Benefits of VSTS

Software development teams of all sizes struggle with many of the same issues, such poor communication and collaboration, a lack of consistent processes, and a scramble to ensure quality at the end of the development cycle. And although most teams struggle with the overhead of information gathering and reporting, they still suffer from an inability to make accurate, real-time decisions.

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is an integrated application lifecycle management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance. With Visual Studio Team System, all members of a software development team can:

 Collaborate and communicate more effectively with other team members and business stakeholders.
 Ensure quality throughout all phases of the development process.
 Improve visibility into project status and quality, and use that data to make informed, real-time decisions.

VSTS Features

Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) is an integrated development environment coming with Visual Studio family of products. Some of the features of VSTS include the following:

• Use as a source control system or version control system (replacing VSS and similar tools)

• Use a bug tracker software (replacing other bug tracking software).

• Create work items and assign to members of the team

• Design and modeling tools for development and software design.

• Setup Unit tests (replacing NUNit).

• Analyze code for potential problems and coding standard violations.

• Setup and create automated build process (replacing NAnt and other similar tools).

• Create and run manual tests, Web tests, and load tests

• Generate various reports to track the progress of project.
Team Foundation is a change management system that provides integrated source control, issue tracking, and process management for development teams

Visual Studio 2010 Conference

I've participated in VSTS 2010 conference conducted by Microsoft on 5-Mar-2010 at Arcot,Taj Connemera Chennai.Just i share my notes

Theme of the session
how to improve Productivity and Quality of the product and thereby increase Profitability using Visual Studio 2010 features

Survey Report
About 68% of the projects are not completed or not effectively used because they are not able to manage cost , time and fuctionality

Three Pillers of ALM

1.Adaptive - Process Automation

Every organization has their own set of workflow like Code Review , Change Management , Bug Tracking etc. It extents the existing Workflow without any change

2.Collaborative - Location Transparency

ALM gives the single platform for developers on different locations

3.Transparent

Realtime Analytic and Reporting
Reduced Risk
improved Predictability