Chapter 1: Planning a Team System Deployment

Overview

It can't be stated enough that planning is an essential part of any process. Without planning, you may unnecessarily complicate the deployment process or, worse yet, miscalculate what your needs are and have to reinstall the product. (As a consultant who has deployed Team System hundreds of times, I speak from experience.)

Deployment does not necessarily mean just the installation of the product. Once Team System has been installed, you must configure it correctly. (For example, you must set up the proper permissions, change the process template to match the target environment, and handle other details including source code migration and extension or customization of tools to make them interact with Team Foundation Server). If you are a consultant, you'll often get client requests to install Team System in, say, two days. Team Foundation Server takes at the very least a day to correctly install and configure in an enterprise environment. Working on a two-day engagement to deploy Team System is the equivalent of asking a home builder to build a house from scratch in two weeks! It's best to set the proper expectations with your clients, work out a deployment plan, and work out realistic timeframes.

In this chapter, you learn the major components of Team System and how to plan your deployment based on your capacity and needs. The final part of the chapter discusses strategies to help you migrate your existing tools and data to Team System.