Great Project Tracking Software
March 13, 2017
Great Project Tracking Software
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server (TFS) is being utilized by many different departments within our organization. We personally use it to track tasks, user stories, bugs, releases, and test cases. Developers associate specific check-ins with bugs/user stories within TFS which, when pushed to our staging environments, are then assigned to QA/UAT for review. User stories and bugs are tracked as release scope for regular releases. The ability to associate releases/user stories/bugs in many different scenarios is priceless. It allows us to create different metrics/queries to measure success and potential failure, as well as to analyze what went well or what went wrong. TFS can be confusing for those new to the field or those who are older and used to other programs, but once the learning curve is achieved, the user tends to take well to the program.
- Field customization is a feature TFS has that I particularly like. We have a very specialized customization of TFS running so that I can query for specific iteration/release paths that are relevant to our metrics. We also utilize a unique workflow structure for bugs and user stories as the process from creation to close is unique within our company.
- TFS does their web view really well, especially with newer versions of the product. Often times, I feel that very little is lacking when I am logged into the web view of TFS. I am able to bulk edit items in the newer version of TFS, and at my old job we even set up the ability for QA to push checked in code to stage environments through TFS.
- Finally, I feel TFS does a very good job of keeping historical track of actions performed to tickets. If someone has edited a ticket in any way, I can review and identify who made the change and when. This helps give me context when a developer contacts me to ask me a question related to the wording of a ticket. This also helps hold people accountable if tickets are written incorrectly or incompletely and prevents people from passing blame to others.
- The older versions of TFS are more lacking in the web version-- if you aren't updated to 2015 or above I believe, a lot of the web features are not available (like bulk update). You really have to keep up to date with TFS for the best features, and it's no simple task to migrate your entire instance of TFS from an older version to a newer version.
- VSTS is supposed to be a virtual version of TFS that we've been looking into, but it severely limits customization options for ticket templates and workflows. It would be nice for VSTS to eventually carry that customization over so we could feel more comfortable switching to "the cloud" so to speak.
- Queries are a very powerful tool, but normal business users struggle to understand how they can best utilize this tool to analyze tickets. Because of the permissions structure in all companies I have been a part of, I've never been able to save my custom queries to a public folder in TFS for business/project users. Instead, I have to take time to train these users and give them guidance on how to best create queries for their needs. This is admittedly a business process issue, but it could potentially also be resolved with some good training/guidance around queries provided by TFS themselves.
- A positive impact of TFS is that it has helped keep people accountable. There are less mistakes made as they can be audited easily, and people double-check their answers rather than confirming something they don't know the answer to.
- A negative impact is that we have one person who manages the configurations within TFS. Anytime I need a change to template or default creation settings, I need to email them and get on their schedule. This causes a delay for changes I'd like to see at times.
- TFS is well used and well respected within the community, and when working with other companies, they tend to like that we are using TFS over other bug defect trackers.
I've used a number of different project management/bug tracking systems over the years. In addition to JIRA, Bugzilla, and Basecamp I've also dealt with in-house bug tracking systems, which were by far the worst as we couldn't keep up with features and browser updates we needed, since that project was considered the lowest priority compared to actual paying projects. JIRA is probably my second favorite because of it's great customizable dashboard, but I think TFS is really powerful, and the fact that it can integrate with check-ins etc is what puts it a step above the rest.