Finding the right piece of information in the multitude of different work items managed within the development process is difficult. Keeping up with the latest developments related to those work items is even more difficult. TeamCompanion offers an easy and efficient solution how to stay on top of all events and be able to find the information you need, keep up with the development and be instantly aware of any changes.

Welcome to the second blog entry in our series about real-life project scenarios, where we show how, with the help of TeamCompanion, you can handle different realistic situations you come across every day in your development process. In the previous blog, we showed you how TeamCompanion enables Scrum teams to resolve capacity and prioritization issues more efficiently.

This time we will take a look at how, irrespective of the role you have, you can get instant visibility into only those types of information you want to keep on your radar. Just two steps are needed: firstly precisely define the set of work items you are interested in by using predefined or custom work item queries. Then, schedule the execution of those queries. In this way, TeamCompanion will inform you about any changes to corresponding work items in near real time and in the least intrusive way - by highlighting changed work items as "unread", the same way Outlook does for unread emails.

Picking Up and Scheduling Queries You Want to Keep on Your Radar

With TFS, we get many useful queries or views in the work item database out of the box. However, not all of them are equally useful to everyone and members of different roles will likely use different pre-canned queries in search for specific information they require.

Adam, the Product Owner is interested in the backlog queries of a specific project – the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog. He has added them to his Outlook’s Favorites.

Additionally, he has scheduled the execution of those queries to an interval of 30 minutes which suits his working rhythm. TeamCompanion offers various options for defining how often a query will be executed. You can preset the desired recurrence patterns in minutes, hours or days and define the schedule time span.

In this way, Adam can keep the 2 particular queries, the Product Backlog and the Sprint Backlog, in sight and be notified in near real time if any work item belonging to the query result sets changes. Each query will be refreshed according to the defined schedule, which will automatically retrieve the current state of work items from TFS and highlight changed work items as "unread" in the query result list. Adam will instantly see the count of unread work items appearing next to the work item query name in the Navigation pane. Additionally, when he views the query result, the changed work items will appear in bold text in the result list. As expected, TeamCompanion will not bother Adam with changes he made – he will be notified only about the changes made by other team members.

The query result list is the starting point for all work item management tasks. Adam can easily browse through the list, use powerful searching and filtering options, and sort or group the query result set. He can easily see all the details of the work item selected in the list in either the embedded work item form or in the HTML preview, edit work items or execute various actions on them.

Different Perspective for Different Roles

Let’s check the perspective of two additional project roles.

Cameron, the Portfolio Manager, is one or two management levels above Adam, and he manages the whole project portfolio – a series of projects, one of which is the project where Adam is the product owner. He must therefore have a broader perspective and track the progress on multiple projects simultaneously. He would use a query like Portfolio Status, which shows high level epic work items for multiple projects.

On the other hand, Julia’s information worker level is much more tactical. On her radar she keeps just the items that are related to her current assignments - My Tasks, My Bugs and My Issues. She will add these three queries to her Favorites.

Scheduled Query Execution versus Standard Email Notifications

The TFS built-in email notifications are the standard way to get notified about changes to work items. You can define several basic (using predefined templates) and advanced criteria (defined using more complex expressions) when to receive email notifications about changes on the server.

On the other hand, TeamCompanion notifies you in the context of existing work item queries by regularly executing them according to defined schedules. TeamCompanion elegantly utilizes the same paradigm used by Outlook for emails, which works equally well for work items: whenever there are new or changed work items, they are highlighted and the total number of changed items appears to the right of the work item query name.

There are several benefits of scheduled query execution when compared to standard email notifications:

· It is much easier to precisely define the set of work items you are interested in using work item queries than using the standard email notification subscription UI.

· It is often difficult to determine whether you are interested in each specific change without analyzing the notification email. You may use email rules and automatically forward notification messages to specific folders, but that would only partly solve the problem.
With scheduled execution of work item queries and highlighting of “unread” changed items, you can instantly see which work items have been changed and whether you want to analyze these changes or ignore them. This is an easy and efficient solution with far reaching effects, which improves the efficiency and thus reduces cycle time.

