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Wednesday, May 03, 2006 #

"How tightly integrated is Project Server and Visual Studio Team Server?" ... A Question from My Recent Webcast

 Your question: "How tightly integrated is Project Server and Visual Studio Team Server?"

 

My answer: "Not very integrated, yet."

 

 

Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server provides many of the same functions for coordination and collaboration that Project Server 2003 does.  Each uses a WSS site as the basis for collaboration and coordination of documents, tasks, issues, etc.  It would be pretty logical if both could be built on top of the same WSS sites, but that is not the case. 

 

So, why not just get by with Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server?  Because it is a tool of the techies, for the techies, and by the techies.  It is a great tool to manage the Software Development Lifecycle, but that is only a subset of project management.  The Project Server tool was created because a proper project team needs to include a cross-functional team of people for whom Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server would be all but impenetrable.  Sponsors, business analysis, subject matter experts, deployment and support professionals, will all have a much easier time dealing with Project Server 2003.

 

So, my recommendation is to use Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server for the development team but use Project Server for the overall project team.  Again, to me, the integration is more one of workflow than technology.  The handoff to the development team would be a milestone in Project Server, and concrete deliverables would be the product of the handoff.  There are some clever workarounds that you could pursue, but clever is rarely a good idea in these matters.

  1. Project Initiation:         Project Server
  2. Project Planning:         Project Server
  3. Project Execution:       Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
  4. Test and Validation:    Visual Studio 2005 Team Foundation Server
  5. Deployment:                Project Server
  6. Productionalization:      Project Server
We can certainly imagine that 2007 will bring new opportunities for cooperation between these two important tools.
 
P.S. Yes, I know that "Productionalization" isn't really a word but I'm uncomfortable with "Institutionalization"... it sounds like it's off to the funny farm.

 

posted @ 1:12 PM | Feedback (25)