I am interested in evaluating team foundation server and I have downloaded the 2010 trial and ready to install on my server. As part of the evaluation my boss has asked me to have a good idea of the final cost if we decided to use TFS. I have 2 questions in this post really.
What components do I need to purchase to be able to use TFS and currently how much do they cost? We have 3-4 developers who would need to use TFS. At the minute one of them is using Visual Studio 2010 Professional.
After looking around I noticed that TFS11 Express has just launched which looks to be free for upto 5 developers. Is this a viable option for us to use?
I would say the main thing we are looking for is source control.
Kind Regards
Ash
You'll find licensing information at this page.
Yes TFS Express will be a totally viable option for your team, if all you need is Source Control, some Work Item and some Continuous Integration. This edition is made for small teams such as yours and you wouldn't have to pay for a CAL.
As you have less than 5 developers and just looking for Source Control. Team Foundation Express will be viable option.
Related
Hello we are deciding at our project to move from Teamcity to TFS 2018 but we are not sure if its best idea. I was reading a lot comparison but they are pretty old 2 years is in programming world really lot. We like about tfs 2018 that it support it own nugget server it has own version control technicaly you can have everything at one place. Can you please give some pros and cons of both?
You can refer to this article to Compare TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
About the vendors - JetBrains Vs. Microsoft
JetBrains: JetBrains, creator of the best Java IDE - IntelliJ IDEA - is a technology-leading software development firm specializing in the creation of intelligent development.At JetBrains, we have a
passion for making people more productive through smart software
solutions that help them focus more on what they really want to
accomplish, and less on mundane, repetitive "computer busy work".
Microsoft: Microsoft Corporation is an American corporation that develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of products
and services related to computing. The company was founded by Bill
Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975. Microsoft is the world's
largest software maker measured by revenues.
Compare Pricing - TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
TeamCity Starting from $299 Per license, Team Foundation Server
Starting from $20 Per month/user. .
Compare Features and Functionality
As with any business software solutions, it’s important to consider
features & functionality. The tool should support the processes,
workflows, reports and needs that matter to your team. To help you
evaluate this, we've compared TeamCity Vs. Team Foundation Server
based on some of the most important and required Enterprise
Integration features.
TeamCity: Data Import/Export, Basic Reports, Online Customer Support.
Team Foundation Server list of features include the following: Data Import/Export, Basic Reports, Online Customer Support,
Mobile Friendly / Cloud
TeamCity: their software can be used in the following: Standalone, On Premise while Team Foundation Server can be used with: Standalone,
Cloud, SaaS
Which Software is Better? TeamCity or Team Foundation Server?
Which solution is better? TeamCity or Team Foundation Server? As
usual, the question is not “Which software is better?” but “Which
software is right for your needs and budget?”. Neither of these two
Enterprise Integration software is necessarily “better” than the
other. Both offer industry-leading features and a scalable platform,
as well as the ability to custom-build a unique solution with optional
modules. If you would like to get quotes or having trouble deciding
which Enterprise Integration is the right for you, we’d love to help.
Fill out the forms in this page to get demos, free quotes and a custom
software recommendation.
Besides, you can integrate TeamCity with Team Foundation Server as needed to combine their advantages.
Without installing additional software, TeamCity servers and build
agents can interact with Team Foundation Servers (from 2010 to 2017;
2018 is supported since TeamCity 2017.2) and Visual Studio Team
Services.
Please refer to below articles to know more about that:
Cross-Platform TFS Integration
Integrating TeamCity with Team Foundation Server
I currently work in a company that uses FogBugz for issue and bug tracking and SourceGear Vault for source control.
We are now introducing Team Foundation Server. Clearly TFS will replace Vault for source control. My question is, with the following requirements:
Large existing base of FogBugz cases (some obviously open) that we need to support ongoing
Support desk needs to be able to raise bugs / support calls
Want changes to source to be linked to a case number
... what is the best split between using FogBugz cases and TFS WorkItems?
Is it possible to totally migrate from FogBugz to TFS?
