Monday, December 8, 2008

Deleting work items from TFS 2008

I think that Microsoft has a very careless approach to managing work items in team studio, let alone making a new work item type is in any way streamlined (I will write about this in my next entry) but just deleting a work item is a task in itself, which was only introduced in Team Foundation Server Power Tools through the console, and was not available in 2005.

Here are the links that describe how to delete a work item:

Install  the Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools: 

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/tfs2008/bb980963.aspx

 

Video: “How Do I: Destroy Work Items and Work Item Types?”

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/teamsystem/cc700982.aspx

 

Basically: from the command prompt launch:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2008 Power Tools\TFPT.exe destroywi  /server: /workitemid:

 

And even after that the work item is not completely destroyed:

http://stevennagy.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!B2EFDBF0964586B3!238.entry


Overall this gives me the feeling that management of work items in team studio is incomplete, especially in contrast to build management, testing, source control and even the high level of integration of the documentation into the development lifecycle. I just don’t understand why Microsoft can’t be bothered to implement management of work items in a decent manner.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Answer is MSF trade-off triangle. You always must leave something out of scope.

Dead Smile said...

I think it was acceptable in VS2005, but now 4 years down the line and an integrated visual tool that executes just one command is not unreasonable.

Anonymous said...

No.
Good example is scroll bar in Windows Mobile. You cannot switch it from right side to left . And there left handed persons and there are Hebrew like languages. So, It was acceptable several years ago in Windows Mobile 4 of 5. But now a mobile operating system must take in to consideration such features. And yet Windows Mobile 6 does not have it.

The logic is simple. You can workaround this issue (blaming Microsoft for stupidity). This decreases the priority. Then there big features which is unimportant for you but critically important for businesses. Like encryption of memory cards. As result simple/small/workaroundable features are implemented after much longer period. And sometimes Much measn never.

Dead Smile said...

I see your point, you sound just like out technical operations manager, I just disagree with this approach.

I will try to develop an add-on into visual studio to do just that, and we will see actually how difficult this is.

Anonymous said...

And you will see only how difficult to implement it. And this has nothing to do with priority, resource management and trade-off triangle. Remember that implementing left-side scroll bar is trivial task.

Your estimation is wrong because you do not take in to consideration for example testing. It does not matter if you implemented feature . What is matters is if you tested it enough to meet quality standard.
Trivial task does not means it will be trivial to test. And always there is minimal amount of testing you must perform regardless of simplicity of feature. Testing is not simple - in Microsoft for any one developer working on a feature there is another developer who is testing it.

To get an idea do the following before starting anything:
1. Estimate amount of time you are willing to spend on testing add-on including testing against different versions of VS with different service packs on different Windows (at least count against how many configurations your are willing to test).
2. Estimate amount of time you are willing to spend on documenting add-on.
3. Estimate amount of time you are willing to spend on supporting add-on including testing for upcoming patches and service packs for VS on several versions of Windows.

Then multiply it by 3. This is realistic time correction . Now multiply it by your salary per hour. This is how much it will cost you. And all of this is without actual coding.

Do it and you will see that instead of developing it is better come to Limassol and have few pints of beer. At least you do not need to support it :)

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