Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012

Chapter 2

Introduction to Team Foundation Server

What's In This Chapter?

• What is Team Foundation Server
• Core concepts central to Team Foundation Server
• Getting access to Team Foundation Server and connecting to it for the first time
• What's new in Team Foundation Server 2012
• Planning your Team Foundation Server adoption

Because Team Foundation Server is so fundamental to the Application Lifecycle Management offering from Microsoft, later chapters go into more depth about utilizing different aspects of the product, such as how to use it to plan your work, how to use version control when developing software, and how to make use of the build automation capabilities. In each case, the use of Team Foundation Server is explained within the context of the task you are doing—but before we can do that you need to know what Team Foundation Server is, what it provides, and how to get it.

Although a full treatment of Team Foundation Server is therefore necessary in a book about Microsoft's Application Lifecycle Management solution, this book deliberately focuses on how to use Team Foundation Server to develop software and effectively organize your teams. Team Foundation Server is highly customizable and extensible by an administrator. The book Professional Team Foundation Server 2012 (Wrox, 2011) is targeted at administrators of Team Foundation Server and individuals who wish to customize their instance heavily, though Chapter 6 of this book will give you a taste of the customizations that ...