Managing TFS Work Items

Question

We're looking into migrating to TFS 2010 in the next few weeks. However, we're unclear on what kind of tools are required for the team. We know developers need Visual Studio but what tooling is required for Project Managers and Testers that will ONLY need to manage work items? Do they also need Visual Studio to just view and edit work items?

Answer 1

Project Managers and Testers can use the following methods to access TFS 2010

• The web access portal - this allows the ability to create/run queries of work items, and even view source/builds if they want
• Excel/Project - Both have integrate with TFS. You are able to load work items directly into Excel/Project, edit them, and publish them back to TFS.
• Visual Studio with Team Explorer only - This is a barebones installation of VS, with the Team Explorer only. It doesn't take all that long to install, but it will say "Visual Studio" when launched. Not sure if that is scary to testers/project managers.

Web access provides a good complete set of functionality, but having VS/Team Explorer will provide a rich client experience (read: faster, more responsive).

Additionally, in order to get the Excel/Project integration, you'll need at least the VS/Team Explorer installed on the client box, even if they never use VS. And you need a CAL (Client Access License) to use the web access portal.

So to summarize, TFS provides a lot of ways for the non-developer to interact with the system, but all of them require a CAL, and most of them require installing VS/Team Explorer on the client machine.

Answer 2

In short, they don't need Visual Studio. They can use Team System Web Access (formerly known as TFS Web Access) to do pretty much everything a developer can do, except associate a check-in with a work item. After you install TFS 2010, you simply browse to http://yourserver:8080/Tfs/web and you're in!

Answer 3

Project Managers (and all other team members) can also work with work items from Outlook using 3rd party TFS client embedded in Outlook: TeamCompanion www.teamcompanion.com. This way, assuming they otherwise use Outlook, they wouldn't need to change tools or use any additional tools at all. As is the case with Excel or Project integration they would still need a TFS CAL and additionally a TeamCompanion license. TeamCompanion supports much more than just work item management: Email/TFS integration, SQL Server Reports, SharePoint document integration and much more...

Full Disclosure: I am the Product Owner of TeamCompanon, so I may be biased :-).

Answer 4

There is a web front end which you can use to manage the work items. There is also integration to Excel and MS Project.

See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms181304.aspx for more information on Team Foundation Clients