How does your team differentiate TFS work items that are "done" (development/testing complete) vs. "deployed" (live in Production)?
My first option would be to use a Tag to mark this. You can query and filter through them.
Another option would be to customize the work item types with an additional field, but this route is a bit more complex.
Change your Definition of Done to include: Deployed. Doing that you will have code working in production. If is needed more work, is not done.
But I guess you´re asking about how to have a new status. You can modify the workflow template to include this new state. In older versions of TFS you only can do that before to create the project, not in an started project. I don´t know in the latest version.
Related
I have a request to add a new field to a work item and we are using TFS 2017. My organization has done this before in previous versions of TFS. However, I remember customizing any process template to add new fields causes headaches when upgrading to the next version of TFS.
My question is if this is still a concern? If so, is there a work-around for this issue?
Thanks!
Tim
Basically, you would have the same procedure if you want to upgrade a on-premises TFS with customizations.
So, before you customize, you should understand which customizations support an easy update path and which do not.
Recommended practices:
Identify the best options for customizing WITs that support your
tracking requirements. When you change objects that track work items,
you should identify how these changes will affect existing and future
team projects.
Put processes and all XML definition files under version control. Do
not deploy objects that you define but have not stored in a
repository.
Test your customized objects just as you would test your software.
Minimize the number of custom fields that you introduce. Minimize the
number of fields that you make reportable.
Please refer to the link below for more information:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts/work/customize/on-premises-xml-process-model#before-you-customize
Is there a way to reset or start over with the latest version TFS work item template? I do not care about any existing work item history.
Scenario: I have a TFS project that has code, but never used work items. The existing template is too old to use the automatic Configure Features wizard tool. It is ok to mess up any work item history.
Is this possible? Thank you!
Have a look at TFS-PowerTools
The built in Work Item Templates should override your existing ones. That might even work before updating, but i'd not recommend that try.
We had this trouble once too. A coworker fixed this after doing some kind of Troubleshooting guide. (Let me check tomorrow if i can find that one again)
Let me know if that helped!
Take a look at https://nkdagility.com/tfs-process-template-migration-script-updated/
It covers off what you need to do, and includes some PowerShell to help you.
My team is just now starting to use TFS 2015 Update 1 on premise to manage their development process. I have set up the server and defined some custom states and transitions for work items to better map to our process. To start with, we will only be taking advantage of the Kanban board and are not attempting to use iterations for a variety of reasons I won't get into here.
My problem currently is using TFS to plan releases. Specifically, I don't see any way to group Features and User Stories into a specific release. All of my googling has turned up many articles involving Microsoft Release Management, so I installed and configured it, but it is absolutely overkill for what my team is trying to do right now. I'm not trying to automate deployments to different environments at the moment, I just need a way to group work items into a something that encapsulates the concept of a release in TFS. Is there no way to do this? The best I can come up with right now is to further modify the work item templates to either provide a simple "Release" field with a pick list, or define another type of work item that I can group the others into. This seems like a glaring oversight by MS from my perspective, so I'm hoping I'm just missing something.
Grouping work into releases can be done in a couple of ways, just remember that the concept of a "Release Plan" doesn't explicitly exist in TFS. Release management covers the "Release to Production", but doesn't cover any planning.
Ways to plan releases:
One way is to create a Release Iteration, this works when you're not working on multiple releases in parallel and truly finish one release before working on the next. The Release iteration used to be default, but has been removed from the product in favor of teams delivering sprints and teams doing continuous delivery.
Project Root
+ Release 1.2
+ Sprint 1
+ Sprint 2
Another option is to use Tags. You could tag work items with a tag that signifies it's targeted for a specific sprint.
Use a Marker workitem, on the backlog place one work item which clearly stands out ### END OF RELEASE 1 ### Any workitem below it is not part of that release. This technique fits a more agile way of working and more clearly shows that the contents of a release are a floating thing.
Create a custom Release Workitem, link your other workitems to this work item to target it for that release.
And your option to create a picklist on a *Custom workitem field** is another option.
