Requirements Management and Traceability with Visual Studio Team System 2010 (Channel 9)

How can you ensure that a requirement has been sufficiently tested? How do you track the work that goes into a specific feature? How much work is left to do before a feature is completed, and how does that feature relate to bigger scenarios or user stories?

Siddharth Bhatia, a senior group program manager for Visual Studio Team System, takes us through an end-to-end example of how Visual Studio Team System 2010 will help an organization manage their requirements throughout the lifecycle of a software project.

This "Humanized Screencast" is best viewed at fullscreen using the high-quality WMV download.

Update: This video was re-encoded to fix some indexing issues at 2:30 p.m. PST. If you downloaded a version prior to that please download a new copy.

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AthemeX Here since the beginning

Oct 01, 2008 at 1:01 PM

Hm, near the end the video is broken.. can you please fix that because I was quite curious as to what the 'cool visualisation' looked like
briankel

Oct 01, 2008 at 1:20 PM

Hi AthemeX -

I think you're right, I'm seeing some funky index problems with this video as well on certain machines. I'm encoding a new version now - stay tuned...
briankel

Oct 01, 2008 at 2:28 PM

A new encoding of this video has been uploaded which should fix the prior index problems. Thanks again for the report, AthemeX.
codputer Don't you know what a cod is?

Oct 01, 2008 at 8:08 PM

Just started looking into Team Foundation Server - although I've used all the other MS products. It's nice to see that everything is being pulled together, getting everything fully integrated. I bet it was not fun working with all the com object in office and project!

I love the screen cast format - the screen is easily readable, especially on my wide screen monitors! Much nicer than zooming in and out with a shaky hand. I'm sure the interviewers appreciate it as well! Now they can concentrate entirely on conducting the interview!
Yaron

Oct 21, 2008 at 2:29 PM

That's all nice and encouraging, but traceability is not just about project management oriented "linking" of tasks for tracking of execution. Its about providing a tool for DOCUMENT traceability - does the developer specification cover the requirement? Do the test cases cover the requirement? See competitors like Doors, Rational (IBM) RequisitePro.
sbhatia

Oct 24, 2008 at 12:52 AM

Hi Yaron,

Thanks for the note.

With particular regard to Word specifications and traceability, we're looking to our partners for that. [Link to our partners]
In terms of test cases and requirements, it is possible to -- very easily -- see what requirements are covered by test cases and even more importantly which ones aren't.

-Siddharth
Judy H

Jan 21, 2009 at 9:55 AM

Which process template was used in the demo?
briankel

Jan 26, 2009 at 7:44 AM

I'm pretty sure everything was MSF for Agile.

Brian
mglick

Jul 06, 2009 at 10:20 AM

I don't hear anything in the video
initdotd

Jul 25, 2009 at 2:42 PM

Ok, I'm totally missing something. The video is only showing as a static image for me and no linking. All other videos work fine on this site and I'm using IE. I would really like to watch this post.
RyanM

Jul 29, 2009 at 8:00 AM

Please fix this. The video will not play. We really need something in the RM space.
briankel

Aug 03, 2009 at 9:09 AM

Hey guys, Channel 9 was having a problem with older screencasts. This has been fixed now.
Clemmend

Sep 08, 2009 at 12:41 PM

It was actually MSF for CMMI (which is also an Agile template based on MSF Agile). The MSF Agile template has User Stories instead of Requirement work items.
Clemmend

Sep 08, 2009 at 12:46 PM

Fell like an idiot maneuvering around this posting mechanism... I am trying to make the post appear right below the original question, like Brian Keller reponses. I will try once more...
Clemmend

Sep 08, 2009 at 12:49 PM

Tried a 3rd time. There doesn't seem to be a way to make my reply post appear right below a question like Brian Keller responses. Also, the "Edit" neves switches to "Save" in edit mode. Is this because I am using Windows 7/IE 8?
pvsk

Apr 14, 2010 at 9:41 AM

I have the same problem that I cannot quote the piece I want to reply on.

Anyways, my question to Siddarth is if you want folks to seriously consider using the requirements management feature of TFS, you should not always depend on third party integration. It is difficult to justify a full fledged requirements management tool together with TFS. It is great to see that you can have hierarchy of requirements and link them to tasks and testcases. The question I have is , Is there any support for modeling say an activity diagram and link an activity in the activity diagram to a requirement (say Feature). For example, I can create an activity diagram to capture a business process and link individual activities in the diagram to one or more features and then features to requirements.

I think the rich text editing withe TFS gives a good opportunity to enter requirement details within TFS itself.

Another related question is you guys have also the Sketchflow tool to quickly design and prototype user interfaces, is there any traceablility between Sketchflow and requirements in TFS?