· Last but not least, email notification subscriptions can easily quickly generate hundreds or thousands of notifications emails. As we are all already overwhelmed by too many emails, any tool that can save us from additional email spam is welcome. Scheduled query execution, which highlights "unread" changed work items in near real time, is precisely such a tool, which helps you keep up with the latest developments in the least intrusive way.

In this scenario, you saw how Adam, the Product Owner, Cameron, the Portfolio Manager, and Julia, an Information Worker, can easily pick up work item queries they want to keep on their radar, schedule their execution and be assured that they will be notified about work item changes in near real time, without overloading their inbox.

So, what are you waiting for? Schedule your queries and relax until you get notified about the next change…

Looking forward to our next real-life project scenario?

With TeamCompanion, you can try out different offline capacity and prioritization scenarios before you finally pick the one that best suits your situation.

In order to illustrate how you can easily reassign tasks in unplanned situations with TeamCompanion, we will walk you through a real-life scenario.

Furthermore, this is the first in a series of blog entries about real-life project scenarios. We intent to show how, with the help of TeamCompanion, you can handle different realistic situations you come across every day in your development process.

Offline “What if” Scenario

Adam, the Product Owner, receives an e-mail from Brian, saying that the team members have some additional unplanned absences during the sprint, and that now, two days before the sprint end, they are short of time. This means that they are not going to be able to complete the work that they agreed on at the beginning of the sprint. Due to such unexpected conditions and very tight deadlines, the outcome of the entire project might be compromised. In such circumstances, Adam has to quickly react.

With TeamCompanion, Adam can visualize all related information and therefore quickly and efficiently resolve capacity and prioritization issues.

He takes a look at the Sprint backlog and the corresponding burndown chart to see how the team is progressing. The burndown currently looks fine, meaning that, until this point, the team was doing a good job.

Next, he needs to check the team capacity as announced in the email. Cameron will be absent until the end of the sprint, and he is currently 15 hours overloaded. Brian is absent today only. He also is overloaded, but only by 4 hours. The embedded statistic for team capacity shows that the team has 39 hours of work planned in total until the end of the sprint and that there are only 23 hours available. Adam is forced to make changes to the sprint backlog in order to make it realistic once again.

Adam filters his view of the sprint backlog to show only active tasks and not yet done PBIs. Now, he can see just the remaining active tasks. On the Team pane, he can analyze the remaining capacity chart. As the sprint is near its end, the team has already agreed on who is going to work on the remaining tasks, and therefore all members except Annie are already at capacity or overloaded.

Annie has only 3 free hours left, which is not enough to take over Brian’s and Cameron’s tasks.

The 1^st PBI in the list is already fully in progress, so it doesn’t make sense to change it. The 2^nd PBI has just partially started. The work on the 3^rd PBI needs yet to be started. Adam decides to fully remove the 3^rd PBI from the current sprint. He clicks on the Iterations pane in the right hand bar, and drags the 3^rd PBI from the sprint backlog list to the product backlog list item in Iterations pane.

All charts and statistics are automatically adjusted. The team capacity statistic now shows that 16 out of 23 hours are needed. So the team now has 7 unassigned hours. That will be their buffer – less than one man day. Annie, Brian and Julia have now 8, 3 and 4 hours left respectively.

In the TFS Web Access, you can check whether adjustments in the project plan are feasible only after committing real work item changes to TFS. This is not the case with TeamCompanion’s agile planning tools! Here, you can use our offline support and inline charts and statistics to analyze different “what-if” scenarios, without actually committing any changes to the server.

As a Product Owner, it’s not up to Adam to assign tasks to team members. He just needs to verify whether the sprint plan is feasible after his changes. He wants to check one of the possible “what-if” scenarios by reassigning tasks in offline mode.

He drags and drops tasks from the sprint backlog list either on the Team pane or on the Members pane in the right hand bar. All changed work items are shown in italic, indicating that these are only local, offline changes, that you can either save to the server or discard (undo).

