TFS Reviews

One of the valuable and interesting features is Coded UI automation.

It helps with the structure of the tickets. It can be modified and configured for different flows.

The record and play functionality needs some improvement. The record and play is tricky. In order to make it work for you, you need to do some workarounds. For instance, I use the Run application of the Windows. You need to use it properly.

The MTM is stable.

It can be used for a lot of web tests and Windows testing. I do API tests with Fiddler via MTM.

Microsoft has really nice support.

We used JIRA, but the technology is different. If the developers don't use TFS, then the MTM is really hard to integrate to the process.

The initial setup was easy, but it can be even easier if you get some help at the beginning.

It is a really fair price for the functionality you get.

I was using bug tracking systems. MTM is not only a bug tracking system, but you can also manage your tasks and test runs.

Work item management integration with source control. I value it as the most valuable feature since it provides seamless integration with your TFS source control which makes it easy to drill down the requirements from the source control, and vice versa.

It has improved a lot over the years with newer versions, Build is one such area which has been significantly simplified, making it very easy for the users to use than the previous XAML and pre TFS 2010 build infrastructure.

Also, the introduction of Release Management has made TFS a complete ALM tool.

I think the integration with SharePoint. Microsoft should discontinue the use of SharePoint as I don’t really see any value add to TFS, document management features can be included in TFS web portal itself, if required!

11+ years, using TFS right from the first version (TFS 2005).

I have rarely faced any stability issues, except for some minor notification/alerts issues, etc., which can be easily ignored, as Microsoft is quick to provide fixes for them as well as there are quarterly updates for TFS.

The technical support has always been up to the mark in my case. Also, there are multiple posts online which help you in difficult times.

Yes, I previously used VSS, but since it was just a source control solution, I moved to TFS, which offered much more features in one package.

The previous version of TFS (TFS 2005) were a bit messy during setup due to the different installers required for different components, but with newer versions the installation and setup has been simplified to a great extent.

Yes, the pricing and licensing for TFS is on the higher side, but if you intend to use the tool as a complete ALM tool, it will reduce your costs in the long run.

As of now, there are no products in market which you can compare with TFS which provides you complete integration with different components required in ALM hemisphere, I have tried various Open Source tools, but none of them can match the functionality TFS provides. They are GIT, JIRA, Octopus Deploy, etc.

If you need a complete ALM tool for Microsoft applications and have the budget, please go ahead with TFS.

The scrum template to manage our development process, as well as the continuous build and release functionality.

It helps us to manage our Scrum process, as well as continuous integration, but not much more than the previous product we used (JIRA).

Agile metrics/reporting (if you compare it to JIRA's functionality), as well as more/better customizable widgets to create richer dashboards.

I would really like to be able to see things such as cycle and lead times for issues, as well as be able to see the cumulative flow diagram on a dashboard.

We use the on-premise version of TFS, and I see that the cycle and lead time widgets are only available on the Team Services version.

I must admit that I don't like the fact that the on-premise versions are always behind the Team Services version. Do you maybe have an indication of when we can expect to have these widgets available in the on-premise version?

We have been using TFS 2017 for three weeks now. However, we have been on the previous versions (2013 & 2015) for three years.

No.

No.

We have had no need for any technical support so far. Should we require technical support, I don't know if it will be readily available in South Africa.

Yes, we used JIRA. Since we have to pay for Visual Studio, licenses for coding purposes (and these licenses included TFS) it did not make sense to continue paying for JIRA, even though I really liked the JIRA solution.

We got an external consultant to help us with the initial setup so it was pretty straight forward. Since then I was able to make all the required changes.

Pricing and licensing model is still quite complex, as are all of Microsoft's products.

We did not evaluate other options, but like I mentioned, we were using the Atlassian suite of products.

Make sure that you understand Microsoft's licensing model and that you select the process templates that are most suitable to you when setting up the product for the first time. Different process templates have different reports that you can view.

Microsoft Test Manager with Enterprise Licensing.

TFS’s test management capability without the expensive licensing has large gaps. Users will be unable to access performance testing and coded UI testing capabilities.

Test Execution will not allow 'on the fly' correction of the test steps that affect the test case itself and not just the run copy of the test case.

Reporting has less depth and cannot report on requirement coverage without Microsoft Test Manager with Enterprise Licensing.

Any improvements would have come on the development side as the organization already had a more mature test management application.

Basic, manual testing should not be only available at the most expensive pricing level. We use many different resources during the testing process, some users only create the test cases, some only execute test cases, and some do both.

Access and permissions are confusing when attempting to include basic manual testing functionalities.

For instance, a user who has contributor and project admin access can end up with no ability to create a test case due to permission level. All users doing any type of test authoring, execution, failure triage or reporting must have the costly advanced permission level.

The ability to export test cases with test steps from TFS to excel, the ability to sync excel changes back to TFS or upload existing excel test cases into TFS. Getting existing test cases in other application lifecycle software into TFS is a finicky, time-consuming process relying on cut and paste functionality.

