Urban Turtle's blog

Are you attending Microsoft Tech·Ed 2011 conference next week in beautiful Atlanta, Georgia? Please, do not missed this great session featuring Urban Turtle.

DEV271-INT Would You, Could You with TFS
Speaker: Richard Hundhausen
Thursday, May 19 | 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM | Room: B301
You’re considering Team Foundation Server, or perhaps you have already deployed it. You think you know what it is capable of, but do you? Microsoft built in many extensibility points which developers have used to build interesting and useful add-ons. These solutions include tools for managing requirements, product and sprint backlogs, work items, and software deployments. In this session, we discuss the partner ecosystem and demonstrate some of these products. See how to go beyond the out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation Server without custom development or going to other ALM platforms.

Furthermore, if you want to learn more about agility, here are two Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF) sessions that I will lead.

BOF09-DEV Is Scrum better for My Projects?
Discussion leader: Mario Cardinal
Wednesday, May 18 | 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM | Room: B209
Have you thought about, or are you using Scrum as a project management framework for agile software development? Jump start your learning or, if you’re a Scrum veteran, share what you have learned with fellow developers. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses, best practices, pitfalls, and more with in this session.

BOF17-DEV Agile Development: Can it Work for Everyone?
Discussion leader: Mario Cardinal and Phil Japikse
Thursday May 19 | 1:00 PM – 2:15 PM | Room: B209
As software developers, engineers, and craftsmen, we are focusing more and more on improving the code that we write, shifting from mere Delivery to Code Elegance. But our customers typically want the lowest cost, fastest to market option. Whether you are struggling with this issue or your team has found the perfect solution, join us to learn (and to share) how to manage this balance.

Do not hesitate to say hello, either at these sessions or simply by stopping at the Microsoft booth. I will hang around the Microsoft® Team Foundation Server 2010 demo station during the week.

Urban Turtle users often ask about why they do not have access to the real-time hour burndown introduced in version 3.5. While somewhat technical, the reason is actually pretty simple. Urban Turtle relies entirely upon Team Foundation Server to store any information regarding your project. As you probably know, classification in TFS is based on iterations and areas. Besides the name of the classification node itself, there is no other way to store iteration and/or area metadata. To work around this limitation, popular process templates such as Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 and Scrum for Team System have introduced the Sprint work item type definition. The sole purpose of this work item is to store information regarding your team sprints. Among other things, it lets you specify start and end dates, which are obviously a prerequisite to create a hour burndown chart.

The MSF Agile 5.0 process template does not specify such a work item type. Fortunately, Team Foundation Server is designed to let you customize your project’s template to better reflect your business process. It is therefore rather easy to add a Sprint work item type to an existing MSF Agile 5.0 project. In this blog entry, I will show you how to import the Sprint work item type definition from Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 into an existing MSF Agile 5.0 project.

Prerequisites

Sprint work item type definition
You will need to know the location of the Sprint work item type definition from the Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 process template. If you haven’t done so already, you can download this process template from the Visual Studio Gallery on MSDN. If you install the process template in the default path, you will find the Sprint definition file (Sprint.xml) under ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0\Process Template\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions’.

witadmin.exe
Importing a work item type is done through the use of a command-line utility known as witadmin. You must first locate this utility on your computer, preferably on your server hosting Team Foundation Server. If you have Visual Studio 2010 installed, you should be able to launch a Visual Studio Command Prompt from the Start menu, which will allow you to skip searching for the executable file itself. Otherwise, the file can be found by default (on an x64 installation) under ‘C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common7\IDE\witadmin.exe’.

While this article describes how to use the witadmin utility, you could choose to use the Team Foundation Server Power Tools which Mathieu refers to in his Approval feature with MSF Agile 5.0 article.

Importing the Sprint work item type

1. Start by launching a Visual Studio command prompt (if available) or a standard command prompt. If the former is unavailable to you, make sure to navigate to the location of the witadmin utility. Check the prerequisites above to help you locate it.
2. Launch the witadmin utility by specifying the following arguments:

   /collection: The URL of the Team Foundation Server collection that contains the MSF Agile 5.0 project.
   /p: The name of the MSF Agile 5.0 project
   /f: The path of the Sprint.xml file, enclosed in double quotes.