The plan seems to be feasible once again. All team members even have some spare time left! Adam concludes that this change will help the team successfully finish the sprint with a small adjustment. On the Plan and Prioritize ribbon, he clicks on the Undo button to undo all the changes he made.

Finally, he needs to adjust the sprint backlog once again, by removing the last PBI and let the team assign the remaining tasks as they see fit. So, once again, Adam drags the 3^rd PBI from the sprint backlog list to the product backlog list item in the Iterations pane in the right hand bar. On the Plan and Prioritize ribbon, he clicks Save to save only this change. The team will do the rest by themselves.

In this scenario, you saw how Adam, the Product Owner, can easily workout different solutions and pick the one that represents the best solution for a particular project scenario. He will save all changes only after he reaches a feasible solution. In this way, he is able to quickly react and easily adjust the plan in order to bring the team back on track. TeamCompanion guarantees a fast and efficient resolution of prioritization and capacity issues and ensures smooth and continuous flow throughout the entire development process.

Keep an eye on our next scenario!

Work Items get premier treatment in Outlook

Outlook is the most familiar e-mail management tool and calendar software that helps you stay in touch with your email, tasks, contacts and meetings. Wouldn’t you just love to have the same experience when working with Work Items on your Project?

TeamCompanion allows you to handle Work Items the same way as we work with our email in Outlook. Familiar user experience brings wealth of benefits; higher efficiency and easy way to learn and adopt product features. Basically, Outlook user experience simply applies to handling your Work Items.

To illustrate the simplicity and Outlook familiarity here are a few TeamCompanion features that will best describe it:

Multilevel grouping

Multilevel grouping is the unique TeamCompanion feature not available in other TFS clients (Team Explorer, TFS Web Access). This function allows you grouping of Work Items by multiple fields.

Filtering and Searching

Good Search is very important feature of any product. It helps you to find important things in just a few clicks. Search functionality in TeamCompanion is also an advantage. TeamCompanion enables you with full text search and search across all fields. On the other side, Microsoft TFS clients only offer search for title and description fields. TeamCompanion also enables HTML preview for searched Work Items where search terms are highlighted.

Reminders, To-Do-Flags and Favorites folders

TeamCompanion brings synergy effects of Outlook. You can use standard Outlook features like Reminders and To-Do Flags, even when working with Working Items. Or you can place most frequently used Work Item queries into Favorites folders, where they will be easily available and always in sight.

When working with Work Items with TeamCompanion, the entire Outlook functionality will be at your fingertips.

TeamCompanion was on a tour again. This time we attended ALM Summit 3 conference, from January 28th to February 1st at the Microsoft Conference Center in Redmond, Washington!

Ekobit was one of the Gold Sponsors of this year’s ALM Summit 3 conference where we presented our Outlook-add in product for TFS, TeamCompanion which helps you manage your Application Lifecycle in the most efficient way.

Besides interesting conversations and friendly atmosphere we gained deeper insight into application lifecycle management. We learned out about case studies that show industry's best practices and development challenges from ALM area. We had a chance to gather the expertise and learn how Microsoft's ALM Solutions enable and support best practices.

This year's ALM Summit plenary sessions hosted by Microsoft executives and industry experts were focusing on ALM Leadership, Agile Development, and new this year; DevOps and Testing. Also, popular full-time Hands-On-Lab featuring self-guided tutorials on TFS and Test Lab Management.

Most importantly, TeamCompanion as presented at the conference as a part of sponsor’s expo, where we talk and presented this product to the conference attendees.

Big thanks to all participants and our new friends! We are at your disposal for more information about the TeamCompanion product.

Brian Harry, Microsoft Technical Fellow working as the General Manager for Team Foundation Server (TFS), uses and recommends TeamCompanion as an Outlook add-in for TFS. During his Ask me anything (AMA) session on reddit.com, which was organized as an announcement for GIT version control that TFS and Visual Studio will support, Brian mentioned which Outlook add-in for TFS he uses.

