Whidbey RTM Release Criteria – Dogfooding Team Foundation Server

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During Whidbey Beta 1 we built a web application for reporting the division release criteria called DDMetrics. This tool served its purpose for Beta 1 and Beta 2. Now... it is time to take it to the next level and start using an incredibly awesome tool built by the Team Foundation Server team (dogfooding)! 

Starting this week we will be using “Team Foundation Server work item tracking” for reporting on our Whidbey RTM release criteria. I just wanted to take the opportunity to say the more time I spend in Team Foundation Server the more excited I get about the awesome features/tools that we are building everyday in the Developer Division. We are very fortunate that we have such a great opportunity to thank the VSTF team by getting some real time usage.

Just some of the TFS Capabilities…  

Users of DDMetrics during the previous milestones are going to be thrilled when they see the capabilities in Team Foundation Server... below I will just name a few that I think are very cool:

  • Customization – we were able to define our own WIT (Work Item Type) to collect only the data necessary, we don't have the 60+ fields you have in Product Studio just because some info is required for other types of bugs. We only have what is necessary!
  • Querying – I already created some template queries for people to use that are grouped by AssignedTo, PU's, or by criteria. In addition to queries based on all criteria that are marked as “Meeting”, “Not Meeting”, “On-Track”, “No Data”, etc. We had some of these capabilities with the old web app, but nothing like we do now. This is a 100 times better...  
  • Excel and Project integration – ok this is cool... you can run a query for work items assigned to you, your PU, or as a criteria owner, open the results in Excel, make your modifications and publish. BAM!!! All your work items have been updated in Team Foundation Server. 
  • Alerts – you want to receive email when work items change? Imagine if you are a single criterion owner and you want to know when we complete a sign-off. Well, now you can.  
  • Much much more... I haven't even touched on the reporting (SQL Reporting Services or simply through Excel), I will save that for next time or better yet my daily status mails! 

The Team Foundation Server team is working hard refreshing their Dogfood servers. Once that completes I will be sending out instructions to the necessary folks for how to access the DDMetrics RTM project.

-Mike