TFS2012, VS2008 & Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum

2
votes

I am currently looking to migrate an existing TFS2008 server to a new VS2012 server.

A major part of the reason behind this is that we want to be able to use the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum template, however I am struggling to determine whether VS2008 is able to manipulate work items created using this template (according to all of the blogs and/or other information I can find, the templates can only be installed to a VS2010 or VS2012 server, but there is nothing clear about Visual Studio clients). I believe that both VS2010 and VS2012 can access an manipulate items based upon these templates.

Note: We HAVE to use VS2008 at the moment as some of the projects are for mobile devices (Windows/CE, Windows Mobile) and, as I am sure you will be aware, these projects are not supported by VS2010 or VS2012).

I am aware of the compatibility GDR's for both VS2008 and VS2010, but again they mention nothing specific about the scrum templates.

So, my question is simple...

Can I access and manipulate (add new work items, update existing items, create a sprint etc) a TFS project that is based upon one of the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum templates on Team Foundation Server 2012 from Team Explorer 2008/Visual Studio 2008.

1
tfsvisual-studio-2008compatibilityscrum
I don't have a box to test on, but at a minimum you'd be able to use Web Access to manipulate work items. – Andrew Clear

1 Answers

3
votes

Work Item process templates (e.g. VS Scrum) have nothing to do with the version of the client used to connect to TFS, which means that any version of Visual Studio (2008, 2010, or 2012) will work with TFS 2012, regardless of the process template (Scrum, Agile MSF or CMMI).

Furthermore, the forward compatibility GDR provides the team explorer extension (window) that will give VS 2008 the ability to use the new functionality of TFS 2012 (e.g. start and end dates for iterations, capacity planning, etc.).

The process template (i.e. Visual Studio Scrum 2.0) is nothing but a set of XML documents detailing which work item types you will have, what fields they contain, some reports, SharePoint settings, security settings, etc. None of these affect or are affected by the version of Visual Studio.