We thank Brian for using TeamCompanion and invite everyone who is interested to learn more about the product!

Source: www.reddit.com

TeamCompanion supports all important bases in an agile project. While this sounds really important, for a lot of non-users the practical implications of this fact remains unclear. So, in this blog we wanted to say a little bit more about what agile means, and which TeamCompanion’s features support agile projects.

Agile software development is a group of software development methods based on iterative and incremental development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing, cross-functional teams and end users. There is your first clue in searching for connection with TeamCompanion; at the basis of the method is the importance of team and close, daily communication and co-operation between business people and developers.

Another important fact about agile is that it welcomes changes in projects, even late in development and is therefore focused on continuous development. This is connected with an idea that the working software has to be delivered frequently (weeks rather than months). Working software is the principal measure of progress in agile methodology. In all, there are 12 principles in agile software development. To find out more about the method click on Manifesto for Agile Software Development web page.

The TeamCompanion’s agile project management tool is called Plan and Prioritize. It is located under the Work Items node in Outlook’s Navigation Pane for each connected team project. Plan and Prioritize contains all project management related actions together with (the list of) all available Team(s). For the full list of all the features inside the Plan and Prioritize tool, visit the TeamCompanion’s Agile Project Management section.

In short, TeamCompanion provides support for product backlog grooming and prioritization, sprint planning, load balancing within team and for day to day task tracking using burn down chart. Using drag-and-drop in the backlog view, Work Items can be prioritized. By dropping them on the iterations tree on the right, they are assigned to specific iteration. For more on Agile Project Management support in TeamCompanion see the introductory video.

In June 2011, Ekobit implemented Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS) together with TeamCompanion, Ekobit’s product for connection of TFS with Microsoft Outlook client. It was an important implementation in Hrvatski Telecom (HT), which is Croatian major provider of telecommunications services, that has begun with complex development process of a business support billing solution who prepare around 1.2 million invoices monthly for subscribers of fixed network phone services.

It was a huge development project of highest importance that needed highly efficient and productive environment. Microsoft TFS together with TeamComapanion has been recognized as best application and lifecycle management solution which serves as the baseline for HT’s entire development process. With their implementation, HT’s development process has been advanced and has significantly improved its efficiency. Developers started to get better traceability, real-time status, and better release management by using this application lifecycle management solution (ALM).

With TeamCompanion, which easily connects TFS with Microsoft Outlook, project statuses become easily communicated and delivered. Team members started to receive updates through Microsoft Office— a tool they use every day, with better transparency, flow of information and control of entire collaboration process within Team Foundation Server.

Detailed information about this case study can be found here at Microsoft Vertical Solution Web Page, or you can contact our team at sales@teamcompanion.com.

Dear users, it’s been five years since the first release of our TeamCompanion software. During that period you were enjoying the benefit of free upgrades for our new product releases, even those for new Outlook and Team Foundation Server

From January 1, 2013 our upgrade policy for some version releases will no longer be available at no costs. Upgrade to the newest TeamCompanion v5.0 will be charged. Exceptions are all those customers who have purchased their licenses after January 1, 2012, who will be able to upgrade to latest version free of charge.
Customers who purchased their licenses before January 1, 2012 have two options:

1. You can either continue using current TeamCompanion versions (up to the v4.7) free of charge or
2. You can upgrade your licenses to the newest TeamCompanion v5.0 version by paying the reduced license fee. To upgrade your license to the latest version, please either run the Upgrade action from the TeamCompanion’s Help/License Activation dialog, or go directly to the upgrade page and start the license upgrade process.
   

New TeamCompanion will be continuously enhanced by adding new features. Old versions will not be enhanced any more. Naturally, both the new version and old (v4.7) version are fully supported.

Upgrade procedure

Once you installed TeamCompanion v5.0 you’ll notice new Upgrade button on the TeamCompanion’s Help/License Activation dialog. You can either click on it or open the Upgrade page directly by clicking on the following link.

Once you open the Upgrade page, please enter your license information.