If it is not possible to migrate from FogBugz to TFS then what is the best way to use the FogBugz case and TFS workitems together?
Initially I'd say bugs and defects stay in FogBugz, stuff on the project plan as work items. You could manually get the developers to create a work item for each case in FogBugz and associate the code with that work item but I can hear the howls of derision already :-)
You might want to take a look at the TFS Integration platform. I don't know if there are any tools that link directly to FogBugz but these tools are highly extensible. You could then decide to either migrate everything in to TFS or run both systems and synchronise. Running both is nice as each discipline can use the tool they are most familiar with, devs use TFS for everything and the testers / support can continue to use Fogbugz and the toolkit keeps everything in step.
I'm thinking about building a TFS Process Template for Kanban. I just wanted to gauge the interest....
We have been using TFS and kanban together for several years now. Since kanban can be used to model any process, it doesn't make sense to have process templates. The gap is in the visualization of work items.
There is an awesome tool called TeamWorks by SEP that can do kanban with TFS right out of the box. Plus it is free!
Check it out: http://www.sep.com/labs/teamworks/
Supporting Kanban inside TFS is feasible but it is not for the fainted heart.
First, you will need expertise about how to edit TFS process template. And it is not because you will need to create a specific TFS process template for Kanban. If you are serious about Scrum and Kanban, I strongly suggest that you start (your process improvement) with the Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 template released by Microsoft in July 2010 and change it as you go. Be warned that you will need to manually edit and change the TFS process template as your process evolve (add or remove state).
Second, you will need to find the right skin to turn TFS into a Kanban board. Today, tools like Urban Turtle provides web interface to turn TFS into Scrum (not Kanban). However, through configuration you can adapt our task board to support multiple states (and behave a little bit like a kanban board). As specified by Scrum, Urban Turtle task board contains only three columns (To do, In progress, Done). However, one column can host many state. For example, it is possible to drag a card from one state to another state while keeping the card inside the “In progress” column. As your process evolved, be warned that you will need to manually edit and change the Urban Turtle configuration file to map the new state with color. FYI, adding a specific Kanban board (which will not requires manual edits) is part of Urban Turtle roadmap. However, it is not rank high in our product backlog.
Discloser: I work with the Urban Turtle team. So do not take my words. Instead, read what Brian Harry from Microsoft wrote in his blog a few days ago: "...awesome Scrum experience for TFS." You can read Brian Harry's blog post here.
Kanban is not a software development life cycle methodology but a process change methodology as I have written in my post:
There should never be a Kanban process template for Team Foundation Server(TFS)
There is a great need for tooling for TFS that would make the use of Kanban better on TFS.
I'm working on one Kanban tool for TFS that will try to visualize the flow of work. Please take a look at the early version at codeplex: Visual WIP
Actually we use Kanaban and TFS and my opinion is that TFS is more of an obstacle here than help. We basically reduced TFS role to bug tracking tool and code repo.
One of strengths of Kanban board is its visual design which is very intuitive. It can't really be substituted with a set of forms organized in the flow.
What more, teams tend to use "hardware" white/cork board with sticky notes whenever they can, namely whenever they are co-located. And even if they aren't they usually try to find a software tool which is as simple as possible. You can say a lot about TFS but not that it is a simple tool.
Personally I think that's not a very good idea. I wouldn't use it.
I am currently creating a business case for rolling out TFS 2010 as our source control and bug/release management tool.
We currently use OnTime for our bug tracking software and subversion for our SCM.
I was wondering what advantages TFS 2010 has over OnTime?
I have done some thinking so far and would love to hear responses:
TFS 2010 allows linking changesets->work items->builds
TFS 2010 provides greater customisation of workflow than OnTime
TFS 2010 is integrated into the Visual Studio IDE - This requires less apps to be open and less window flicking
Thanks in advance.
TFS is one of the least intuitive Version Control systems I have ever had the misfortune to have to use. It may have numerous "bullet point" advantages over OnTime (and other comparable systems), in terms of raw feature-lists and capabilities, but the key factor is whether it can fit in with your working processes.
