Professional Team Foundation Server 2013

Chapter 28Working 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 Visual Studio Online 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 2013 in this environment, there are ...