DogFood v2 Session summary on: Customizing TFS Process Template to Match Your Process.

My slide portion of the session has briefly covered customization and extension points on TFS. Due to time limitations I had to hide a significant portion of slides.  The full version of the PowerPoint Deck is available for download.

In summary, if you are planning on customizing process template I recommend for you to follow a few simple steps:
1. Start with documenting your process.  Do an ALM Assessment, as a mere a fact Microsoft has a great tool for it: Application Platform Capability Assessment.  Spend the time with all the people that are involved in the process and get a "Green Light" from the management.  Remember the process is not only for developers, but for the entire team (including business sponsors and clients).  Create an Action Plan of the implementation steps.

2. Templates shipped with current versions of TFS are not meant to be used as is, they are just blueprints.  Do not treat the process as paint, throwing it on the wall and seeing what will stick is not the best strategy for the development.

3.  Do not expect by customizing TFS process guidance to go fully integrated (dynamic) environment over night. It will take time, long time.  Use your Action Plan (created part of the ALM Assessment) to fully integrated ALM into VSTS/TFS.

4. Treat your TFS server as production server.  Do not go and try some new ideas against.  If you need to prototype a rule or workflow or workitem get yourself a test environment.  Once you know that it is working well in test server, then go ahead and implement it in your production TFS.

5.  Do not be afraid to make process adjustments on active projects (as long as you are following rule #4).  If your project needs a new rule/workitem/field/report/etc then just implement it.  At the end of the project do a retrospective and decide if the change is worth making part of the global template.  If you are not willing to change and adjust the process, chances are it will become stagnant and obsolete.  100 years ago ice houses and transporting ice down the rivers was a booming business, now days we just use refrigerators...

Happy customizations!

TF26204 error when importing WorkItems in TFS08 SP1

Recently,
I have run into a problem while importing a workitem template from one TFS project to another. The error I got was slightly misleading at first:
TF26204: The account you have entered is not recognized. You do not persmission, please contact your TFS Administrator.

After, traditional WTF (mummbling) and Googling for an error I have narrow down the problem to the rules used on the template. This MSDN article was a big clue!

The Work Item template I was importing had rules with regards to user lists.
Specifically the original Project Template had a custom security group "Testers" and the WI template has rules specific to this group, in my case it was: , the new project was created with a different template and did not contain mentioned group.

At this point I had two options:
1. Modify WI template and remove all references to the non-existent security group. Good starting point is here or here.
2. Add the missing group to the TFS Project. From VS menu click Team Team Project Settings Group Memebership and click New.

I have choosen option 2. This error may also show up if you have custom lists that use "\" in this case I recomend to replace "\" with "" via option 1.