Course Details

This 2-day course provides Project Managers, Business Analysts, and Team Leaders the essential skills required to effectively manage a software development project using Microsoft Visual Studio 2013.

This course focuses on Agile methodologies and examines both the MSF for Agile Software Development 2013 process template and the Microsoft Scrum process templates.

In this course, attendees will plan a new software development project and go through the steps to initiate the project using Visual Studio 2013. This includes recording requirements, using storyboards to prototype experiences, and creating their product backlog. We'll cover planning and running a sprint, as well as using the taskboard and burndown chart to track progress. On the second day of the course, we'll look at focusing on quality, stakeholder feedback, team collaboration, and getting regular stakeholder feedback.

The final module of the course looks at the many reports out of the box with TFS 2013, and how you can create your own reports quickly and easily using Microsoft Excel.

This course includes hands-on labs to reinforce practical skills and to ensure you're ready to use the tools upon your return to your workplace.

Team Foundation Server/Visual Studio Online

This course is equally applicable for teams using either Visual Studio Online or an on-premises Team Foundation Server.

At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

• Describe the full feature-set of Microsoft's Application Lifecycle Management suite
• Understand how Work Item tracking can be used across the entire team
• Create custom work item queries, chart queries, and pin to team dashboards
• Use a variety of client tools to interact with team members
• Initiate a new Team Project in either Visual Studio Online or TFS 2013
• Enter requirements into Visual Studio Online or Team Foundation Server, including storyboards to illustrate requirements and experiences
• Record estimates in your requirement types
• Plan and run a sprint, including tracking progress using taskboards and burndown charts
• Understand a number of the quality indicators available
• Use dashboards to view appropriate groups of reports
• Record team capacity and monitor a team's velocity
• Capture quality feedback from stakeholders
• Configure alerts and notifications for team members
• Understand the out of the box reports and what they can tell us about our project
• Create ad hoc reports using Microsoft Excel

Audience

This workshop is designed for Project Managers, Business Analysts, and team leaders looking to effectively manage their development projects using either Visual Studio Online or Team Foundation Server.

Pre-Requisites

Attendees should have some familiarity with Visual Studio and the basic use of VSO/TFS.

Module 1: Introducing the Microsoft Visual Studio 2013 family

• What's new in Visual Studio 2013
• Overview of the Visual Studio 2013 family
• Overview of product features
• A lap around Visual Studio Online
• Project workflow across the Visual Studio 2013 suite of products

Module 2: Initiating a new project

• Organising projects in TFS
• Understanding Process Templates
• Creating a new Team Project
• Setting Team Project properties
• Scheduling sprints and releases
• Switching between team projects

Module 3: Work Item primer

• Overview of Work Items
• Traceability between work items
• Creating custom queries
• Work item charting and pinning charts
• Work item tagging
• Configuring project alerts and notifications

Module 4: Requirements

• Examining Requirement types
• Creating portfolio backlogs
• Creating requirement hierarchies using features
• Storing Requirements

Module 5: Getting our backlog started

• Creating backlog items
• Prioritizing the backlog
• Estimating items on the backlog
• Techniques for improving estimations
• Grooming the backlog

Module 6: Working with TFS Teams

• Configuring Teams in our Team Project
• Understanding team capacity
• Managing work from a master backlog
• Allocating work to our teams
• Configuring our iterations in TFS

Module 7: Planning and running a sprint

• Understanding team capacity
• Selecting items for the sprint backlog
• Forecasting using team capacity
• Tracking progress using the taskboard
• Using Burndown charts to track progress

Module 8: Using Storyboards

• Overview of Storyboarding capabilities
• Creating a storyboard to illustrate a requirement
• Linking a storyboard to a work item