   For example, using the arguments that match your environment, type the following command and press ENTER:
   witadmin importwitd /collection:http://localhost:8080/tfs/DefaultCollection /p:Agile /f:"C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft\Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 1.0\Process Template\WorkItem Tracking\TypeDefinitions\Sprint.xml"


3. If all goes as expected, the following message will appear: “The work item type import has completed”.

Configuring Urban Turtle to recognize the Sprint work item type
Urban Turtle uses what we call Configuration Mapping Files to deal with differences between process templates. You can create your own mapping file and configure your project to use it. By default, the mapping files can be found under ‘C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Access\Web\UrbanTurtle\configuration\project’. We must advise against editing one of the default files as these get removed when uninstalling the application.

1. Start by copying the MSF Agile 5.0.xml file, and open the copy using any text editor. Locate the
   TemplateConfiguration element at the top of the document and change the Name attribute to something like “MSF Agile 5.0 – Burndown”.
2. For Urban Turtle to recognize the new Sprint work item type, you must add an entry in the mapping file, telling it exactly what work item type represents a Sprint. It could be any type, but it must have fields to contain the start date, end date and a description (or sprint goal). Since we are using the Sprint work item type definition from Visual Studio Scrum 1.0, you can copy the required configuration from the default mapping file for this process template and append it to the Features element.
3. The last step required is to configure your project to use the new mapping file. This is done through the Configuration page in Urban Turtle, accessible from the Configuration option under the Project menu.
   
4. Simply select the new “MSF Agile 5.0 – Burndown” and then click the Apply button to save your selection.
   

Using the Hour Burndown
Displaying the Hour Burndown requires you to create a Sprint work item in the selected iteration. This is made very simple by Urban Turtle just by clicking the Sprint Details icon on the iteration box.

Once you have specified start and end dates for your sprint, you can display the Hour Burndown. First, make sure the iteration is selected in the iteration panel and then click on the Burndown button on the toolbar.

Voilà, a real-time Hour Burndown with MSF Agile 5.0!

As you can see, just about any feature that is not available out of the box with your process template may be enabled by customizing your project and creating a custom configuration mapping file. Some of you may recall that we had already shown how to enable the Recycle bin functionality for MSF Agile 5.0 projects. With these features enabled, MSF Agile 5.0 users have no reason to feel left out when using Urban Turtle!

Over a year ago, we released Urban Turtle 3.0, the premier Scrum tool for Team Foundation Server 2010. To be honest, it was a bold move. Four months before the release, what we had was a product that almost nobody knew about, compatible only with TFS 2008. We threw half of the code away, went through a complete UI overhaul and developed against beta releases of TFS 2010, aiming to be ready for the big Visual Studio 2010 launch in April. Strong believers in Agile software development practices, we fully embraced the release early, release often pattern and sim-shipped Urban Turtle 3.0 alongside TFS2010. Over the year that followed, we managed to release 12 updates, one each month. Today marks the day of our 12th release: Urban Turtle 3.11. As always, it includes a few new features, several tweaks and improvements as well as a few bug fixes. Read on to find out what’s new!

Print support
Many people have been requesting for some time now that we add printing support to Urban Turtle. As per the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, people highly value individuals and interactions over processes and tools. They wanted to be able to print work items in an index card format for use on an actual task board instead of a virtual one. This is exactly what we are introducing in Urban Turtle 3.11. You now have the option to export work items to a PDF file. We’re starting with basic support, but we do hope you will give us feedback to help us improve this feature over the next releases. Click here for a sample of the PDF output.

Filters on the task board
We have decided to port the planning board filtering options over to the task board following a customer request. You now have the ability to hide work items from child iterations, to hide items that are done and to filter work items according to their work item type. These settings are independent from the planning board, meaning that you can hide done items on the planning board but have them show up on the task board.

