Process Template Customization Plan
Customizing a process template is an iterative process. You need a Team Foundation Server where you can test your process template to make sure it was customized correctly. Generally, you use the following steps to customize a process template.
Customize
After downloading an existing, working process template, the first step is to make your changes. For more information on downloading a process template, see How to: Download a Process Template. The first time you customize a process template, make a small change. If you try to make numerous changes without a clear understanding of how the changes may affect your template, you risk encountering multiple mistakes that will be difficult to debug.
Plan your change, and update the appropriate XML to implement the change.
Upload
The next step is to upload the process template to a Team Foundation Server. Ideally you should use a Team Foundation Server that is not in use by other teams to avoid introducing a process that is still being worked on.
Be sure that the name of your process template is unique. If you downloaded a process template from Team Foundation Server, made a change, and are now uploading, you must change the name, or delete the existing process from Team Foundation Server.
The upload process performs a verification check to ensure the XML is valid. If you get any errors trying to upload the process template, the change you made caused the error. Review your change to be sure the XML is still valid and that the change is correct. For more information, see How to: Upload a Process Template.
Create Team Project
After uploading a process template, you must create a team project so that you can verify your change. Run the New Team Project Wizard and create a test team project. If any errors occur, be sure to look at the team project creation log. It contains a list of the tasks it tried to run, and which ones failed. You can map failed tasks back to the XML to determine the cause of the errors.
Verify Changes
If the team project is created successfully, perform additional steps to verify that your change appears in the team project correctly. If you added a report, make sure it appears in Team Explorer. If you removed a work item type, be sure the work item type you removed is no longer available. For each plug-in documented, there is a list of verification steps to help you ensure that your changes are implemented. For more information, see Verifying Changes to the Process Template Plug-ins.
Work Item Types
Work Items can be handled differently when you customize them. There is no need to create new team projects to test work item type changes. You can use the witimport command-line utility to upload updated work item type XML into an existing team project. You can make all of your changes and verify them using the witimport utility and a team project. For more information, see witimport.
Deleting a Team Project
The act of creating a new process template will inevitably create many test team projects. You can clean up unnecessary team projects using the DeleteTeamProject command-line utility. TFSDeleteProject is located in the Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE. For more information, see TFSDeleteProject.
To delete a team project using the TFSDeleteProject command-line utility |
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TFSDeleteProject /server:<serverName> <project name> |
For example, to delete a team project named ProcessTest from a Team Foundation Server named teamstage5, type the following at the command line |
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TFSDeleteProject /server:teamstage5 ProcessTest |
See Also
Tasks
Walkthrough: Creating a New Team Project