Alternatively you could also use the Area Path in much the same way as Iteration Path. By using the Area Path you have the benefit of not having a sprint tied to one specific release.
It is not the best solution but could be the solution in some cases.
Answering solely based on your question around planning releases, then:
Create a custom work item template, called 'Deployment'.
When planning of a release begins, create a new 'Deployment', let's say, called 'MyProduct v1.1'.
In your planning meeting, create Features and User Stories appropriately, and create a relation to the 'MyProduct v1.1' Deployment, by opening the User Story and adding a Link (using the Deployment Work Item number) as 'Related'.
To monitor Deployments, create a custom Work Item query targeting the new 'Deployment' Work Item template. You can configure this to display on your dashboard.
Follow whatever release procedure you like based on the 'Deployment' and its' relations.
You should follow a naming convention when creating 'Deployments' for consistency.
p.s. I recommend using the extension 'Work Item Visualization' in this instance. It'll nicely map out the 'Deployment' related Work Items.
If you want to use TFS to actually build an and create a Release, then Release Manager is worth considering.
TFS 2015 Update 2.1 now includes a built-in version of Release Manager. It's much more user-friendly and simple to configure when compared to Release Manager standalone installations.
To group work items into a 'release', you can do the following:
Create a build definition for the repository you're working with - see Build Def creation docs
Create a Release definition - see Release Def creation docs
Once you have these definitions created, the working process would be:
Developers work against work items
Commits are made against the WI number (or tasks)
When it's time to create a release, start a build on the definition you created. In doing so, WIs will then be associated with a Build Number.
When the build succeeds, start a new Release from the definition you created.
You have have a set of work items associated with a release, see screenshot:
Note: You can enable CI builds and releases, although the above is based on manual triggers.
You can also directly call the Release API to locate WIs associated with Releases, however you'll need to obtain the actual Id of the release first.
You are currently limited however to viewing these relationships based on knowing the Release. In a real world scenario, it's more realistic to look at a Work Item to see when it was release. To do that, there's no built-in functionality at present, however my own-answered question will guide you - see here.
Additional to the methods explained by jessehouwing there exists also several 3rd party tools which can integrate with TFS/VSTS and provide advanced planning features. See VSTS Marketplace for an overview.
When you upgrade your tfs server does it automatically update the scrum template your using for existing projects or do you have to do that manually? If manually what is involved?
The team project we are working on was defined in 2012 RTM but our server is now # 2013.3. We haven't used the work items that much at this point (at little bit initially for a pilot project) but we are to push harder for our organization to use scrum so we want to make sure we are on the latest/greatest template before we start.
Your process template is not automatically updated. As long as you haven't made any changes to the original process template, upgrading is quite easy.
You enable new features by running the Configure Features Wizard in your team projects configuration page.
If the automatic update fails, you will get a message describing the errors it encountered. Now you will have to apply those updates manually which is also described on MSDN but is a bit harder.
A not so nice but easy way is to remove all work items and process data from your project and then add the newest items. Martin Hinshelwood has some great guidance on how to do this.
Is there any possibility to create a custom Work Item Type in TFS 2010 that is read-only after the first save?
We would like to implement a very simple code review solution based on a custom review work item associated to a changeset.
The idea is that after the work item is created, it can not be altered afterwards (not even by the original creator).
I've tried setting the System.ChangeDate to FROZEN but that isn't supported and unfortunately the first save is also a change, so setting it to EMPTY or READONLY doesn't work either.
Did you have a look at the community solution for code review for TFS 2010 http://teamreview.codeplex.com/
The most complete solution for Team System Code Reviews: a specific work item type and a Visual Studio add-in for a completely in IDE code review experience. TeamReview exploits the advantages of Team System and VSX to reduce waste and surface new business value from code reviews
HTH
Chees, Tarun
You might want to look at the work item type's workflow. You can make changes to fields in both the states and the transitions.
You could try to modify the transition from New to To Do (or whatever the first state is called for your WI).
In those transitions, you can freeze or make read-only the fields that you want to freeze.
Hope this helps,
Assaf.