As momentum to adopt TFS builds, many organizations and individuals are overwhelmed by its complexity. They feel as though “we’ve bought the Dreamliner. Now if we could just figure out how to make it take off, fly to Paris and land.” In a large company where we’re assisting with migration from Visual Source Safe to TFS, we’ve recently held getting-started presentations. Each presentation is to 20 or so developers, analysts and managers. The overwhelming consensus is that TFS is a powerful and very useful foundation, but that there needs to be a more user-friendly tool on top of it that provides a simpler interface, and that provides real Agile guidance that walks the user through the Agile process, rather than simply providing the raw tools to do so.
In talking to Adam Gallant, Microsoft Technology Solutions Professional for Developer Tools, I understand that Microsoft recognizes that TFS does not provide a “great end user experience” and they are intentionally leaving the door open to 3rd party developers to create such tools.
Keep an eye open in the new year for these tools to start to emerge.