This morning I had the pleasure of presenting a session for the Canberra VSTS Users group. It was great to see so many VSTS enthusiasts together and I hope everyone enjoyed the session. I just wanted to share a little bit of information about the session and some of the key messages I shared with the user group.
Topic selection
Firstly, Grant suggested the group would enjoy a talk on Process Template and Work Item customisation. This is a technical session I have delivered many times over the past two years but this time I wanted to deliver something a little different. Basically the session in the past has been a walk through of the XML files, a look at the process template editor (PTE) and a discussion about what you can do.
So why make this session different?
This was OK when there wasn’t much information available on the topic now there is a wealth of great articles on the MSDN site. Check them out here;
What I have found in my consulting work is that often a client tells me they want me to customise the pocess template and create/modify some of the work item types. I tell them this is not a problem at all and then ask them exactly what they would like changed…. This is where this gets difficult. Quite often a client simply doesn’t know what they can change and what benefits can be realised by making the changes.
A session more on WHAT & WHY, then just HOW
In doing some research on a What & Why type session I remembered Jeff Beehler’s great presentation (DEV336) at TechEd in Orlando earlier this year. After an email to clarify a couple of minor points, I had a great deck wth some fantastic examples of “What and Why” Microsoft customise much of their TFS implimentation.
If you can get you hands on the TechEd 2007 US DVD’s make sure you spend some time watching Jeff’s session. It is “DEV336 – Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Part 2 of 2): Customizing Team Foundation Server for Application Lifecycle Management”