
- Links in Web Access: There has never been a very good way to see the link relationships between work items, but now the views in the Web Access portal show a nice little plus icon so that you can drill down to related items. Very nice.
2 comments:
Have you experienced any delay in getting scrum dasboard updated? It takes ages to update task and move user stories from one sprint to another.
Krish,
If you mean the project portal reports when you say Scrum dashboard, then be aware that most of the reports get their data from the warehouse. The warehouse is updated about every hour from the actual TFS databases so reports like the burn down, sprint view, etc. will not reflect immediate changes. If it is taking much more than an hour then you have a problem. You can force the data warehouse to update by calling the web ervice directly.
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