ALM in Action
Watch the Case Study of how one of SSW Scrum teams did a website upgrade for the National Australia Day Council:
How SSW improved ALM process in China
Lei Xu and Dan Zhang, worked for CMHIT to improve their ALM process. They successfully:
- Consolidated 3 process templates into one
- Extensively customized their TFS 2012 process template
- Deployed a high availability TFS 2012 platform (SQL Always On, 2 App-Tier for TFS, 2 App-Tier for SharePoint 2013, 2 App Tier Project Server 2013)
- Performance Testing
- SQL Reporting Customization
- Adopting Automated Testing and migration (from MicroFocus Test Partner) to Microsoft Test Manager
CMHIT is a large Chinese based company. They are an information technology solution provider specializing in the port, terminal and logistics industry. The Company provides customers with high-quality products and services with their practical experiences in marine logistics IT service.
Overview
SSW has been developing software since 1990, and has perfected the art of delivering shippable code on budget and on time using Agile techniques.
We use Microsoft's Visual Studio ALM tools (was Visual Studio Team System) to provide the backbone infrastructure that makes sure delivering software is as painless as possible. SSW can help you leverage the power of these tools to make your developers,
testers and analysts work efficiently together.
In our experience the adoption of ALM occurs through a number of stages. Each stage adds another level of software maturity.
Benefits
Source Control is a fundamental part of modern software development. Whether you
have one developer or hundreds it is imperative that you can protect your code from
mistakes and loss. TFS provides this with a comprehensive version control and branching
system that stores all of its data in SQL Server.
More about Source control and Branching...
Getting your process right could be the difference between a successful project
and one endlessly spinning its wheels. When your project is in trouble your customers
become unhappy and costs can spiral out of control. However an efficient process
can help your team work together efficiently and produce that shippable unit of
work you are looking for. More about
Project and Process Management...
Low quality software costs the economy billions annually. This is due to poor productivity
and wasted resources. There is no single silver bullet, but organizations can help
themselves by using tools and processes that give themselves the best chance of
project success. SSW can help you implement an effective team development strategy
to maximize your development team's productivity.
More about Building Quality Applications...
Quality Assurance test professionals have two key goals: to validate the quality
of an application and improve software. Yet testers often seem like an island apart
from the rest of your team. To be effective, their work should be integrated in
the same ALM processes and communication workflows as everyone else. They need to
collaborate closely with developers and provide the rich information needed to resolve
bugs fast. They also need to communicate their progress to non-technical stakeholders
with easy-to-understand reports. More about
Test and Quality Assurance...
Technologies
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 Team Foundation Server (TFS) is a team collaboration
platform that combines team portal, version control, work-item tracking, build management,
process guidance, and business intelligence into a unified server.
- TFS is free if you have an MSDN Subscription, WebSpark or DreamSpark
- TFS can be used with SQL Server 2008 R2, SQL Server 2012 or SQL Server 2012 Express.
If you are a SourceSafe user, you know VSS is an easy-to-install and easy-to-use
source control system. TFS gives you a much more powerful system including not only
version control but also work item tracking and build support.
TFS Is available in 3 editions to suit any size or scale of development team. SSW can assist in migrating between any of these editions.
Team Foundation Server 2012 Express (previously TFS Basic)
This free edition supports up to 5 developers and provides all the essential lifecycle management features such as source control, work item tracking and build automation.
Team Foundation Server 2012
The full on-premise edition of TFS giving you full features and complete control of your platform and data.
Team Foundation Service
This cloud-based edition of TFS is free for up to 5 users or anyone with the following MSDN subscriptions:
- Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN
- Visual Studio Premium with MSDN
- Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN
Other pricing plans will be announced in 2013. All plans will be free until this time.
This is great choice for anyone looking to leverage the full power of TFS without the need to provision your own servers.
Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 can come with the following flavours of MSDN:
- Visual Studio Pro 2012 with MSDN
- Visual Studio Test Pro 2012 with MSDN
- Visual Studio Premium 2012 with MSDN
- Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 with MSDN
All of these include a TFS CAL. For "Backlog Management" and "Sprint Review" features you need "Visual Studio Test Pro 2012 with MSDN" or higher
Visual Studio 2012 Lab Management is an integrated solution to give
you all the benefits of virtualization for application lifecycle management. It
extends the existing VS ALM platform to enable an integrated Hyper-V based test
lab, allowing you to automate your testing process, on a variety of environments
that can be setup to your needs.
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Figure: Using Lab Management in TFS 2012 you can automate your testing process
With the addition of Visual Studio 2012 Team Explorer Everywhere you can now connect
most development platforms to TFS 2012.
Related services offered by SSW:
- Implement TFS 2012
- Branching Consulting
Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2005 to TFS 2008 (discontinued) Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2005 to TFS 2010 (discontinued) Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2008 to TFS 2010 (discontinued) - Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2005 to TFS 2012
- Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2008 to TFS 2012
- Migrate/upgrade from TFS 2010 to TFS 2012 * Popular *
- Migrate/upgrade from VSS 2005 to TFS 2012
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TFS Integration Platform
Additional services offered by SSW:
Common Questions:
How many developers do I need before I need TFS?
The short answer is: one. Whether you have one developer or thousands, TFS will
scale to your needs with an excellent pricing model that competes with VSS. If you
already have MSDN, you can use it with no extra cost.
I use free Open Source products so I don't need TFS, do I?
If you add up the cost of managing and maintaining the many products that you use
to provide a similar solution I think you would be shocked. Usually it is your developers
who absorb this cost making it difficult to quantify. With TFS all your support
comes from one company and with prices starting from free (with MSDN) and unmatched
scalability there really are no competitors up to the job.
Migrating and Syncing
Migration from:
We use the TFS Integration Platform to get your assets moved over. Be aware we can sync (not just migrate) an on-premise TFS to TFS Service.
Note: We expect the TFS team to improve this soon.
E.g. Have TFS Visual Studio expose an option "Download a zip of last night's collection backup"
So the collection can be attached to an On-Premises server
And then later...something like detach on premise collection, zip a backup of the database and use an "import" procedure on TFS Service.
Australia and World Wide
We have consultants available in all Australian capital cities including Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Canberra.
We also have consultants in Beijing, China and San Francisco, USA.