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Recently, we pampered TFS (Team Foundation Server) and with a great help from stackoverflow fellows we successfully through from adoption.

Month ago I asked a question on stackoverflow regarding

What are best practices for someone doesn't have much experience on scrum and help them to learn through TFS?

Unfortunately, there are still none replies. Perhaps, the question itself isn't explanatory and couldn't get experts feedback. I'd like to raise the same question here but quite simple in manner.

We are new chatters on TFS. We were not being expert with scrum but we're putting efforts to learn it quickly. But we've to depict our learning efforts on TFS.

We'd like to hear stories/experiences of TFS, making most of it through practices/patterns.

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3 Answers

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I wouldn't connect much TFS and Scrum. TFS is a software tool which helps you with managing tasks, bug tracking, storing source code etc. On the base of TFS you can implement things like continuous build or automatic tests (see StackOverflow to get advices on specific tools), which should be considered as mandatory practices in Scrum.

Thing which you don't get out of the box with TFS is sharing tickets and/or stories with client. It can be done but proper access management to work items in complex environments with people with limited access is a pain in the neck.

Things are much easier when you run Scrum just internally and you don't show it all out for your customers. Than ticketing is no longer a problem since you can give poeple inside your organization full access to your work items.

And that's basically all TFS may be used for in Scrum context. The clue of Scrum is in different place - I'd advice you to start with the white board where you see all tasks of current iteration and burndown chart. By the way don't try to substitute the board with task list in TFS - it would suck no matter how hard you try. Focus on creating good stories and estimating them. Try to get as much as possible from retrospectives. You shouldn't care much about TFS. It's just a tool.

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Thanks bro! Thats great deal of explanation. – Ramiz Uddin Dec 14 at 12:13
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Agree that TFS is not going to guide you into good scrum practices. There is a 'Scrum' plug in for TFS which might be useful.

You are better off starting with whiteboards and post it notes. Copy the content into TFS if you need to.

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We at Pyxis Technologies manage a lot of scrum projects with TFS. We have developed a Scrum plug-in named Urban Turtle that extends Team System Web Access and gives you a Scrum view of your work items. Our plug-in supports Conchango's template, the MSF Agile template and our own Scrum template. It really simplifies the planning of your work. You can drag and drop work items to schedule them in an iteration or to change the priority of your work. It also gives you visibility with a task board to manage your day-to-day work. Have a look at www.urbanturtle.com

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