ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness – Part 3: A small peek at the upcoming TFS Upgrade Guidance

This is part to an exploration of the upcoming ALM Rangers solutions for Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server 11. Previous posts:

• ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness – Part 1: A small peek at the upcoming TFS Planning Guide
• ALM Rangers Visual Studio 11 Readiness – Part 2: A small peek at the upcoming TFS Branching and Merging Guidance

In this post we are taking a look at the Upgrade Guidance which also delivered a great ALPHA release:

An important sidebar note is that the Planning and Upgrade Guide cross-reference each other heavily. Typically when you have an existing environment and wish to upgrade/migrate to the next version, you typically have to plan + upgrade.

Abstract

Deliver practical and scenario based guidance for the upgrade scenarios and post-upgrade issues for Team Foundation Server.

Epics

The Epics included in the guidance are:

• I would like to understand what’s new in Team Foundation Server 11 Upgrade Process
• I would like to understand the supported Upgrade paths.
• I would like guidance with step-by-step Instruction on how to upgrade my existing Team Foundation Server environment
• I would like a checklist with Pre and Post upgrade steps I can follow to ensure a smooth and successful upgrade
• I would like to understand how to upgrade my previous Process template to make use of Team Foundation Server 11 features.

Extract

On the left the guidance outline and on the right an early quick reference cheat sheet:

Great stuff Pramod Vasanth and team!

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 27, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 28, 2011
  From the team: Very Interesting comment … Upgrading Custom WITs is covered in TFS Process Template Upgrade Guide, but items like PCW, build types are not covered (yet).The project lead uis discussing these upgrade scenarios with the product owner and we will consider including them in the next revision.

• Anonymous
  December 28, 2011
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  December 28, 2011
  Great feedback which I will share with the team :) One thing that is probably important to highlight is that the current focus of this project is primarily on Team Foundation Server, not Visual Studio. We will discuss how we can embrace the Visual Studio scenarios in futrure revisions.

• Anonymous
  January 27, 2012
  What will the new TP types be Agile 6.0 and CMMI 6.0? What new features will they bring to the table that possibly our old Agile 5.0 and CMMI 5.0 projects wont be able to utilize? I agree with Chicago_mike a clear set of documentation for these upgrades needs to be out at the beginning. Coming into 2010 we had a several month delay while we worked out with Microsoft the best way to upgrade our 4.3s to 5.0. I dont look forward to that process again but teams do not want to create new TPs which is understandable. Furthermore we now have these "upgraded" Team projects and I am wondering how they are going to play with any new conversion steps we might need to do  going into TFS 11. Additionally will Scrum1.0 be available or be getting a revision so that it works with TFS11?