TFS Guide now available

This post was originally published here.

One thing I always thought was missing from MSDN regarding TFS was any kind of guidance or best practices.  Just released was a Beta 1 of a TFS Best Practices guide, and after taking a quick look at the contents (over 300 pages) it has a ton of great information.  The section on Team Build is worth its weight in gold, as it not only covers good build practices, but relates them to Team Build.

TFS Guide homepage

Latest Release

This document was put out by the Microsoft Patterns and Practices team, and while the document is a Beta, and it’s easy to go straight to the guidance you need.  It even has a whole chapter dedicated to Continuous Integration, though it does have the caveat “Team Foundation Server 2005 does not provide a CI solution out of box”.  TFS does provide the framework to support it, so you have tools like TeamCI, TFS Integrator, and Automaton.  Also nice is a chapter on Large Project Considerations, and many other chapters have sections dedicated to large project considerations.

The book is laid out into separate parts:

• Fundamentals
  • Source Control
    • Builds
      • Large Project Consideration
        • Project Management
          • Process Templates
            • Reporting

              • Setting Up and Maintaining</ul> It finishes out with a list of:

              • Guidelines

                • Practices
                  • Questions and Answers
                    • How Tos</ul> All in all, a pretty nice reference, and something I really wish I had a year ago.