Business value on the planning board
Until now, the planning board view was restricted to two customizable fields. Since one of the fields represented the work item title, there was effectively only one field to customize unless you knew your work item Ids inside-out. Customers have requested the ability to view both the Effort and Business Value fields at the same time, for obvious reasons. We therefore managed to squeeze in a third configurable field and the default Scrum 1.0 mapping file has been updated to display the Business Value for Product Backlog Items.

Single Column Headers
Another highly requested feature or improvement regarded the duplicate column headers on the task board. We used to display the headers for every root (or parent) work item, usually the Product Backlog Items. This took up a lot of space and was considered a waste by just about everyone using the product. This has been replaced by fixed column headers which are always visible but displayed only once, saving up precious screen real estate.

Configurable Blocked State
The Task work item type definition in the Scrum 1.0 process template specifies a Blocked field which we added support for the previous release. We used to consider any value as meaning that the item was blocked, but it has come to our attention that this can prove problematic with other process templates. While this option is still available, you can now also configure a value to represent the Blocked state. We have updated the Scrum 1.0 mapping file to consider tasks as blocked when the value for the Blocked field is yes. As with many things in Urban Turtle, this is fully configurable and can be adapted to your own custom process template by editing your project’s mapping file.

There are several other improvements and bug fixes included in this release. I invite you to review the release notes for more information. This release has been driven by your feedback, and we would like to thank you for taking the time to propose ideas, ask questions, report issues and praise us on our community support site. Your help has become an invaluable asset to our development team! As always, we recommend that you download and upgrade to the latest version. We are pretty sure that it has something to like for everyone!

Tuesday April 12th marked Visual Studio 2010′s first birthday. “It seems not long ago that we had the world-wide launch celebrating the largest developer tool release from Microsoft in many years” said Somasegar about the first year of Visual Studio 2010 in his weblog.

For the Urban Turtle team, the launch of Visual Studio 2010 was an important milestone. Finally, Microsoft was adding the ability to break down work items into hierarchies to Team Foundation Server (TFS). This was a banner feature that made possible the addition of the Scrum process template to the Visual Studio Gallery.

TFS combined with the Scrum process template was the beginning of a solution to turn TFS Agile… but that was not enough. To be truly effective, one must add the right skin through an intuitive web interface that simplifies Agile project management. To meet this need, as a third-party partner, we created Urban Turtle. Today, jointly with Visual Studio 2010, Urban Turtle is the premier Scrum tool for TFS.

As Somasegar states in his weblog:

More than 1,600 Visual Studio 2010 extensions have been submitted to the Visual Studio Gallery, with over 4 million extension downloads by users. Our partners continue to be able to build businesses around Visual Studio, and over the past year, partners have generated over $400 million in revenue from Visual Studio-based extensions.

Urban Turtle is proud to join this exceptional group of partners. We want to go one step further and offer a promotion to all Visual Studio users. During the entire month of April, Urban Turtle is offering a 15% discount to all Visual Studio users who purchase an Urban Turtle license.
You can join in the party and benefit from this discount by entering the ‘Happy B-day VS2010’ promo code at the time of purchase. (http://urbanturtle.com/pricing/)

Early in the design of Urban Turtle, we envision a product so simple to use that one would use it without having to consult documentation. We have partially achieved this goal but we believe we can do better (and, we plan to do better but without violating our motto which is “less is more”). In this connection, stay tuned for the upcoming major upgrade of Urban Turtle (version 4.0).

However, in the meantime, there are training needs that remain to be met. For example, simple questions such as how to install Urban Turtle or how to launch Urban Turtle using Team Web Access are recurring themes. In addition, over time, we discovered that explaining how Urban Turtle support Scrum needs to be more explicit. That’s why we have created a “Quick Start” section on our website.

This getting started section provided short screencasts (2-3 minutes videos) to answer these recurring questions. Because it allows getting “inside” the product to show how small parts work, screencasts work particularly well to a highly-technical product such as Urban Turtle.

On the “Quick Start” page you will find the following screencasts:

• Installing Urban Turtle
• Launching Urban Turtle
• Explaining Scrum in less than 120 seconds
• Grooming the backlog with Urban Turtle
• Planning the Sprint with Urban Turtle
• Tracking day to day work with Urban Turtle

Furthermore, this is where you can download documentation about how to configure Urban Turtle. Learn about the hidden gems that you can access only through the global settings file.

