Choose carefully MSF3 or MSF4
There is quite a big twist in Microsoft approach to the MSF lastly. When MSF3 is the loose set of good practices written on paper, MSF4 is their implementation within VSTS... some people say even that MSF has been monetized. MSF4 defines two main templates and guidance - MSF for Agile and for CMMI. There is an option to define your own process with Template Editor, but that is not an easy process.
In general...
- Option 1 - If you have small team and you want easily customize the process - MSF3 will be a good choice and set of VS Pro licenses will be fine.
- Option 2 - If you work within big corporation, in distributed geographically team, keeping a standard is a problem... you may think about MSF4 and convincing stakeholders to spend a lot of $ for VSTS installation (that is not just about buying licenses - you have servers, administrators, infrastructure - all the heave equipment).
BTW, if you are in second option and you works with open technology, you need to consider RUP and Eclipse from IBM. There funny thing to write but in first option you may do .Net projects with RUP and you may do J2EE projects with MSF, even when MSF+Visual Studio belongs to Microsoft and RUP+Eclipse belongs to IBM.
Do not be religious
You just read what MSF is about, you are very excited... Lets rock, lets put it into play...
No, no... Hold on for a sec... go for vacation... Chill down...
Whatever you do, does not do it because the paper says so. MSF is just the tool to realize the goals. Which goals? What do you want to achieve? Whatever you do, does not forget that you are about improving things.
Introduce Framework step-by-step
Anayze the current status! Do you have some well working processes? Take care about them and protect them. Do not hesitate to customize MSF, so old-well-working things stays where they are.
If something works wrong, indentify 1-3 the biggest problems and solve them using particular mechanisms from MSF. Daily builds, bug triage, zero bug bounce - these are the good candidates at the beginning... Does it work? Do people like it? It is MSF... Lets start the new project with 5 phases, but if there is project manager in Prince2 meaning, do not hestiate to unite Program and Product manager role if that is necessary.
Team model in practise
Team model in MSF is quite unique and white paper says that each role has to work in each phase. That is not totally true. Release Management comes into play rather in the final phases. Keep in touch with the guy, but does not insist on having him at each meeting and 100% engaged into the project at any stage.
The other story is User Experience fellow. The main problem is, that there is so little people with this profile on the market. In practice very often the role is taken by business analist... and that is fine. In similar way the Program Manager role is often classic Project manager and Product Manager is Sponsor of the project. As far as it works... lets leave it ;)
Use trade-offs
Trade off theory has helped me often in practise to leverage new requirements and staying assertive - nothing is for free!
- Of course we can add the functionality! What do I get in return? Extra time or person? When he will be on the board? In 2 months? Ok... When he is on board we will analyze the new functionality ;)
In very taugh times you may mention fourth dimension - quality; triangle story extended to tetrahedron (three sided piramid)...
- I may agree to add new functionality, within the same timeframe and resources, but you must approve to me on paper that you accept lower quality of the final product.
... Yes, that is just the intelectual trip ;)
>Keep the balance between the phases
If envisioning took 1 week, the planning will probably take around 1 month. If during planning you have done all the key Proof of Concepts in code, you may close the developing phase in next 1 month. Stabilizing will the next 1 month and Deployment about 1 week.
For example... It is quite common error, that when things goes wrong the stabilization time is cut off. The effect? The same time doubled or tripled is spent during Deployment. That is a dark side of Project Management that in crasis, the taught situation must be faced and not just postponed.
If you prepare the schedule in planning phase, do not expect that you will be able to close 3 next phases in 2 months and 1 week, if getting to the point since the beginnig of the project took you over 2 months - there are some exceptional situation, but at least look in the mirror and answer yourself where these exceptions truely are.
Use bug triage
I bet my surname domain on the short setence - BUG TRIAGE WORKS!
Things, which are not monitored once per a time, go into the chaos stage. Let's face it - reparing bugs is boring and painful work to do for developers. Everybody knows it. Anyway it must be done though, in the same way how you must clean your flat (at least once per a while). Project Manager must be sometimes a mommy who says: "Sweetheart... Clean your room tommorow, ok?" or "When finally you will put these dirty socks into this damm wardrobe!" :D
Having whichever Bug Tracking System (excel / customized open source project / customized SharePoint poratl with lists / commercial product / VSTS ) is at great help - anybody may quickly see what happens with bug #645.
- Hey Bart! Our CEO has looked today in our BTS and he has asked about this problem with dockable windows. Can you add him some comment about #645 and send him a link?
...and this is it - you definitely will not loos by knowing what MSF is about ;)
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