The ability to see a hierarchical view of user stories with child test cases and the test cases bugs in the backlog

Since November 2016.

There is an issue when selecting multiple test cases for execution or editing that the rows selected are not highlighted in IE 11 and Chrome. There is also an intermittent issue with test modules toolbar icon visibility in IE 11.

I am not involved in this aspect of TFS’ evaluation.

I am not involved in this aspect of TFS’ evaluation.

Yes we are using HPE ALM for Test Management, TFS was purchased to help support the development team

I am not involved in this aspect of TFS’ evaluation.

It's just as expensive as HPE ALM, without many of the features, best used for development tool only to avoid higher costs.

I am not involved in this aspect of TFS’ evaluation.

Test Management is immature for an application lifecycle management tool and it might take a couple more releases and pricing/functionality restructuring.

Valuable features include total traceability, test management, source control, and extensibility.

The solution gives us support for Agile processes, including usage of board and burndown charts. It provides us with an estimation process to move to formal and test coverage for more visibility and accountability.

• Test automation: There is only integration with the MS framework which requires us to use only a certain configured infrastructure. Even MS is changing this approach as integration should be done on your own (publishing test execution results into TFS).
• Process customization: This is evolving but it is still far behind the competitors such as JIRA WI management, HPE ALM with events model and ability to manage all aspects of integration including VersionOne integration with multiple APIs.
• Scaling for large organizations: There is no predefined approach for handling different types of projects. You need to build out your own way using community suggestions and your implementation resources. There are limited scaling strategies for large organizations with more than 300 users.

We have been using the solution for more than five years.

There were some minor stability issues under a large load or during migration between versions.

For large organizations with more than 200+ concurrent users, there can be some scalability issues.

The technical support has been getting better since 2015, when MS started making more frequent releases, including a user voice application.

Previously, we were using HPE ALM, QA Manager, Atlassian Stack, and small, customized ALM products. The change was made at the corporate level.

It depends on the project/organization size. For a small organization/team, it is very easy. For a large one, the process definition takes more time and then the setup can happen.

If you have an MSDN license for using TFS, it is a good tool to start from. Later on, you may prefer to select another suite. However, you need to be sure about change. TFS, as from 2015, is evolving very quickly including the CI server, GIT server, and code review process with pull requests support inside.

We evaluated HPE ALM, JIRA, and VersionOne.

Look for the cloud version. It will give you an understanding of further development of the product.

We use the source code repository technology of TFS, we have Git repository in TFS, and also, have TFVC.

Git was introduced starting from TFS 2013. This allowed our team the flexibility on the source control preference.

This product has allowed us to continually maintain our code repository.

The product is mature. We use it as our primary on-premise source control for both Git and TFVC allowing the flexibility for different delivery team to use different source control that best suits them.

We have just recently upgraded to this version of TFS, but have been using Microsoft Team Foundation Server for the last six years.

If your plan on using on-premise, we would recommend you would resource your hardware/VM requirements appropriately to host Team Foundation Server.

There were no scalability issues.

The product is mature, as we’ve upgraded our on-premise Team Foundation we’ve never had to engage technical support, as the upgrade process was seamless barring some minor issues here and there.

There was no issue with the setup or upgrade path as both are well documented.

There is now cloud offering of the Team Foundation Server known as Team Foundation Services for smaller companies/individuals to use, starting out with the free version for five users. I would recommend people review their requirements based on the size and resources; review them with the different offering that is now available from Microsoft.

As the variant of this product was already in use, we followed the upgrade path as we are Microsoft Gold Partners.

Now, there is the cloud offering of Team Foundation Server which is known as Visual Studio Team Services which would suit those who do not want to maintain the on-premise version and is free for up to five users.

Project Management: Agile and Code development can now work side-by-side in the same solution.

This speeds up development, as developers do not need to be swapping applications to update and develop at the same time.

TFS increased productivity and reduced our times to market by 60%.

The product needs to stay competitive with its peers like Github, and the adoption of other markup language renderings in the code section of TFS.

10 years.

I didn't encounter any issues with stability.

I didn't encounter issues with scalability.

If you have premier support, then the support is excellent. We get a response within four hours of placing a ticket.

I did not use a different solution prior to using TFS.

Simple, out-of-the-box.

The only area that takes time is creating builds and release pipelines.

It's free with MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network).

We have looked at Github, JIRA, and Rally.

Team Foundation Server is an enterprise ALM tool, not just for developers.

It’s come a long way in 10 years, it's worth a look.

Code annotations and code review is the "most valuable" feature of this product platform.

RBAC management is too complicated for SCM and IT to manage, Windows Explorer integration of Power Tools is not reliable, Workspace synchronization is not reliable, does not support keyword expansion, does not support offline history and cannot even determine the current workspace version without being connected to TFS server, shelf sets cannot be versioned, shelf sets cannot be merged, and merges do not carry associated work items.  These are just the issues with version control.

Throw a dart, you will hit something that needs improvement in TFS.