Overview of Process

As part of planning your Team Foundation Server deployment, you must determine what processes you want to use for each of your projects on your Team Foundation server. You can choose to use a different process template when you create each project, or you can choose to use the same process template for all your projects.

What is Process?

Most businesses have some established ways of getting work completed, from loosely-organized tasks to highly formalized systems. These methods for getting work completed are called processes, and the collection of processes is called process. Processes develop over time to meet business needs. Many companies and organizations have formalized process and process guidance to help companies work more efficiently. Whether you have very little formal process in your current business, or a great deal of customized process development, you can use Team Foundation and Team Foundation Server to help support and develop your own business processes.

Team Foundation and Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 integrate with the Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF), a highly customizable and scalable set of software development processes, principles, and proven practices designed to deliver the type of guidance desired by the user when and where it is needed. For more information about the Microsoft Solutions Framework and process, see Visual Studio 2005 Team System: Microsoft Solutions Framework (https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=51459).

Process Templates

When you create a new project in Team Foundation Server, by default you can choose between two different process templates, MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. Each of the templates is based on a different MSF process with a different philosophical approach to software development. These templates shape how the project is set up. Each of these process templates gives you a different set of default work items, work item queries, product templates, reports, security groups, and guidance when you create a project using that template.

You can customize either of these process templates to better suit your individual business needs. For more information about managing process templates, see Process Template Manager and Customizing Process Templates.

Process and the Team Foundation Server Administrator

Although it might seem like a simple choice during the project creation, choosing a process to follow is not as easy as randomly picking a process template within Team Foundation Server. The choice of process and the process template should be based on how your business works, your current business needs, and how you want your business to work in the future. However, process choice decisions are not usually left up to the Team Foundation Server administrator. As the Team Foundation Server administrator, you will be more concerned with implementing whatever process choices that are made, and understanding how the choice of process affects Team Foundation Server deployment and operation.

See Also

Concepts

Choosing a Process Template

Other Resources

Process Template Manager
Customizing Process Templates