Professional Team Foundation Server 2012

Chapter 26

Working with Geographically Distributed Teams

What's in this chapter?

Understanding the difficulties of a distributed development environment

Getting to know Team Foundation Server Proxy

Learning techniques for working with remote teams

Dealing with build servers in a distributed environment

Introducing Team Foundation Server Integration Tools

Understanding how to be effective when the server is not available

 

The development of software by distributed teams is a growing trend. People are working in a global economy with greater competition and choice. There are many reasons you may be working with a distributed team, including the following:

• Your company has grown and expanded, and it has several field offices.
• Your company contracts out portions of development to third parties.
• Your company merged with another company and both companies must work interactively over great distances.

Even if you don't work in a distributed team, you may work in an environment whereby your server infrastructure is located at a different physical location. Following are a few examples:

• Your IT infrastructure is outsourced to another company; for example, using the Team Foundation Service hosted by Microsoft.
• Your development team is located in a different city from the main office to take advantage of skilled workers in that area.
• You have a mobile workforce that moves between offices and has no main office.

When you work with Team Foundation Server 2012 in this environment, there ...