trace of thought (Scott Colestock) - Team System

TFS 2008 / Scrum talk at MN VSTS User Group...

Scott Colestock — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:42:42 GMT

I had a chance to do an updated version of my TFS 2008 / Scrum talk at the MN VSTS User Group. Slides are here.
What a great turnout! And great questions from the group...

Preserving TFS Build Labels...

Scott Colestock — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:36:25 GMT

A frequent pattern in TFS/Team Build is to merge from one branch to another using a label as the basis for the merge. (That is, you select a label in the source branch that designates the point you want to merge "from".) Often, this label was applied by Team Build automatically.

This might play out like: "I know this build of this feature branch is good; I'll use the corresponding label as the basis for a merge back to the trunk." Etc.

If this sounds like you and your shop, be sure to enable the feature that Buck Hodges discusses here to make sure that your build label sticks around even when your retention policy indicates the corresponding build should be deleted. Otherwise, if the merge process takes awhile (due to conflict resolution, or lunch) you might find that upon completion of your work, you get an error indicating the label you were using cannot be found.

If this scenario does play out poorly for you...you could attempt to deduce the time at which your build label was applied and then apply your own label (with the same name) to that point in time on the source branch. The merge process will then complete...

(No, really, I didn't get burned by this...)

TFS/Scrum Podcast...

Scott Colestock — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:17:25 GMT

I had a chance to sit down with Jeff Brand while down in Omaha for my presentation at the HDC. We recorded a podcast on all (most) things Scrum and TFS – you can check it out here. It was great fun – thanks Jeff!

Heartland Developer's Conference 2008

Scott Colestock — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:00:45 GMT

I’m down in Omaha today at the Omaha edition of the Heartland Developer’s Conference 2008. I’m presenting on Scrum with TFS 2008 – with just a little bit more content than at MDC 2008, since both the Conchango Scrum template and the Task Board UI were both updated recently (like…yesterday!)

This is a great conference – they do a great job organizing this event, and there is a ton of great content. I did my session this morning, and then had a chance to record a podcast on Scrum/TFS with Jeff Brand later in the day – more on that when it actually posts.

Slides I presented today are here.

Slides from MDC 2008...

Scott Colestock — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:31:32 GMT

I had a great time presenting at this year’s MDC – thanks to all of you who attended. We covered Conchango’s newest Scrum template for TFS 2008, as well as their very cool new Task Board UI. We covered eScrum, VSTS Lightweight Scrum, Scrum itself, process customization in TFS…come to think of it, it was a lot of content for an hour and a half…

My slides are available here.