Here is the link to visit the “Quick Start” page: http://urbanturtle.com/quickstart

Here is another proof that a hosted TFS is an option becoming increasingly affordable and feasible. We recently partnered up with DiscountASP.NET, the leader in Microsoft ASP.NET web hosting and Team Foundation Server (TFS) hosting. Under this partnership, DiscountASP.NET introduces a hosted version of our Urban Turtle solution which is available to their TFS hosting customers as an add-on. In addition, DiscountASP.NET customers get a 10% discount for on-premise Urban Turtle licenses. Customers can get more information on how to redeem this offer through the marketplace section in their control panel.

We launched our hosted TFS service last year and Urban Turtle was a popular request from our customers. We are excited to partner with Urban Turtle for a hosted implementation of their agile management tool.” said Takeshi Eto, VP Marketing and Business Development at DiscountASP.NET.

At Urban Turtle, we think this is a great solution for teams of all sizes as well as first-time TFS users. Since there is no difference between an on-premise or hosted Urban Turtle solution, the learning curve is significantly reduced.

You can read the Press Release announcing the partnership here

To learn more about this hosted version, visit http://www.discountasp.net/tfs/.

Almost a whole year has gone by since the release of Team Foundation Server 2010 and our add-in for its Team Web Access application tier, Urban Turtle 3. Since then, we have managed to release a new version each month, for a total of eleven. Some say it’s too much, others say it’s impressive, but the team thinks nothing of it. We’re just working hard, trying to improve our product release after release. Frequent releases is merely a side effect!

Scrum for Team System
This month, we bring you two outstanding features along with the ubiquitous bug fixes. First on the list is further improved support for Scrum for Team System v3 (refered to SfTS from now on). We’ve been shipping beta support for this template for a few months now through a compatible mapping file but users have found it to be lacking. The problem lies with the custom types used by SfTS. Both the MSF Agile 5.0 and Scrum 1.0 process templates use the standard Parent-Child relationship to link most work item types. With SfTS most links are named according to the type of the relationship. For instance, a task implements a product backlog item and is not merely a child of it, as with the other templates. The Parent-Child relationship was the only one supported by Urban Turtle until today. This meant that work items created with Urban Turtle would not appear as expected when looked at from the SfTS tooling and reports, and vice versa.

With Urban Turtle 3.10, we are introducing support for the Direct Links query mode which allows Urban Turtle to display all link types between work items. This means that a task that implements a product backlog item and another task that is a child of the same product backlog item will both be displayed as children on the planning board.

Another cool feature is that you can now explicitly define the link types in the mapping file. By default, when adding a child item using the plus sign on a card, the Parent-Child link type is used. You can override this by specifying the link type to use and Urban Turtle will automatically create the appropriate relationship when adding a child item. This is obviously required for the SfTS template, and the mapping file has been updated accordingly. You can also use this feature to restrict the work item types that are allowed to be created as children as only the link types specified are displayed on the Add child dialog. Define a single link type and you can even avoid the dialog altogether!

Teams!
The second major feature of this release is Team Configuration and Management. It is now possible to specify teams on a per-project basis, allowing further filtering options and better control over the Assign tasks to drop-down list on the task board.

A team is composed of a name, a root iteration, a root area and a TFS Security Group. Both the root iteration and area affect which iterations and areas are visible from Urban Turtle when the team is selected. By default, Urban Turtle uses the project node as the root for both the iteration and area paths. This new feature allows you to override this default behavior and automatically hide some classification paths. We expect people already using areas to divide team work to really appreciate this new feature.

We use the TFS Security Group to determine which teams are displayed on the new Team menu by verifying the current user’s membership. When a team is selected, the Assign tasks to drop-down list displays the security group members, this overrides the default behavior of listing individual users who have access to the project.

Configuration is done through the global.settings file, which was only used before to control access to Urban Turtle. Documentation for this file can be found here.

