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I noticed today that the process templates in Visual Studio Online are showing a “.2” suffix in their names. I’m not exactly sure when this update occurred, but am pretty sure it’s related to Visual Studio 2013 Update 2, which is imminent.

So, I launched Visual Studio 2013, opened Team Explorer, and downloaded the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2013.2 process template. I extracted it right next to the prior (RTM) version.

I noticed that Microsoft Customer Service & Support (CSS) is offering a number of great webinars in the coming days on various TFS and ALM topics …

• TFS Release Management Tool (19 March 2014)
• TFS Work Item Customization (26 March 2014)
• TFS Migration (2 April 2014)
• TFS Warehouse and Reports (9 April 2014)
• TFS Upgrade Scenarios (16 April 2014)

Use this time zone converter to help determine your local time zone.

Yesterday, while using Team Explorer for Visual Studio 2013 to customize a process template, I ran into this error …

As suggested, I checked the ActivityLog.xml, but it didn’t offer anything more than just the message CreateInstance failed for package …

Earlier this week I installed the Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools and went to run a BPA scan. It finished very quickly, giving me a couple of strange %TFSServerURLValidated% messages …

Viewing the report showed an additional warning “Cannot validate the URL provided”. I double-checked the spelling of my TFS URL, but it was fine. By selecting the “Other Reports” option, I was able to find the root cause …

This is an update to an older post that I had written for TFS 2010. Here are the steps to unconfigure TFS 2013 …

1. Execute tfsconfig setup /uninstall:all.

This should be done from the %ProgramFiles%Microsoft Team Foundation Server 12.0Tools directory.

2. Drop the Tfs_Configuration, Tfs_Warehouse, and (optionally) any team project collection relational databases.

3. Drop the Tfs_Analysis Analysis Services database.

Thank you for attending last week’s Quality Enablement through Agile Testing event put on by Microsoft here in Boise.

I hope you had fun exploring the testing tools in Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. I know that I enjoyed co-presenting with Jason Singh and Steve Lange. I also enjoyed explaining and demonstrating how Lab Management can simplify your build > deploy > test lifecycle.

UPDATE (14 March 2014) - As a few of you have pointed out, Service Pack 1 for Microsoft SharePoint Server 2013 is now available.

Wanted to share a surprise impediment from earlier this week.

Actually, I should have known better than to try and install the latest greatest ALM tools (TFS 2013), alongside the latest greatest SharePoint (2013), on top of the latest greatest Windows Server (W2012R2). The resulting odd behaviors were confirmed first by fellow MVP and Scrum trainer Neno Loje, and then by KB2891274 that he shared with me.

1. Read the most recent Scrum Guide in your native language and then read it in English
2. Take the Scrum Open assessment until you can achieve 100% repeatedly
3. Study for the PSD assessment by reading
   1. The PSD Objective Domain
   2. The PSD course (if you take it)
   3. My Professional Scrum Development with Visual Studio 2012 book
4. Take the Developer Open assessment until you can achieve 100% repeatedly
5. Set aside a clear time to study and then take the exam

Remember: Reading the Scrum Guide and related reference materials alone is not necessarily enough prep for someone to pass a Professional Scrum Assessment. Questions often ask test-takers to interpret information and apply it to challenging situations, so knowledge gained from personal experience and other sources is typically needed.

Thanks to my fellow Visual Studio ALM MVP Colin Dembovsky for building the “One Work Item” check-in policy that I was always too lazy to build.

Judging by the title, it may sound like one of the other work item related check-in policies provided by Microsoft, but this one is different. It allows the team to select the type of work item required to be associated with a check-in, as well as the count (exactly 1 or at least 1).