My experience with TFS is that you will be required to adapt to the TFS way of working, because adapting TFS to your way of working will be impossible or too difficult to justify.
We recently reviewed a number of possible alternatives to replace a system comprising SVN and a manual bug-tracking system (Excel spreadsheets). On-Time was evaluated but deemed too expensive and complex.
In the end we opted to continue using SVN, but drastically revised (simplified) our repository structures and chose to combine SVN with the FogBugz issue tracking system. The integration between these two systems was fairly rudimentary "out-of-the-box", but required only a little effort on our part to achieve the much closer level of integration we desired. Certainly far LESS effort than my previous experience of a TFS roll-out involved.
Our SVN/FogBugz system is also now integrated with a FinalBuilder build automation suite.
The result is a system that not only fits our working practices perfectly (since we devised the means by which the systems would integrate to achieve that) but which is also infinitely adaptable as our working practices evolve.
I think that it really depends on the size of your team(s), and what you want out of source control.
I used bugzilla in combination with Perforce for a couple of years and found that both were really very good at their own individual things while working in a very small team (2-3 people), but the suffered from a lack of integration between them and from some little idiosyncrasies that took time to get used to.
I recently moved to a new job where TFS is used extensively. There are 4 main teams in this company with 10-12 developers in each, split into further project teams below that level, and it is in this kind of environment that TFS really shines imo. It's biggest advantages in my view are:
1) The integration with Visual Studio - it's not just a case of having less windows open, but it really does speed things up and make your life easier. Things like VS automatically checking out files for you as you work (no issues with accidental checkouts due to lockless editing), being able to synronise local + TFs builds, being able to quickly compare the local version against previous ones..yes you can get 3rd party plugins to integrate but none to this level and with the same stability.
2) The communication features - simple things like integraton with Live Messenger (provided you configure TFS correctly) are great for large teams. We use WLM to communicate accross the office and for collaboration as its just quicker than walking over to someone else every time you need to ask a quick question.
3) Linking builds/changelists to tasks - Yes other SCMs do this but again it's just done in a very nice, integrated fashion..I guess it's nothing special to TFS but personally I like how it tracks this.
4) Ease of merging/lockless editing. I've had experience with some other merge tools and the TFS one works nicely enough, making merging after concurrent editing pretty simple. It's very similar to perforce in this respect, but also with a usually pretty effective auto-merge tool which I use for tiny edits that I know cannot cause any potential issues with edits other developers are working on.
5) Auto building/build management. Working with a couple of large solutions containing 20-30 projects that depend on each other, this is a godsend. We have it set to queue up a build every 20 minutes IF something has changed, and when one has happened its listed in the history log..so easy to see when you need to update your local libraries.
I don't have any experience with configuring it other than build management, but I have heard that this is the worst part of TFS..that its a bit of a pain to get everything running correctly.
So, translating that to a business case..I'd say that if you are a Microsoft software house with large/multiple teams, then the time savings and productivity improvements that you will see as a result of the above features are worth the investment in setting it up. Its free to use in most cases as you will probably have a MSDN subscription (maybe some CAL issues but i'm not sure) so your biggest cost will be in user training and configuration.
Firstly, I would suggest to consider what is your primary concern, what is the problem that you are tying to solve by rolling out TFS.
In terms of version control I would recommend the blog post from Martin Fowler on Version Control Tools and a follow up results of a version control systems survey. Admittedly this might be and is a subjective view of the subject but one that seems to be pretty popular. TFS clearly looses in comparison to other Version Control Systems.
I currently work with TFS2008 and we have migrated from SourceSafe and IBM ClearCase/ClearQuest and there is no doubt that TFS is far better then any of the previous tool, still it has its serious shortcomings and the new version will only partially address those.
