Hands-On Lab

Managing Project Details in a Project Plan Mapped to a Team Project in Team Foundation Server 2012

Lab version:11.0.51106.01 Update 1

Last updated:3/21/2013

Contents

Overview

Exercise 1: Publishing Deliverables and the Full Work Breakdown Structure to Team Foundation Server

Exercise 2: Reviewing Deliverables and Work Breakdown Structure in Team Foundation Server

Exercise 3: Updating Status for Development Tasks and Receiving Project Management Updates

Overview

As a project manager, you can manage both business requirements and implementation tasks in Microsoft Project Server that can then be synchronized to Team Foundation Server. As work progresses, development teams can update their tasks as they work in Team Foundation Server. Both project managers and development teams can manage their workflows independently while collaborating fully and communicating effortlessly when changes occur that affect the schedule. The synchronization engine for Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 and Project Server maintains scheduling data for the requirements and tasks in the mapped project plan.

Figure 1

Process Flow for Managing Details in Project Server

Project Manager / As a project manager, you perform the following tasks in Project Professional or your instance of Project Web App:
Define the project plan that contains both deliverables and tasks. Deliverables may correspond to requirements or user stories, depending on the process template that your product team used to create the team project.
Save and publish your plan to Project Server.
Approve or reject status updates as work progresses.
Continuously publish updates to the plan on Project Server.
Synchronization Engine / For each deliverable or task that is set to publish in the plan, the synchronization engine performs the following actions:
Updates the team project by creating a work item for each task that is published in the mapped project plan. The engine also creates a link that binds the task in Project Server to the work item in Team Foundation.
Creates a status update for each mapped field in each published task as changes occur in Team Foundation. These updates appear in the approval queue for the project manager to review.
Updates work items in the team project based on whether the project manager approved or rejected the status update.
In Team Foundation, the team lead and team members perform the following tasks:
Review the work items that are added to the team project.
Update the work items as work progresses by changing the Remaining Work and Completed Work fields for each task.
Respond to work items with a rejected status by modifying work items and resubmitting to Project Server.

Prerequisites

In order to complete this lab you will need the Team Foundation Server2012 and Project Server 2013 Integration virtual machine provided by Microsoft. For more information on acquiring and using this virtual machine, please see this blog post.

Exercises

This hands-on lab includes the following exercises:

  1. Publishing Deliverables and the Full Work Breakdown Structure to Team Foundation Server
  2. Reviewing Deliverables and Work Breakdown Structure in Team Foundation Server
  3. Updating Status for Development Tasks and Receiving Project Management Updates

Estimated time to complete this lab: 60 minutes.

Exercise 1: Publishing Deliverables and the Full Work Breakdown Structure to Team Foundation Server

In this exercise, you will learn how to create a deliverable and the corresponding work breakdown structure (composed of tasks) to be synchronized to Team Foundation Server for the development team. The deliverable will be the requirement that the development team will implement and the corresponding work breakdown structure of tasks will be the individual tasks assigned to each team member in Team Foundation Server.

  1. Log in as Lina Abola (username: linaa). All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
  2. Launch Microsoft Project Professional 2013from the taskbar and login using the profile. This is the application used by project managers to edit project plans stored in Project Server.

Figure 2

Loading a Project profile

  1. Open the Human ResourcesApplication project plan from Project Server by selecting it from the Recent list.

Figure 3

Opening project plan

  1. At this point, we will create a deliverable and then break it down into tasks. We would like to insert a new task under the Development summary task. Select the New Employee Wizard task row and then select the Task button to insert the new task row.

Figure 4

Inserting new task row

  1. Update the new deliverable name to be Change Benefits Plan for Employee and assign it to the development team lead, Peder Thode.

Figure 5

Editing and assigning new task

  1. The new deliverable is scheduled to start at the same time as the existing New Employee Wizard deliverable, but we would like to schedule the new deliverabledevelopment effort to start after that. Select the New Employee Wizard row, hold down the Ctrl key, and then select the Change Benefits Plan for Employee row.

Figure 6

Selecting two tasks in order

  1. Select the Link Selected Tasks button to schedule the new deliverable to begin after the existing New Employee Wizard deliverable. You can verify that the new deliverable is scheduled to take place by viewing the Gantt chart for the schedule.

