Professional Team Foundation Server

7.1. Team Project Defined

So, what exactly is a Team Project? You can think about it in several ways. A Team Project is a collection of all the stuff that makes up your project in Team Foundation Server. That stuff can include work items, documents, code, test cases, and pretty much anything related to your project that can be stored in Team Foundation Server. The beauty of the Team Project is that everything related to the project is located in one logical space. You simply reference that Team Project to reference anything related to the project.

Maintaining all this information in one collection makes it easy to report on the project. All the information related to a Team Project is stored in SQL Server 2005 on the data tier, allowing easy access via SQL Server Reporting Services to project information. Also, each Team Project is its own silo of information, which allows all the information in the project to be unique to that project.

Team Explorer allows you to view this collection as a Team Project. When you create a Team Project, which you learn how to do later in this chapter, the process model you select defines the details of the Team Project, including work items and reports. Using Team Explorer, you can connect to the Team Project and access all the different work types associated with the project. You can also specify project areas and iterations, which allow you to add structure to your project.