INTRODUCTION

LET'S FACE IT: Shipping great software is difficult. Is it rewarding? Yes. Is it profitable? Yes. Does it mix art and engineering? Yes. Is it easy? No.

Yet some companies and organizations do ship great software. They deliver products that their customers love. They do it on time and on budget. They deliver solutions and services that are highly valued in the marketplace. So how do they do it?

The answer is deceptively simple: They rely on a combination of technology, talent, and process. Each of these three elements is necessary, but each by itself is insufficient to deliver a great product. If you're missing one element, you will certainly fail. If you have all three, then you have the necessary raw ingredients to succeed.

This book focuses on one element of shipping great software: the process. It offers a road map for how to use Scrum to organize teams and activities. It shows you how to use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) to execute a Scrum project — from planning the sprints to tracking progress. By focusing on just this one ingredient in successful software, this book provides the details you need.

In this book, you'll learn best practices for running a Scrum project and for using TFS. The book even includes templates to help you get started. Even with all this help, you will still face difficult questions for which there is no standard answers. You'll need to rely on your insight and experience.

This book is a collaborative effort of three authors ...

Get Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010 now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.