Figure 7

Linking tasks

Figure 8

New deliverable is now scheduled after existing deliverable

  1. As the project manager, you can create new tasks to implement the deliverable and assign them to team members. Make sure that you fill in the duration (remaining work) and resource names for each task as shown below. You can use the Indent Task command in the ribbon to ensure that they are children for the deliverable item in the project plan.

Figure 13

Adding implementation tasks to Change Benefits Plan for Employee deliverable

Note: The information column in the previous screenshot shows red icons for over-allocated resources. At the moment, both David and Jill have two weeks of work assigned for a one week period.

  1. To fix the over-allocation problem, link Jill’s second task (Database Schema Changes) to her first task, so that she is scheduled to work on them one after the other. Go ahead and link David’s tasks in a similar fashion. Note that the Start and Finish dates are re-scheduled as appropriate and the resources are no longer over-allocated.

Figure 14

Adding implementation tasks to Change Benefits Plan for Employee deliverable

  1. At this point, we are ready to mark this new deliverable and associated work breakdown tasks as items that need to be synchronized to Team Foundation Server for the development team. For each of the deliverables and associated implementation tasks, set the Publish to Team Project property to Yes. For the deliverable, you will want to set the Work Item Type property to Requirement (since it is a deliverable) and you will set the implementation task’s Work Item Type property to Task as shown below.

Figure 15

Set deliverable and implementation tasks to synchronize with Team Foundation Server

  1. Switch to the Team Planner view to get a sense of how each resource is assigned to tasks in the project plan by choosing Team Planner from the Task menu as shown below.

Figure 16

Switching to the Team Planner view

  1. To view the tasks in the timeline, right-click on Jill Frank and select the Scroll To Task option.

Figure 17

Scrolling the timeline to a task

Figure 18

Team Planner view

  1. At this point, you may want to set a baseline so that you can review status updates by the team members in the future against your baseline. In the Project tab, select the Set Baseline button.

Figure 19

Set baseline

  1. In the Set Baseline dialog window, select the OK button to accept the defaults.

Figure 20

Set baseline

  1. To save changes to the project plan, select the Check Out button and then select the Save button (or press Ctrl+S).

Figure 21

Saving the project plan

  1. Please wait for the project plan save operation to complete successfully before moving on. This step may take a few seconds to complete.

Figure 22

Saving the project plan

  1. To publish the project plan to Project Server, navigate to the File | Info screen and then select the Publish button.

Figure 23

Publishing the enterprise project plan

  1. Please wait for the publication operation to complete successfully before moving on. This step may take a few seconds to complete.

Figure 24

Publishing the enterprise project plan

  1. Close Project and select Yes when prompted to check-in.

Figure 25

Checking in the project plan

Exercise 2: Reviewing Deliverables and Work Breakdown Structure in Team Foundation Server

In this exercise, you will learn how to review the deliverables and implementation tasks created by the Project Manager in Project Server. The development team lead will be able to view the newly synchronized deliverable and tasks in Team Foundation Server.

Note: As you progress through the exercises in this lab, you can switch users rather than log out completely. To do this, select Start, clicking the right arrow to the right of the Log off button, and finally select the Switch user option. You can do this as an alternative to logging out for the remainder of this lab.

  1. Log in as Peder Thode (username: pedert). All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
  2. Launch Visual Studio Ultimate 2012 from the taskbar. This is the tool used daily by the development team.
  3. In the Team Explorer window, connect to the “Human Resources” project (if not already connected) and then select the Work Items link.

Figure 26

Navigating to Work Items

Note: The Human Resources project is based on the MSF for CMMI Process Improvement v5.0 template.

  1. Double-click on the Work Breakdown work item query to open it.

Figure 27

Opening the Work Breakdown query

  1. Note that the new requirement Change Benefits Plan for Employee, created by the project manager Lina, now appears as a new Requirement work item in Team Foundation Server. In addition, the implementation tasks are shown as individual Tasks already assigned to the development team members.

