Adopting Team Foundation and Visual Studio for Application Lifecycle Management

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This topic introduces a tutorial that follows members of a fictitious team as it incrementally adopts Visual Studio as its solution for application lifecycle management (ALM). The tutorial shows how the team starts quickly and then starts to use Visual Studio for additional ALM activities at different points in time.

The Story: Julia, Adam, Annie, and Peter are a team that develops web applications at Fabrikam Fiber, a company that provides cable television and related services. This team has decided to use Team Foundation Server (TFS) to manage the code. Over time, the team also starts to use Visual Studio, Team Web Access, Microsoft Test Manager, Microsoft Feedback Manager, and PowerPoint to manage the backlog, create storyboards, get customer feedback, and review, test, and build the code.

Your team can adopt Visual Studio features for ALM in any sequence, except where one feature depends on another. For example, as the following illustration shows, teams who want to perform exploratory testing and request feedback in Visual Studio must manage their backlogs in TFS.

ALM Incremental Adoption

Before You Begin

Julia installs TFS and puts the team’s code under version control. She also sets up continuous-integration builds so that the team can identify and fix build issues early.

Set Up Version Control

Set Up Continuous Integration

Backlog Management

Until now, the team managed its backlog in an Excel workbook. Now the team will manage its backlog in TFS. Annie adds the backlog items to the team project. When team members plan the next iteration, they use the backlog page to identify the items for the iteration backlog and to break those items down into tasks.

Create the Backlog

Plan the Iteration

Exploratory Testing

Adam starts to use Microsoft Test Manager to perform exploratory tests.

Test a Backlog Item

My Work and Code Review

The team starts to use the My Work page in Team Explorer to collaborate more effectively. In this instance, Peter suspends his work in progress to fix a bug, gets a code review from Julia, checks that fix in, and then resumes his work in progress.

Develop Code for a Backlog Item, and Fix a Bug

Storyboarding

Annie creates a storyboard to conceptualize and get feedback on a design that she’s developing.

Storyboard a Backlog Item

Customer Feedback

Annie uses Microsoft Feedback Manager to solicit and manage feedback from her stakeholders.

Request and Process Stakeholder Feedback

Provide Feedback

Send email to adoptingtfs@microsoft.com to tell us whether this tutorial was helpful.