Professional Team Foundation Server

17.2. Implementing Release Management Tasks in Team System

Are there any components of Team Foundation Server and Team System that can assist in the process of releasing software? Indeed, there is. You can slice up the release management process as a lifecycle within the larger software development lifecycle. In a nutshell, release management involves four phases:

• Planning—The process of creating a release plan

• Implementation—Executing the release plan

• Testing—The final QA and user acceptance testing process

• Deployment—Shipping the product

The release plan can be created using the same tools that a project manager would use, Microsoft Excel or Project. You can create an area within the Team Project called Release (by right-clicking on Team Project, selecting Team Project SettingsAreas and Iterations, and adding a Release node to the project, as shown in Figure 17-2).

Then you can associate all your release management oriented tasks to this area.

You could alternatively create a custom work item called Release Task for this purpose. How do you effectively choose whether to create an area or a custom work item? If your tasks are structurally the same as other tasks in Team System (in other words, there are no custom transitions and so forth), you should pick the area approach. If customization is required, then the new work item approach will work well for you.

You should execute a release ...