Microsoft Team Foundation Server
Adaptable. Comprehensive. Effective.
Whether you use Agile, Waterfall, Scrum, Lean, or a combination of project management methodologies on your project, Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) flexibly accommodates your specific needs.
Chateaux uses TFS internally and with our clients to help ensure each project remains within its cost, time and quality parameters by enabling effective team collaboration and efficient coordination of each code delivery. This is particularly relevant when engaging in a multi-vendor project.
Chateaux can help you to leverage the capabilities of TFS within your organization. Our services include:
- Installation
- Customization
- Integration with other Microsoft and non-Microsoft applications
- Team enablement sessions
Project Management – TFS provides a diverse and holistic project support structure flexible enough for use with any type of methodology we adopt for a given project.
Communication – TFS enables consistent and open communications on the status of all tasks for all team members at any given time.
Work Item Tracking – Project artifacts such as requirements, tasks, bugs, issues, and test cases, collectively known as work items, are centrally stored, easily maintained, and simply managed through customizable queries and state changes.
Version Control – TFS manages versions and revisions of project source code in a centralized repository, enabling parallel development while reducing complexity.
Chateaux employs "Define. Design. Deliver.", our proprietary project methodology . We searched for a tool with the flexible framework needed to support our adaptable methodology, as well as an end-to-end project management structure. After extensive research and trials of other tools, we chose TFS to help meet the goals of our firm as well as those of our clients. This application enables our project teams to collaborate effectively and efficiently, be more agile in our development cycles, and deliver according to our client's needs.
Although stored in a centralized database, the project artifacts produced were each vendor's exclusive intellectual property; therefore, each vendor required limitations on what others could view and access. TFS allows each vendor to securely manage their own activities. The process remained visibly seamless to the client and ensured a superior level of collaboration to accomplish overall project goals.
A well-managed process was imperative to the success of this multi-vendor project. At the height of the engagement there were:
- 52 Team members
- 1480 Bugs
- 197 Change Requests
- 5076 Test Cases
- 261 Issues
Branch, merge and versioning capabilities in TFS allows multiple vendor teams to work in parallel, which means major and minor release cycles can be integrated seamlessly.
TFS's Test Manager allowed Chateaux to automate the test case execution process and schedule after-hours runs in all test environments including unit, functional, system integration and user acceptance testing. This allowed us to keep our staff count low while meeting the iterative testing demands of all our test environments.
By complementing Chateaux's methodology with TFS, we were able to maximize vendor coordination while maintaining necessary privacy controls and provide the client with a result that was on-time, within-budget, and in-scope.
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