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Developing ALM Solutions Using Visual Studio TFS 2015 (ALMI15)

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About this Course

This five-day course is designed to get your entire team working efficiently with Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management solution based around Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 or Visual Studio Online. The course is divided into different topics on each of the days to help you gain a complete understanding of the features and capabilities of Visual Studio 2015 and Team Foundation Server 2015.

This class is designed for individuals or complete development teams who need to learn how to use Visual Studio 2015 and Team Foundation Server 2015 for Agile software development. This course covers team development, project management, Agile development, Agile testing, and DevOps.

This course can also be taught onsite at your facilities and can be custom-tailored to meet the needs of team members and place emphasis on specific job roles to ensure a successful TFS deployment.

This course includes hands-on labs to reinforce practical skills and ensure you’re ready to use the tools upon your return to your workplace.

Audience Profile

This course is designed for all team members looking to effectively use the team-oriented features provided by Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and Team Foundation Server 2015. This includes developers, testers, project managers, and business analysts.

At Course Completion

At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to:

  • Describe the full feature set of Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management suite
  • Create team projects and team project collections as appropriate for your environment
  • Understand how Work Item Tracking (WIT) can be used across the entire team
  • Create custom work item queries and alerts
  • Use a variety of client tools to interact with team members and TFS
  • Use the version control system to maintain source code as well as branch and merge code
  • Improve code using the Code Review Workflow in My Work
  • Enhance team collaboration using Team Rooms
  • Create automated builds and automate the execution of unit tests
  • Manage their projects using the Agile planning tools
  • Create portfolio backlogs to help manage large projects
  • Manage work in teams including sprints and backlogs
  • Create test plans, test suites, and test cases
  • Perform a variety of testing using the testing tools in Microsoft Test Manager
  • Raise information-rich bugs and verify them once resolved
  • Use the new web-based Test Case Management interface
  • Perform exploratory testing
  • Configure build automation using the new build system in 2015
  • Create and modify builds to include automated testing and deployment
  • Configure Application Insights to monitor application telemetry

Prerequisites

Attendees should be familiar with Visual Studio and the basic use of Team Foundation Server or Visual Studio Online.

Course Outline

Module 1.1 - Introducing Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 and Team Foundation Server 2015

  • What’s new in Visual Studio 2015
  • Overview of the Visual Studio 2015 family
  • A lap around Visual Studio Online

Module 1.2 - Organizing Work with Team Projects

  • Organizing projects in TFS or VS Online
  • Understanding process templates
  • Creating a new team project
  • Setting team project properties

Module 1.3 - Managing Work Using Work Items

  • Overview of work items
  • Traceability between work items
  • Creating custom queries
  • Work item charting and pinning charts
  • Work item tagging
  • Configuring project alerts and notifications

Module 1.4 - Integrating the Team Using Different Clients

  • Using Team Explorer
  • Using Microsoft Excel to create and manage work items
  • Using Microsoft Project to integrate with work items
  • Team Web Access
  • Third-party clients

Module 2.1 - Creating Our Product Backlog

  • Examining requirement types
  • Creating backlog items
  • Creating requirement hierarchies using features
  • The importance of acceptance criteria

Module 2.2 - Agile Estimation

  • Introduction to estimation
  • Using story points
  • Planning poker and other popular estimation techniques
  • Adding your estimates to TFS work items

Module 2.3 – Working from the Product Backlog

  • Introducing the Kanban board
  • Entering and editing details on the Kanban board
  • Customising columns, including using split columns and limiting WIP
  • Recording our Definition of Done (DoD)
  • Understanding the cumulative flow diagram

Module 2.4 – Working in Sprints

  • Specifying your sprint schedule and your team capacity
  • Selecting items for the sprint backlog using forecasting
  • Decomposing requirements into tasks
  • Using burndown charts to track progress
  • Monitoring work using the task board
  • Working with unparented work items

Module 2.5 - Using Storyboards

  • Overview of storyboarding capabilities
  • Creating a storyboard to illustrate a requirement
  • Linking a storyboard to a work item

Module 3.1 - TFS Version Control Concepts

  • Version Control in Visual Studio
  • Version Control terminology
  • A closer look at workspaces
  • Changesets and shelvesets

Module 3.2 - Using Team Foundation Version Control

  • The Source Control Explorer
  • Getting code into TFVC
  • Understanding the Pending Changes experience
  • Linking changesets to work items
  • Locking files in TFVC

Module 3.3 – Configuring an Effective Version Control Environment

  • Working with workspaces
  • Setting team project-wide source control settings
  • Check-in policies
  • Backward compatibility using the MSSCCI provider
  • Using TFS Shell Integration (PowerTool)

Module 3.4 – Branching and Merging

  • Defining a branching strategy
  • How to branch
  • Branch visualisation and tracking changes
  • Merging and resolving conflicts
  • Custom differencing tools

Module 3.5 - Unit Testing and Code Quality Tools

  • Unit testing in Visual Studio
  • Visual Studio Test Explorer
  • Code metrics
  • Static Code Analysis

Module 4.1 - Creating Our First Test Plan

  • Creating a test plan
  • Creating test suites
  • Mapping requirements to tests
  • Mapping our effort to specific builds
  • Configuring test settings, including data collectors

Module 4.2 - Authoring Test Cases

  • Creating and managing test cases
  • Creating reusable shared steps
  • Databinding our test cases
  • Using shared parameters

Module 4.3 - Executing Test Cases

  • Assigning a test case to a tester
  • Navigating the Microsoft Test Runner
  • Recording reliable action recordings
  • Test Case Fast Forward

Module 4.4 - Raising and Verifying Bugs

  • Raising a bug from the Microsoft Test Runner
  • View bug states
  • Verifying a bug fix

Module 4.5 - Exploratory Testing with MTM

  • What is exploratory testing?
  • Exploratory testing in Microsoft Test Manager
  • Creating bugs and test cases from exploratory tests

Module 5.1 - An Overview of DevOps

  • Demystifying the DevOps buzzword
  • Understanding DevOps value
  • How the Microsoft stack supports DevOps

Module 5.2 - Continuous Integration and Build Automation

  • Understanding the new 2015 build infrastructure
  • Creating new build definitions
  • Configuring continuous integration
  • Build customisation
  • Working with legacy XAML builds

Module 5.3 - Continuous Deployment

  • Creating a release pipeline
  • Overview of deployment options
  • Deploying applications to Azure

Module 5.4 - Continuous Testing

  • Configuring automated testing
  • Web tests and load tests

Module 5.5 - Monitoring your application using Application Insights

  • Overview of Application Insights
  • Monitoring application availability
  • Monitoring application performance
  • Viewing diagnostic information