Hi What is the diff between Conchango and the builtin agile template in TFS 2010. Any recommendations ? Thanks
+3
A:
Not sure on the precise differences, but I remember these were mentioned in dnrTV shows with Adam Cogan which were quite informative.
Paul Rowland
2010-01-27 23:00:01
+1
A:
We are trying to make the same decision and testing both. Right now, we are leaning towards the Scurm for Team System Template. This is primarily because we are using v2.2 now and have become accustomed to the terminology and process.
Also, the SfTS web services automate many tasks such as calculating ROI and work remaining. I haven't seen any evidence of that with MSF for Agile. I know that we could write our own, but EMC did a fine job of it and there is no need to re-invent the wheel.
The MSF for Agile template has some nice new reports, but I'm guessing that I can grab the rdls and make them work for SfTS template.
I'd recommend getting one of the Virtual PC images of 2010 beta 2 that MS has made available. It already has a project in there with the MSF Agile template and work items entered. You can add the SfTS template and try both out.
Paul G
2010-02-09 21:15:24
A:
We have chosen the Scrum template for all our projects - main reasons:
- It automatically summarize hours remaining etc from tasks to user story (product backlog item)
- It has pre-built reports for sprint burndown charts
- It saves the information regarding sprints and start-end dates for sprints as workitems in TFS - not only in Excel (as with Agile template)
- It has a Scrum Dashboard (very beta so far - but promising)
It has some drawbacks: 1. No built in Completed Hours which is rather strange - it is however easy to add yourself 2. No resource planning (the agile template has this in Excel) 3. The configuration with Workstreams, Team sprints is too complicated for us - we would rather if they could offer
irony
2010-02-12 07:25:12
There's no Completed Hours field, because that's not Scrum. Scrum doesn't care how much time you spent (only accountants do) - it only cares about how much time is left to get to Done.
Richard Banks
2010-02-14 23:43:28
+1
A:
Hello dear experts,
As per today, has anyone got any other feedbacks concerning SfTS vs MSF for Agile ??
"On paper" Scrum for Team System 2010 seams really good ! I think we are going to use it on our project.
Cheers,
Vincent THAVONEKHAM.
Thavo
2010-04-26 13:48:42
+1
A:
We've used Conchango's SfTS template for TFS 2008; their v3 template looks pretty good, but Microsoft's Agile template has some awesome reporting capabilities, and their planning spreadsheets look very handy as well - I found that sprint planning using SfTS was painful.
I would imagine that transitioning from one template to another would be a painful exercise; mind you, we've customised the SfTS template, so the upgrade won't be a walk in the park either.
I've got TFS2010 running on a VM with the MS template, I haven't tried the SfTS v3 template yet. A couple of things I've noticed though are:
- MS's Tasks (Sprint Backlog Items in SfTS) are simpler than in SfTS - they only have two states, of Active and Done. We've had all sorts of pointless arguments over when to move an SBI between states (even worse, giving only certain user groups permissions to transition between states), so I could quite see Microsoft's approach being a breath of fresh air.
- MS doesn't have SfTS's Sprint workitem (which is used to define start/end dates and capacity); I haven't figured out yet how to do this in MS, although I think it's related to the Excel planning tools, but I'm not a big fan of having to set up the Iteration Path first, then the Sprint workitem etc
- The MS reports are awesome; the SfTS reports markedly less so, IMO, and some of them never worked properly for us. The Conchango forum is not the best, feedback can be quite slow in arriving.
- The ability to link tests (automated or otherwise) to Test Cases in MS is double-plus awesome, I don't know if SfTS supports them or not. If not, I suspect this could be what swings it for my team.
I asked this question on the Conchango forum a month or two ago, but apart from a few me-too questions, there's been no response from Conchango - you'd think that they would want to really push the advantages of their template.
David Keaveny
2010-04-30 05:29:58
+1
A:
I have just written a blog that gives you a side by side comparison between:
- Scrum for Team System v3
- MSF Agile v5
- TFS Scrum v1 (beta)
Crispin.
Crispin
2010-07-06 11:25:33