Submit entered information by clicking on the Get license details button. After you submit license information, license details will be displayed.

On this page you can see how many licenses you have for each TeamCompanion version. Please note that all licenses purchased for TeamCompanion versions prior to v5.0 are considered as v4.7 licenses.

Use the edit box to define how many v4.7 licenses you want to upgrade. Next step is payment. By clicking on the upgrade button you’ll be redirected to the payment page. Upgrade order will be processed by BlueSnap, formerly known as Plimus.

Please follow instructions on the payment page to complete the upgrade process. Once your order is processed, you’ll receive additional mail with order confirmation.

TeamCompanion successful participated at the Visual Studio ALM Days in Munich, Germany.

During the conference which took place from 22^nd to 24^th of November, TeamCompanion’s team met a large number of interested participants who wanted to know more about latest developments in agile project management features and integration between Outlook and Team Foundation Server.

A lively atmosphere at TeamCompanion’s booth reflected the positive mood of Visual Studio ALM Days, conference that boosts a high number of participation which include manufacturers, service providers, experts and users at the center. As a result, the conference is an excellent opportunity to share first-hand experiences, feedback, questions and engage in direct conversation about current issues in the industry.

It is worth noting that this year’ ALM Days gathered a large number of renowned experts, including Sam Guckenheimer, the Product Owner of Microsoft Visual Studio product line and an author of Agile Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio and Brian Harry, a Microsoft Technical Fellow working as the General Manager for Team Foundation Server.

ALM Days 2012 focused largely on team productivity and quality assurance and questions such as how to reach quality through better team efficiency. Experts, among which were TeamCompanion’s representatives, shared their experiences and improvements in the current Visual Studio ALM product generation. Benefits from these kinds of knowledge and information exchanges are numerous, so TeamCompanion’s team is already making plans for next year’s event!

A big Thanks to all the participants, old and new friends of TeamCompanion!

We are proud to announce that we officially released TeamCompanion v5.0 that supports Office 2013 and Team Explorer 2012.
This version is a trial version available for all users free of charge until December 31^th 2012. Except for the time restriction, this version offers full unrestricted feature set of TeamCompanion. We will release a non-trial version (one which will require activation) in the weeks ahead (before this trial expires).

New version is themed the same way as already released TeamCompanion v4.7, implementing new Visual Studio style theme. Together with features already released in v4.7 TeamCompanion v5.0 brings a few additional features and improvements.

Outlook 2013 support

TeamCompanion v5.0 fully integrates with the new Outlook 2013. It works with both Outlook 2013 Preview and Outlook 2013 RTM.

Support for new TFS 2012 hierarchical query mode

TeamCompanion now supports new TFS 2012 hierarchical query mode – “Match linked work items first”. This query mode is available only on TFS 2012 project queries and only for the queries of type Tree of Work Items.

Attach Mail to Work Item

Attach Mail to Work Item action has been expanded and now, when possible, suggests default work item related to the mail user attaches. We try to sense to which work item the email relates based on its contents. To demystify this a little bit, if you get an option to open the related work item while some mail is selected, the very same work item will be offered as the default selection for the attach mail to work item action.

Plan and Prioritize columns detection

Until now, you were able to change columns for the TeamCompanion's unique Plan and Prioritize tool only if you were using TFS 2010 or older. For TFS 2012 servers Plan and Prioritize backlog and iteration backlog query columns were hardcoded.

We have improved this feature and now once you perform backlog or iteration backlog query changes using Web Access, changes will be visible inside TeamCompanion as well. First time you refresh Plan and Prioritize query, query columns will be synchronized.

Fixed all known major issues

Thanks to your feedback we managed to fix a few of ugly bugs (e.g. Undo Unit crash) and improve overall application performance. Thank you very much for your valuable feedback and please do not hesitate to contact us in case you find any issues while using TeamCompanion.

Download new TeamCompanion v5.0 here: www.teamcompanion.com\Download.

For more information visit www.teamcompanion.com, take a quick tour or go into feature details.