Addressing the individual point you have raised:
TFS allows to link builds with changesets and work items, but so many other systems
I have not used OnTime but the workflow customisation can be both an advantage and a hindrance. Potentially, there might be a lot of work involved in creating a custom process template and you would still need a sensible UI on top of it (Team Explorer or Web Access might not be sufficient)
Integration with Visual Studio is an advantage but there are add-ons to Visual Studio that allow integration with other source control providers
On the advantages of TFS I would probably mention
Distributed builds and separate build agents - if you do many builds
Full integration with Visual Studio via the Team Explorer
Extensive reporting infrastructure (though you can only take full advantage of it when using MSTest for all the testing)
SharePoint collaboration site for each project
Given the substantial cost of rolling out full TFS installation I would really consider what real business benefit would this solution give you that others don't.
Not shure about TFS, but the UI of OnTime is kind of non intuitive.
Also I dont like that you have different fields for Bugs and Tasks. Of course you can always add your own fields, but the default layout should be ready to use.
We endet up using only "Bugs" even if it is a task.
I dont say its a bad product, but if TFS has a better UI for bugtracking now (which it hadnt 4years ago when I had to use it and hated it ), then this would be an argument for TFS.
Sorry to hear that you want to get rid of SVN. Thats a hard decision.
I'm not sure about the licensing for the Axios OnTime but if you have an MSDN subscription then it's no additional cost. See the blog post here
I've been using TFS 2008 only for version control and while it's a nice upgrade from VSS some things that we're tyring to do aren't exactly in line with what is expected. That said, I've written a quick little web app that fills in those gaps. It was pretty easy to develop against using the API and there's lots of addons to help with specific tasks.
Probably not the answer you want to hear, but I'd be doing my damnedest to make a business case against TFS.
In any event, my general advice would be to try it out yourself (or in a small team) on some very small, but real project - maybe some tool you need on a once-off basis, code that can be thrown away or easily migrated to another system because it's small. There's nothing like actually using the system!
I have used OnTime and Subversion. I have not used TFS as bug tracker, but I've used it for source control. The source control part of it is basically still the bad old Visual SourceSafe. If you are currently using Subversion you will be swearing your head off any time you need to rename a file or, heaven forbid, delete a file and then create one with the same name - never mind any branching or merging. It's hard to convey in a post just how primitive and fragile it is as a source control system - that's why you really have to use it. You'll see what I mean when you find yourself stuck with a file you can neither check in nor delete and some meaningless error. Not that Subversion is perfect - but it's a decade ahead of VSS!
The workflow part of TFS, which I've only briefly played with, seems very "heavy" to me. That is, it really restricts the user to that workflow and requires a lot of steps that are often unnecessary. This stuff can help, but it can also just as easily get in the way. A good system provides the workflow when it's needed, but allows you to bypass it when it would just get in the way. When we used OnTime, we found that even its relatively unobtrusive workflow was often just more trouble than it was worth. Of course, this all depends on the specifics of your situation. How are you using OnTime workflows now and what do you want out of TFS that OnTime doesn't provide?
Linking changesets to bugs can be done with Subversion as well. It supports some extensibility mechanism - I don't remember the details, but FogBugz uses it (we switched to it after OnTime). Linking the to builds can be done by adding a simple svn tag command to your build script. Visual Studio integration can be done with VisualSVN.
The cost is also a huge downside of TFS. It is very expensive for what it does, especially when you take into account how well it does it. Yes, it's "free" if you have to have an MSDN subscription for every developer anyway - but do you have to, without TFS? Subversion is free, full stop. OnTime and FogBugz are far more reasonably priced.
I would strongly recommend against TFS. I once tried to restore the source code from a crashed instance, but I gave up after a few days, so source code was lost (= it failed to do the one thing a VCS should do). Of course, I might have done something wrong, but it's not easy to get everything right when the restore guide is two miles long, and it really is something that should happen so rarely that nobody is experienced with it.
Now I use Subversion/Trac, which gets the job done (and customizing the workflow in Trac is so easy it's not fun, compared to TFS).
For the time being, avoid TFS!
I would stick with SVN + FinalBuilder and then choose between FogBugz or CounterSoft Gemini.
