Vitaly's WebLog
Software development, startups, marketing

TFS Workbench and MS Project

December 5, 2010

If you are practicing Scrum and use TFS for this you probably know there are several project templates exist for TFS and Scrum. There is a couple from MS and there is also quite popular 3-rd party template from http://scrumforteamsystem.com/ guys. Here is a comparison of these template (it is from a company that created one of the templates, so it may be biased).

We've used "MSF Agile v5" for some time and now trying "Scrum for Team System v3.0". This template comes with a tool called "TFS workbench" (ex "Scrum Masters Workbench"). Some may find this tool handy, but if you expect high level of quality as in MS products you will be disappointed. It is free product (at least yet). Anyway this topic not about this tool, although I use it in the post title as the name of template is too generic.

If you are using SfTS 3.0 you may find that tasks hierarchy is lost when you export your WIs to MS Project. To fix this you need to do the following:

1) CD to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\" 

2) Run "TFSFieldMapping download /collection:"http://YOURTFSSERVER:8080/tfs/YOURCOLLECTION" /teamproject:YOURPROJECT  /mappingfile:"c:/temp/MappingFile.xml""

3) Open c:/temp/MappingFile.xml and add the following line:

<HierarchyLinkType LinkType="Scrum.ImplementedBy" />

4) Run "TFSFieldMapping upload /collection:"http://YOURTFSSERVER:8080/tfs/YOURCOLLECTION" /teamproject:YOURPROJECT   /mappingfile:"c:/temp/MappingFile.xml""


Comments

December 8. 2010 03:39

Hi,

If you're going to name my product in your blog title and then report dissapointment, you might as well correct your typo!

"but 'is' you expect high level of quality"

Feedback is always welcome ;)

Crispin Parker

December 8. 2010 04:26

Hi Crispin,
First of all, thank you very much for developing the Scrum template and TFS Workbench!
I know that they are free, but TFS Workbench would be much more useful without some of the annoying bugs it has now. Some people might have different opinion, but mine is that this kind of product would better cost something and be more reliable.
I wish you all good with these products, they are very good to have for community. Thanks again!

vgorn

December 8. 2010 04:56

Ah-ha BUGS!

<!-- Insert bugs below -->

https://www.scrumforteamsystem.com/QA

<!-- Thank you -->

The workbench has a fairly rapid release schedule and bugs are addressed as they are reported. I even accept feature requests!

Look forward to your feedback.

Crispin Parker

December 15. 2010 18:21

TFS Workbench is worth paying for.  I have feature requests but I suppose this isn't the place.  SfTS is very nice.  It is well thought out and well supported by Crispin and the community in the forums.  

I've been struggling with integrating SfTS and Project Server.  The Microsoft MSF works with server but SfTS fails.  Thank you for posting your mapping trick, I believe this pointed me in the right direction.

Evan Stevens

December 23. 2010 09:02


        
        
        If you are practicing Scrum and use TFS for this you probably know there are several project templates exist for TFS and Scrum.  There is a couple from MS and there is also quite popular 3-rd party template from http://scrumforteamsystem. com/ guys.

Maxims

Comments are closed