Other improvements
We’ve made several other improvements throughout the application. On the task board, we’ve tweaked the pagination system and turned the collapsing/expanding of a parent work item into an instant action. We’ve also fixed an issue with the Burndown where the planning board settings would be used even when launching it from the task board. More improvements and bug fixes are listed in our release notes on the download page.

Available now!
As usual, we recommend that everyone upgrade to the latest version. If you’re still pondering whether or not the Turtle is worth a try, rest assured that we’ve gone to great lengths to make the first experience as painless as possible. The setup is a simple three-click, next-next-next affair and the integration with Team Web Access is seamless. You’ll find two new tabs, Planning board and Task board, and with the common MSF Agile 5.0, Scrum 1.0 and now Scrum for Team System v3 templates, you’ll be up and running right after the installation. So don’t hesitate, download it and give it a try. Don’t forget about our community support site. All questions, comments, suggestions or bug reports are more than welcome. You’ll get answers straight from the team in a timely fashion, so post away!

It is really cold up here in Montreal, but this Turtle is not the hibernating kind. Once again, relentlessly, the team has worked hard to bring you its tenth release in ten consecutive months. While we’re happy with our track record, we’re definitely a lot happier with the contents of each of these releases and the latest one is no exception. It’s packed with new features, improvements and bug fixes of all kinds, so read on to find out what’s new!

Taskboard Improvements
Several new features have been added to the task board.

• Warning Zone


Ever since we’ve added support for the Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 process template, people have come to us asking why some work items were not visible on the task board. Most of the time, the simple reason was that they were in a state that was not configured to appear under one of the columns. While this made sense to us, it was still pretty confusing. We wanted to find a solution that would not force us to map states to columns in a way that did not make sense. What we’ve come up with is something that will hopefully remove some of the confusion while helping people realize that some work items should probably not be in the team’s sprint backlog.

Work items in a state not mapped to one of the task board columns will now appear under a new section dubbed ‘The Warning Zone’. The cards in this section appear a little bit different than the cards in columns. The state of the work item appears as a link that will allow you to quickly change to a state mapped to a column. In theory, the warning zone should never be visible. If you see it, it means you’re probably doing something against the rules.



• Recycle bin

The task board is all about simplifying work item state transitions. In this regard, we’ve implemented an equivalent to the Recycle Bin feature of the planning board. Put simply, if a ‘Deleted’ state is configured in your mapping file, as it is by default with the Scrum template, a recycle bin icon will be visible on the card if the transition to this state is possible. This is a great way to quickly remove tasks involving work that is now unnecessary!

• Blocked tasks

Scrum 1.0 users have asked us why there was no visual cue when they flagged a task as blocked. This was a very good question for which we simply had no good answer and so we went straight ahead and implemented the suggestion. Indeed, it is very useful to know at a glance that a task is blocked and requires attention from your Scrummaster. As always, this feature is configurable, meaning that you can add your own Blocked field to your work item type definition and gain this feature by rolling out your own mapping file.

• Independant iterations and areas

Another interesting change is that the task board now has iteration and area settings that are independant from the planning board. This allows you to view the current sprint on the task board while grooming your backlog on the planning board without having to switch back and forth between iterations.

Steer clear of the editor!
The work item editor is arguably the slowest window to use in Team Web Access. While it is sometimes a necessary evil, we’ve added some features to reduce round-trips to it.

• Detailed tooltips

We’ve replaced the default tooltips in some areas of the application by ones that display more information. For instance, the tooltip for a card in either board now displays the full title of the work item and the contents of a configurable description field. By default, when using the stock Scrum 1.0 and MSF Agile mapping files, we’ve configured the description field for each of the work item types to display the content of left-side text area from the work item editor.

This also works for the iteration information icon on the left-hand side of the planning board. With the Scrum 1.0 template, the tooltip will display the start and end dates of the sprint along with the team’s goal.

The information icon has also been added to the task board, to the right of the iteration drop-down list. You’ll have no good reason to forget your sprint goal now!


• Improved in-place editing

Urban Turtle 3.7 introduced in-place editing for work remaining on the task board as a way to avoid using the work item editor just to update a task. We had promised that this was only the beginning of a new trend in Urban Turtle, and with this new release, we’ve improved and extended this feature.