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We've had several sprints with the traditional whiteboard and PostIt notes and are ready to move forward to integrating the process into our Team System environment. One tool we're considering is Conchango's "Scrum for Team System" (http://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/en/)
Has anyone tried this tool in a real world scrum process? Was your experience positive or negative? Is the tool worth the licensing fee in your opinion?
We use Scrum For Team System and love it. It really does a good job of merging the TFS and Scrum processes.
We also got the task board (the part you have to pay for) and really like that too.
Even with Scrum for Team System, TFS via visual studio is not good for planning meetings (though it is ok for standups) The task board helps a lot in visualizing the work remaining and in moving it around.
Before we got the Task Board, we would use post it notes for our planning meetings and then enter them in to TFS after. And even though the Task Board is nice, if you don't have at least 2 people working on it in a planning meeting then it is not enough. We have 3 laptops going for a team of 5 + 1 (scrum master) and that works great. If you don't have that then I would still think about doing post it notes.
The task board allows you to refresh and see what the other are entering in. We have one computer hooked up to a projector so that the others can see what is happening. We all then brainstorm like we would on post it notes, but the people on laptops enter the data into TFS.
For us, it works great!
Later Note: If you do choose the Scrum For Team System template then I STRONGLY recommend that you read the Process Guidance. We had to figure out a few thing the hard way before we sat down and read it. Especially on how to handle defects (i.e. when is it a Bug and when it is a Sprint Back Log Item that goes back to "In Progress")
The templates are free. It is only the Task Board Application that cost a modest fee. You can use the templates without the Task Board although I highly recommend using it as wll. I think the biggest advantage for my team has been that the ScrumForTeamSystem tempaltes integrate into VS and provide a seamless feel with the rest of the development environment.
We love the ability to attach the PBI's to check-ins and have them show up on the Daily Build report.
If you are are missing something you need, you can fire up the VS template editortweak the templates to your liking. For us, we added a "Requested By" field and a "Testing Status" field to the PBI template.
The 2 shortcommings that annoyed us were that the "State" of the PBI's were not the same as SBI's (No Ready For Test on the PBI). We do testing/validation at the feature level and not the task level and wanted to track the PBIs status so we had to add our own custom field. The second issue was that there is no report out-of-the-box for a PBI burndown/up at the Sprint level. So you can't see how you are doing at delivering stories, only tasks. You have to make your own.
We don't really use the "Bug" template much (we ship flawless code:) ). No really, there is no such thing as a bug against work in a sprint; so the only time we record a bug is if a client finds an issue in the production code where it didn't work as advertised.
As Vaccano said, it isn't nearly as fast as a whiteboard or post-its in a meeting environment but if you get a couple people really good at using the tool and a couple of laptops you can make it work.
I evaluated several products and the simplicity and price of ScrumForTeamSystem can't be beat.
Like others have said, beware that the Conchango template handles bugs very differently. The idea that unreleased Backlog Items are bug-free is not just a suggestion; there is literally no way to track bugs affecting the current sprint's work. I found that this disadvantage outweighed the advantages.
If you are searching for an online Whiteboard you can have a look at the Scrum tool Agilo. It was build especially for distributed teams which do not have the chance to work on a "real" whiteboard.
For a quick information you can have a look at this video.
The 3.0 version of the template for VS 2010 changes how the tool models Scrum in ways to very effectively support multi-team projects and the typical interactions one will find in larger projects.
Regardless of version, it is currently my default answer for Scrum projects in Microsoft environments. As mentioned, the task board and the (new) ScrumMaster's workbench are incredibly valuable as well!
We build Urban Turtle that extend the Microsoft ALM platform with an intuitive Web interface and simplify your agile project management. By providing a Task Board and a planning board directly in web access you don't have to synchronize anything. The installation is a simple process. 2 minutes to install on the web access server. Nothing to setup on the client desktop.
Don't take my word for cash have a look at what Brian Harry from Microsoft said about the product :
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2010/10/21/urban-turtle-3-5-released.aspx
Have a look at the website and send me your feedback
urbanturtle.com
Dominic Danis
Product Owner.