Visual Studio Team System 2008 expert George Duke demonstrates the basics of working in a team environment to create high quality software using Microsoft’s highest-end edition of Visual Studio. Throughout the series he demonstrates the installation steps and basic usage and techniques, but more importantly discusses the philosophy behind the need for the processes and methodologies required when working on large projects.

About the Author:

George is a software engineer with a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix and a diversity of development experience in both small and enterprise companies including automotive, aerospace, government, communications and medical industries.

George has been integrating software development best practices into these companies using the latest technologies from Microsoft for over the past decade. Currently George is working on a project to significantly reduce patient safety issues for a cancer diagnostic company in Tucson Arizona where he lives with his wife Sarah.

This series is organized into 3 days’ worth of material:

Day 1

VSTS401_01_01 – Components of VSTS 2008

This video provides an overiew of how the pieces of Visual Stusio Team System 2008 fit together, and covering how each of these tools are valuable to your team.

VSTS401_01_02 – Setting up and Connecting to TFS 2008

This video covers how install and configure Team Foundation Server 2008 and Team Build Server, also you will learn how to connect to your Team Foundation Server from Visual Studio.

VSTS401_01_03 – Creating a Team Project in TFS 2008

This video demonstrates how to create a team project in Visual Studio 2008 and configure the related settings while giving you a detailed description of what you get with TFS Team Project.

VSTS401_01_04 – VSTS 2008 Work Items

This video walks through creating work items and querying those items in TFS 2008, you will also learn how to make modifications to work items.

VSTS401_01_05 – VSTS 2008 Notifications

This video demonstrates how to create notifications for work item changes, checkins and builds, you will also learn how to Team Foundation Power Tools to get notifications on build events.

Day 2

VSTS401_02_01 – TFS Source Control Concepts

This video will cover the basic of source control. It explains some of the development challenges that source control solves while showing you the basic features VSTS 2008 provides for source control. You will learn about workspaces, locks, history and much more.

VSTS401_02_02 – TFS 2008 Changesets, Checkins and Shelvesets

This video breaks down the various component of source control into detail, explaining how they work and what is happening behind the scenes. You will lean what happens when you checkin your code and the impact that has on other members of your team you share the code with.

VSTS401_02_03 – Branching and Merging in TFS

In this video we will explain what branching and merging is, why you do it and some of the pitfalls to watch out for. We will also give a basic introduction to branching and merging strategies.

Day 3

VSTS401_03_01 – Creating a Team Build

This video will cover the creation of a basic team build and explain some of the reasons why having a dedicated build server and automated build process can benefit your team.

VSTS401_03_02 – Customizing a Team Build

This video will cover taking a basic build created by the wizard and making it do more through custom targets and tasks. You will learn how to move the functionality from your Team Build project file and place it in your own custom target.

VSTS401_03_03 – Build Automation with Team Build 2008

This video builds on the previous two videos and puts the pieces together on how to automate some common tasks in you build process.