The major complaint with this feature in previous versions was that the clickable zone was just too small. Some people weren’t even aware of the existence of such a functionality in Urban Turtle. We’ve therefore expanded the zone and changed the visual style of the editable fields to improve usability.

Up until now, this feature only applied to the work remaining field, and only on the task board. This is no longer true as you will now be able to quickly edit both the work remaining and effort (story points) fields in either board. Decimal values are also now supported, making it possible to use your full planning poker deck, including the 0.5 card!

Support for Chrome and Safari
We are quite happy to announce that we’ve removed the biggest hurdle preventing Chrome and Safari support: drag and drop on the planning board. This bug finally moved up the priority ladder and the team happily squashed it! We expect feedback from the community regarding this initial support. There’s even a special place on our community support-site to notify us of any issue found while using Chrome or Safari. Please help us improve!

Other improvements and bug fixes
We’ve also managed to squeeze in many smaller improvements and bug fixes in this release:

• The Hour Burndown popup is now centered (and can now be shown more than once in Internet Explorer)
• New child items are never assigned to the current user
• Rank or priority is now always initialized to 0 when creating a work item
• The task board colum headers are now gray instead of orange to reduce eye bleeding
• It is now possible to enable Urban Turtle on a per-collection basis
• Several bug fixes listed in the release notes

We’ve put a lot of work into this release, coming in to work during snowstorms and arctic cold. It’s one of our most jam-packed releases and we hope you will enjoy everything it brings to the table. If you do, or if you don’t, we want to hear from you! The community site is more popular than ever and it’s a great way to gather votes for your ideas. So experience the latest version and voice your opinion. We’re listening!

Nine in nine!
As our customers are well aware of, each and every month we release a new Turtle. For each of these releases, we try to focus on soothing users pains while respecting our vision of a simple, dedicated Scrum management tool for Team Foundation Server. It’s actually a fun and challenging balance to try and maintain and the team loves challenges!

Out with the old…
Our main focus for Urban Turtle 3.8 was improving support for dealing with multiple states in the task board columns. We used to have a feature where, upon dropping a work item onto a column where multiple states were mapped, a dialog would pop up to let the user pick the new state. This was fine when moving between columns but it was quite impractical if you wanted to transition to another state that was mapped to the same column. Put simply, we made it hard for fans of the popular To Do -> In Progress -> Ready to test -> Done workflow to use our task board.

…in with the new!
With this new version, you can now pick the next state for your work item as you drop it on the column. But what makes it really interesting is that you can now drop a work item in the column it is already in while choosing a new state. It is very straight-forward and quick to pick up. Taking the previous example, you could now map both the In Progress and Ready to test states to the In Progress column and easily transition between these states.

To help you distinguish between the multiple states in each of the column, we have added the ability to configure a color for each of the states. This color is then used to add a visual cue on the card and on the drop zones when dragging work items. This configuration is a new section in the mapping file. If you use a customized mapping file, you will need to add the section and pick colors for the different states in your project.

And a few bonuses
Other features include keyboard shortcuts to quickly switch between active users on the task board. We expect this to be quite popular in your daily scrums.

We have also added two new colors, Orange and Brown, for your work items.

As usual, we invite everyone to download and install the latest version. We can’t wait to hear from you about these new features, particularly regarding the task board improvements. So don’t wait, and get it while it’s hot! And don’t forget to visit our community site to share comments, ask questions and report issues!

Yesterday, we got a Christmas present from Brian Harry, the Product Unit Manager for Team Foundation Server and a Microsoft Technical Fellow. He wrote a blog where he praises Urban Turtle.

Urban Turtle is a TFS add-on built by Pyxis Technologies and it provides an awesome Scrum experience for TFS. For 10 years, Pyxis has been at the forefront of the evolving Agile development practices and has been helping companies transform their development process to be more Agile and more effective. We were thrilled when they decided to take that expertise and create a top notch Scrum experience for TFS.

You can read the full story here: Urban Turtle for Scrum and TFS