Figure 28

New deliverable and implementation tasks synchronized from Project Server

  1. A locked link relationship icon is shown for each child task to indicate that the development team cannot change the hierarchical relationship between the deliverables and the tasks created in Project Server. The tooltip describes the details of this locked link relationship as, “You cannot modify the link because the link relationship between these work items is locked and maintained externally (for example, in an enterprise project that is stored in Project Server).”

Figure 29

Locked link type relationship in Team Foundation Server

  1. The development team can now begin to work on their assigned tasks and report progress with the Remaining Work and Completed Work fields on the tasks. We will report progress from the development team in the next exercise.

Exercise 3: Updating Status for Development Tasks and Receiving Project Management Updates

In this exercise, you will learn how to update the status for the development tasks and report progress back to the Project Manager. Each development team member can provide updates to their tasks as they make progress. The status updates will then be synchronized to Project Server where the project manager can view the impact of those updates against the project’s baseline.

  1. You should already be logged in from the previous exercise as Peder Thode (username: pedert). All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
  2. In the Work Breakdown query results window, find the UI Dialog task assigned to David Simpson that is a child of the Change Benefits Plan for Employee requirement. Double-click the task to open it.

Figure 30

Locating the new UI Dialog task

  1. At the end of the week, David wants to report that he has completed 40 hours of work but it appears that it will take an additional 80 hours of work because of complexities not represented in the original estimate. David can report this status update to the Project Manager simply by updating the task’s Remaining Work to 80 and the Completed Work to 40.

Figure 31

Updating task progress

  1. Select the Save Work Item button. At this point, the synchronization engine will report the progress update summarized to the deliverable work item and send it to Project Server for approval by the Project Manager.

Figure 32

Saving update to task

Note: Development team members can also make updates using Team Foundation Server Web Access.

  1. Log in as Lina Abola (username: linaa). All user passwords are P2ssw0rd.
  2. Launch Internet Explorer from the taskbar to load the Home page of the Project Web App ().
  3. On the Project Web App home page, you will notice that the project manager now has new approvals pending. Select the Approvals tile.

Figure 33

Navigating to Approvals page

  1. The Approval Center shows the updates from the initial synchronization and the new status update for David that increases his overall remaining work and the total duration for the task in the enterprise project plan. Select the hyperlink for the “UI Dialog” task to see the details of the update from David Simpson.

Figure 34

Loading task update details

  1. Scroll to the bottom of the Task Details window if necessary and note that the Actual Work and Remaining Work fields are have been updated as we would expect. Select the Cancel button when done.

Figure 35

Status update details

  1. Since you previously took a baseline for the project plan, you can preview the changes to see how the updates will impact your plan.Select thePreview Updatesbutton to get a view of how the changes will affect the overall project plan.

Figure 36

Previewing updates

  1. Previewing updates will load a new browser tab showing the impact of approving the updates to the overall project plan.

Figure 37

Approval preview

  1. Close the Approval Preview browser tab.
  2. Select all updates and then select the Accept button, closing the browser window when done.

Figure 38

Approving task updates

  1. Launch Microsoft Project Professional 2013 once again using the profile and open the Human Resources Application project plan. The previously selected view will be loaded, so return to the Team Foundation Gantt (Project Server) view.

Figure 39

Team Foundation Gantt view

  1. In the Gantt view, we can see that the newly approved status updates are now integrated into the latest version of the project plan (see Actual Work and Remaining Work values).

Figure 40

Updated project plan including progress updates from developers

  1. Launch Internet Explorer from the taskbar to load the Home page of the Project Web App ().
  2. Select the Projects tile to view all of the enterprise projects and their overall progress.

Figure 41

Navigating to Projects page

  1. The Projects page can be used by the Project Management Office to get high-level visibility on all of the enterprise projects, regardless of the software methodology that they follow.

Figure 42

Status across all enterprise projects

  1. You can also view resource allocation and availability within the Project Web App. Select the Resourceshyperlink from the navigation pane on the left-hand side.

Figure 43

Navigating to Resources page

  1. Select David Simpson and Jill Frank and then select the Resource Availability button.

Figure 44

Viewing resource availability

  1. Set the date range from 4/6/2011 to 5/18/2011 and then select the Apply button.

Figure 45

Resource availability graph