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Although we can’t help you decide which tests should be part of your regression suite, we can help you easily identify them by using tags.

Over the years, we’ve seen teams using Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio Team Services to create a separate static test suite or even a test plan. Those approaches are way too much work. Let’s look at a much easier approach.

First, we’ll create a simple test plan for Sprint 2 …

Visual Studio Team Services’ customization capabilities are to a point now where I can write this blog post … as a rebuttal to any earlier post of my own. As you may know, the Scrum Guide has been updated more frequently than Microsoft’s Scrum process (template) which, when launched, was meant to be an exact implementation. It falls upon the community (me and you) to update the Scrum process ourselves. Maybe that was Microsoft’s plan all along. :-)

According to Microsoft’s official definition, Team Rooms, like chat rooms, “provide teams with a space to discuss work in progress, ask questions, share status, and clarify issues that arise.” Sounds great, but I find that most teams I train, coach, and consult are using other products for this type of collaboration. Add to that a general feeling that Microsoft isn’t innovating within this feature, and I’d pretty much written off team rooms.

The Scrum Guide says that the Product Owner is the sole person responsible for managing the Product Backlog and that Product Backlog management includes ordering items in the Product Backlog “to best achieve goals and missions”. One of the best ways to do that is to order based on the principle of Return on Investment (ROI). This is simply the numeric business value divided by the numeric effort (e.g. story points). This may sound easy, but it’s not - mostly because Product Owners don’t track (or even know how to track) business value. #ThisIsSad.

I’m always amazed at how difficult and even impossible it can be for stakeholders to get their ideas into some product backlogs.

I’ve started asking teams to run a stakeholder traceroute. In other words, walk me through the process that a user might go through in order to get a good idea (not necessarily a bug) in front of the Product Owner. Here is an example …

The good news is that I still meet teams who value their stakeholder’s opinions and will give them (near) direct access to their product backlog. Oh, and if you are using Microsoft Team Foundation Server or Team Services, you can add as many stakeholders as you want. Free.

Update (April 2016): Microsoft has released Office Integration 2015 Update 2.

With the recent release of Team Foundation Server Update 1, Microsoft has enabled all users to create storyboards in PowerPoint for free. This means that even stakeholders (VSTS/TFS users that don’t need a license) can now also create storyboards in PowerPoint without a Visual Studio license as well.

This capability is provided by the Team Foundation Server Office Integration 2015 Update 1, which includes a standalone Office integration installer that provides Excel integration, Project integration, and the PowerPoint-based storyboarding tool.

In 2014, the Scrum Guide was moved off of Scrum.org and posted to ScrumGuides.org. At the same time, all of the major Scrum organizations in the world acknowledged this as the official definition of Scrum. Unfortunately, Microsoft still hasn’t received the memo.

Sure, they have a Scrum process template and it was quite good (back in 2010) because it was very minimal - “barely sufficient” even. Unfortunately, as the Scrum guide evolved, the template did not. What’s worse, Microsoft decided that we all wanted Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) support in all templates. Our once-very-lean Scrum process template has wandered away from the light and become bloated with waste - no longer “barely sufficient”.

You may have noticed when creating a new Scrum team project in Visual Studio Online or Team Foundation Server 2015, that the iteration list looks a bit different. Yes, Microsoft flattened out the list of iterations, listing only sprints and no more releases:

Previously, new team projects created using the Scrum process template would have default iterations like this:

I’m sure it’s awesome. I’m sure it doesn’t impact performance (much). I’m sure my apps would be more awesome if I used it, but …

… today I want to turn off this “helpful” window from always showing while I was debugging my code …

So I followed these steps …