I am in an "internal" IT shop and we currently use ClearCase for version management. Our branching strategy is common for this with the main branch being reserved for live code and branching off main for project and hotfix type activities. Each project (and they overlap often) has a branch off main, we don't have multitiered branching.
We get the situation were we have to do merging between integration branches so that the release 4 branch picks up all of the release 3 changes (for example) before release 3 goes live and thus is baselined. And the number of times that a hotfix happens when a project is high and has to be supported.
However, this isn't really going to be possible within the TFS world as we don't want to have to drop to the command line to do baseless merging, however we need to have a highly flexible branching capability - something we have got really used to with ClearCase.
So ideally we want TFS branches to allow us to have a production baseline, to be able to branch off to do short term hotfixes, to be able to branch off to do projects - without actually knowing which of the branches will go live (and thus baselined) first. Having worked through all of the MS documents they all appear to be focused on product type environments - but we are mostly a support and enhancement shop.
I'm looking for recommendations/pointers - I've been a ClearCase admin and can quite happily juggle with branching mentally - but everything I come up with just doesn't look like it will fit with TFS - but this is most probably because my mental process is ClearCase-like and isn't in tune with TFS (yet!)