John Bristowe

Great news! Earlier today, we announced Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, a process template built from the ground up specifically for Scrum teams. From MSDN:

Your team can practice Scrum more easily by using the artifacts in Visual Studio Scrum 1.0. Each artifact serves a specific function and provides opportunities to refine your processes over time. These artifacts include work items, reports, and team queries, and your team can use them to track information, analyze progress, and make decisions.

This process template was first announced at Microsoft TechEd 2010 in New Orleans earlier this summer and was recently updated to incorporate a number of new capabilities. You can read Brian Harry’s blog post to read more about its motivation. For the v1.0 release, Aaron Bjork provides a good summary of what to expect in this release on his blog. Of the questions listed, I found this one particularly interesting:

Q:  Did Microsoft work with Agile thought leaders when building this template? 
Absolutely. We worked closely with a group of Scrum experts and trainers teaching the new Professional Scrum Developer Program including Ken Schwaber fromhttp://www.scrum.org/. It was very important to us that this template be recognized by the community (you) as a great option for Scrum teams. The Professional Scrum Developer Program is taught with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0.

A Quick Installation Walkthrough

First, download and install Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 from the Visual Studio Gallery. It’s a (small) 483KB MSI package that will provide you with the files required for both the Process Template Manager (to install the Scrum process template) and your project portal (for the Scrum reports). As an alternative, you can download Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 via the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010 (listed under Online Gallery → Tools → Process Templates):

Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 in the Extension Manager of Visual Studio 2010

Next, launch the Process Template Explorer in Visual Studio 2010 (Team → Team Project Collection Settings → Process Template Manager...):

Process Template Manager

Click the Upload button and select the folder where the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 process template is installed (i.e. C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0\Process Template). Once installed, the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 should be listed in the Process Template Manager as follows:

 
Process Template Manager with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Installed

For projects based on this template, you should see the following structure listed in Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2010:

Team Explorer Structure with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Process Template Installed

As you can see in the image of the Team Explorer window (listed above), artifacts (like work items) are defined in accordance to the Scrum literature. You can create bugs, an impediment, sprints, and many other artifacts, all from within the Team Explorer window. It’s pretty awesome; almost as awesome as ahot dog vending machine.

By the way, if you’re looking for move the data of an existing project into a new project built from Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, you should check out the TFS Integration Platform project on CodePlex.

New Reports with Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

Here are a few screenshots of some of the new reports available in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0:

Velocity Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

If your team has completed multiple sprints, you can forecast release and product completion dates and plan future projects more accurately by reviewing the velocity report.

Sprint Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a sprint burndown report, you can track how much work remains in a sprint backlog, understand how quickly your team has completed tasks, and predict when your team will achieve the goal or goals of the sprint.

Release Burndown Report in Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0

By reviewing a release burndown report, you can understand how quickly your team has delivered backlog items and track how much work the team must still perform to complete a product release.

In addition to these three reports (above), we’ve also included four new reports to the template that focus on engineering metrics:

• Build Summary
• Builds Success Over Time
• Test Case Readiness
• Test Plan Progress

These reports are included in the MSI package and take about five minutes to install. There’s a Scrum SharePoint solution package that’s included (Microsoft.TeamFoundation.SharePoint.Scrum.wsp) and requires deployment to your SharePoint server.

Looking for more information? Check out a detailed overview of Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 on MSDN. Also, if you're looking to learn more about Scrum, I'd recommend checking out thehttp://scrum.org/. From the site: Scrum.org's purpose is to improve the profession of software development so that developers love their work and our customers love working with developers.

Related Links

• Announcing Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 by Aaron Bjork
• Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0
• TFS Integration Platform
• Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 (MSDN)
• Process Templates and Tools (MSDN)
• Scrum.org

Note: This post also appears on the Canadian Developer Connection.