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Is Visual Studio Team System for Me?

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I’ve been asked this many times over the last few weeks and I though I would put a little flesh around it and tell you what I think.

Disclaimer – I’ve not done the products justice here, please don’t take any of these comments as even a partial feature list…

  1. Yes Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) is for you….
  2. All of you….

Why – Explain Yourself?

Well it’s [VSTS] our most integrated and fully featured development toolset. It’s got a whole host of useful features directly integrated into the development environment.

We did this for a simple reason, to increase developer productivity.

Admittedly productivity some people were getting through a set of non-integrated 3rd party tools. The downside for many of these tools is that they tend to be harder to set up and maintain requiring an additional investment of time – taking you away from wring code.

But I love my tools:

I’m not saying the third party tools are bad – quite the opposite I rate them very, very highly and would recommend them to anyone working with VS2003. I’ve done many a presentation to customers on NUnit, Codesmith, NAnt, NDoc, CruseControl, … If you like using them and can’t live without your custom NAnt script then feel free to keep using them.

All we want to do with VSTS is to seamlessly integrate a number of these concepts into a single integrated toolset.

So I can stick to Just Visual Studio 2005?

If you like setting up NAnt, NUnit, CruseControl, … yourself then perhaps you might want to stick with VS2005 Professional and use these or similar 3rd party tools. You will have everything you had in the past and far, far more based on the .NST 2.0 and VS2005 enhancements e.g.

  • IDE – layout improvements, speed, refactoring, class designer, expansions, …

  • Languages - generics, anonymous classes, partial classes, edit and continue (yes edit and continue in VB .NET and C#)…

  • ASP .NET – 40+ new controls, navigation, caching, membership, personalization, themes, skins, web parts, master pages, source Preservation, …

  • WinForms – new controls, click once, control alignment, office tool bars, …

That’s without even mentioning ADO .NET 2.0, Web Services , …. so much and so little time – Oh well…

But back to VSTS…

To make this a little more manageable let’s just talk about Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Developers (which is one of the three role based versions of VSTS, the other two are focused on Architects and Testers).

  • Unit Testing – like NUnit is but directly built into the IDE. No command line or plug-ins required. Right click and create a skeleton test, run a test, … all great stuff.

  • Code Coverage – once again directly in the IDE see the code literally color coded to show coverage. No more custom XSLT for NCover…

  • Static Analysis – Directly into the IDE for all languages, make your own rules and run them. No more external FXCop to run over each DLL.

  • Code Profiling – test code as it runs for performance – see where the bottle-necks are. Two different approaches supported.

  • ….

Having these tools directly integrated into the base functionality of VS2005 has got to be good thing… right?

I don’t think there is any debate about how good this functionality is, the question is, are you prepared to pay more for the added productivity of these items being tightly integrated within the toolset? That’s your choice…

Team Foundation Server:

Some people appear to get a little confused around the goal of Team Foundation Server – they don’t feel they need some of the Functionality that is included.

To quickly remind people of some of the core functionality in Team Foundation Server:

  • Work Item Tracking – items everywhere Excel, Project, VS2005 IDE – this provides a workflow for issues and should ease the Project Mangers life. Far fewer morning ‘scrumbs’ and less thrashing…

  • Source Code Control – more sophisticated than Source Safe (e.g. better Merge, Branch and Shelve) and designed for bigger and more complex projects. Built upon SQL Server.

  • Project Portal – the entire team can see the projects progress. Graphs and reports show the coverage of the code, unit test passes, code churn, … Storage of the core documents that relate to the project life cycle (oh yeah we have life cycle support as well – oh well another time).

  • Build Engine – daily/nighly builds pre and post conditions reports on these in the server. Bliss…

  • …

Now before I proceed I should mention you don’t need Foundation Server to use the features I covered in the section on Visual Studio Team System for Software Developers – they just work with or without it – you could use source safe and be done with it.

Got that you don’t _need_ Foundation Server.

However, add VSTS for Software Developers to Foundation Server and you get even more integration like post check-in rules to ensure Static Analysis has been pasted or that unit tests are written and a certain amount of the code is covered… Cool eh?

Ok But I Resent Having to Buy Foundation Server Separately:

You don’t need to….

Each of the role based versions of VSTS (Test, Architect and Developer) include a copy of Foundation Server. That version is limited to 5 users but that is enough for many projects or organizations. If you want more that 5 users you need to buy Foundation Server as a separate product.

Conclusion:

If you are a smaller shop say less then 5 people and you have some bright passionate people around then perhaps you might not see the value of VSTS. However, for most, the productivity gained in using VSTS over just VS2005 will (at least I believe) justify the additional cost.

One again I don’t think the debate is over whether or not the features are going to help (or why would so many people use the 3rd party tools today? because they save time!) it’s just whether you would like a single integrated tool or to use a set of other tools that you know and love.

No prize for guessing what I’d recommend!

That’s all really…

Don’t believe me try it…

Get out there and have a look at the products, see for yourselves https://www.microsoft.co.nz/vs2005beta (sorry NZ only).

--
This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    May 26, 2005
    It's a pitty, though, that no code documentation tool is built in in VS2005. The one that was built in in VS2002/3 is removed, so you can get nDoc of the list of tools that VSTS could replace...
  • Anonymous
    May 26, 2005
    Hi Sean,

    You've done a good job in introducing some of the basic concepts here.

    So - from a 1 -5 developer shop's perspective, there seem to be a myriad of options for buying team system and team foundation server.

    How much does it cost to get 1 developer licensed with this software if no pre-existing MSDN subscription or VS2005 license exists? If solo developers want to upgrade from VS 2003, what is their most cost effective method of getting to VS 2005, with Team System Included (and without TS for comparison). If the Role based version isn't the one suggested here, how much extra is it to get a role based version, and therefore Team Foundation Server?
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2005
    Costs in New Zealand have not been finalized yet - however you can just buy MSDN Universal today and get a free upgrade to one of the three VSTS (Architect, Developer or Test) when they are released. The best way to buy MSDN universal for a small shop is via open licensing (see http://www.microsoft.co.nz/msdnopen).

    This will be the most cost effective way to purchase them no matter what. We are providing existing MSDN Universal subscribers with this free upgrade and when the VSTS versions some out they will actually cost more then MSDN Universal today does.

    Sean
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2005
    I'm not 100% sure on the documentation generation support in VS2005 - I did not think we have removed that option.

    I do know that we have added XML Comments to VB .NET in VS2005 not just C# so that you can generate documents for both languages - so that does surprise me.

    Sean
  • Anonymous
    May 27, 2005
    On genaration of documentation I did a quick search and you are right it's not in VS2005 so NDoc it is.

    See: http://blogs.msdn.com/ericgu/archive/2004/06/25/166046.aspx
  • Anonymous
    June 04, 2005
    Visual Studio Team System


    Bill Sheldon from InterKnowlogy has an item in the June 3rd edition of...