Team Foundation Server

Team Foundation Server

Being in a software industry and specially those who are closely working with Microsoft technology no need to explain what is Team Foundation Sever (TFS).
Let me explain in brief what is Team Foundation Server (TFS) and the advantages associated.
Team Foundation Server is a source control, project management tool, bug tracking tool, change management, build automation and so on …
TFS has number of inbuilt functionalities if used in a proper way leads to a project success. TFS enables organizations to manage applications throughout the IT lifecycle.
Source Control
Most of the organization uses Visual Source Safe (VSS) as a source control, TFS is an advanced source control which allows user to manage work items in a systematic way, and e.g., TFS administrator can set a policy while performing check-in and check-out operations.
Following screen shot shows the policy warning if it’s not been satisfied.

TFS can be integrated with Visual Studio; this means it will not allow multiple users to work on a single file with same branch. Most of the time developers use local copy of source code files to develop application, and this created havoc at the time of system integration.
TFS allows user to perform parallel development with the help of branching and merging features. This scenario is mainly useful when team size is between 15-20 members and another team wants to work on same file which is already in development process with other team.
TFS has powerful merge support between files, which will allow user to compare different versions of files to merge in a single file. Changes done in another branch can be easily integrated with main branch.
Following screen shot shows how changes can be merged with main branch using TFS

Comparing files before merge

Reports
TSF helps a lot in a project management, e.g, if there is a backlog in testing/development activity and you want to find out what is the exact reason behind backlog. TFS give you appropriate reports by which you can easily make out the real reason behind backlog.
Following sample reports shows the quality of the application.

Remaining Work Report

Varieties of reports can be generated using TFS such as list of active bugs, bugs which does not have test cases etc. TFS uses SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) to generate reports, reports format are configurable can be modified according to user requirements.
SharePoint Integration
Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) also plays an integral part in VSTS .Using built-in features; WSS allows the stakeholders to view information about the project and provides visibility to all without developing custom applications, or learning new techniques – a single point of reporting.

Define System Architect
This functionality is available with Team Suite for Architect where user can define application architect .



This is the only brief overview of Team Foundation Server, entire TSF cannot be covered in the single document since TFS is a very big topic and requires lots of efforts to find new available features.
References :
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181233(VS.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms242904.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181710(VS.80).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc487893.aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244373(VS.80).aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Foundation_Server