How to track team's time utilization using tfs

Question

We have started using TFS 2012 as part of moving to Scrum methodology. One challenge that we are facing is that though I can set up the capacity per day of each team member, I have no clear idea as to which employee will be free(after completing the assigned task) so that I can tag him to the next sprint. I believe this has something to do with MS Project syncing to TFS 2012. Please shed some light on this.

Basically I want to look at each team member's work end date with respect to the current sprint. Is it possible in TFS 2012? If not, what is the alternative?

Answer 1

Your request doesn't really make sense from a purist perspective. In Scrum teams a member doesn't get individual task assignments and team members don't individually move from one sprint to another. In Scrum a team works as a collaborative group, together working on the goal that was set for the sprint.

To achieve the goal during a sprint the whole team collaboratively creates a plan. This may involve backlog items and tasks. This is what TFS allows you to model. Individuals or even multiple developers then volunteer to do a task (some of the plan may have already selected ideal team members for the task, but that doesn't mean that person is solely responsible for it). This is also how TFS is used by scrum teams when using the Scrum process template.

As such the functionality you're asking for does not exist when using the Scrum template. When using the CMMI process template (optionally linked to Project Server) you can do these type of assignments. You can then also plan overall "releases" and you don't have to use "sprints".

So what you want is not possible. It's not possible because that's not how Scrum intends it.

What are your alternatives:

• You can ignore the way it's meant to be used and open the task board, filter by team member and see if there is any remaining work associated to that team member. There is no way to "move the team member" to a new sprint, but you could move additional work into the current sprint. Normally the Scrum team would see that it has additional time available during the Daily scrum and then work with the product owner to see what other PBI's they may be able to pick up in that sprint.
• Convert to CMMI, though I don't recommend it when you're planning to implement Scrum as it's intended. It's not an easy conversion and I suspect that most developers won't like it, but tools like WitMorph can be used to move your scrum template to the CMMI template to enable full project server integration.
• Hack the scrum template to support MsProject. I really don't recommend this, as it makes proper scrum adoption a lot harder.

Much better solutions would be to:

• Learn about TFS and Scrum online:
  • Pluralsight has a course TFS as well as Scrum
  • as does this Microsoft Virtual Academy course on TFS.
  • Read The Scrum Guide
• This great book by Richard Hundhausen: Professional Scrum Development.
• Take an in-person Scrum.org PSD.NET class to better understand how to use TFS in the context of Scrum. Learning both the tools (Visual Studio and TFS) and the framework (Scrum) to build your team on. You can already test your knowledge using the Scrum.org Open Assessment for Scrum in general and Development Practices.

I personally recommend to experience the usage of the tools first-hand and in-person. But then again, I'm a scrum trainer myself and have had a lot of people in my classes who left with a firm grasp of how to apply the tools the way they're intended.