Team development of software projects does not lend itself to simplicity. Not only does everyone on the team have a different role, but each step in the software development life cycle -- management, testing, building and analysis, in various forms -- brings its own set of methodologies and best practices to the table. (Here's hoping the team has a big table.)
Microsoft's Visual Studio Team System aims to un-muddy this water. The suite, with separate editions for architects, developers, database programmers and software testers, gives teams customizable templates for key development processes, a dedicated server on which to save their work, and a formal check-in, check-out system for each smaller project.
Two resources from Microsoft, one new and one updated regularly, should provide clarity for Visual Studio Team System project managers and team members alike.
 |
||||
|
|
|||
|
||||
The new resource is Visual Studio Team System Basics Training, a training course from MSDN that covers licensing, architecture, version control, server extensibility, deployment, maintenance and more. This course is available as a Virtual PC image, so make sure you have installed either Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005.
The regularly updated resource is Visual Studio 2005 Team System Guidance, a CodePlex page that is being maintained by Microsoft's patterns & practices team. Guidance comes in forms such as a product overview, articles, downloads (both tools and tutorials) and virtual labs.
Highlights include a video that explains migration from Visual SourceSafe to Team Foundation server Source Control and how-to articles that explain the necessary steps for programming either ASP.NET or WinForms applications to Team Foundation Server.