TFS Query–Tasks Completed Yesterday

Sometimes boards get allot of cards on it and during your standup it may be hard to remember what you did yesterday.  That done column gets pretty big even for smaller sprints when teams create a hundred tasks.  I did not see this query in the default set.  It was easy as it is just one new clause added on to the existing Completed Tasks query. 

Just add the following clause:

And Closed Date = @Today – 1

del.icio.us Tags: TFS Tips,TFS Queries

OneNote 2013 Crashing on Sync

This morning my OneNote was crashing and giving the message that is has stopped working.  The only options are to Debug or Close the program.  Restarting didn’t help and I noticed it kept crashing when it was trying to sync a specific notebook

This notebook is in our SharePoint so I did a quick search and found a KB from Microsoft called KB2737968.  There was a forum post with a link to it which fit my circumstances.  Make sure you pick the correct one to download and run based on whether or not you installed the 32-bit or 64-bit version of office.  It will also ask you to shut down any Office applications you may have open.

The article also suggests applying an Office 2013 updates that are available.

After applying this and doing a reboot OneNote now stays up.  It was able to sync the notebook in question.  One thing is a password protected section was added to the Notebook.  I just found out about that and am wondering if that was the culprit.

del.icio.us Tags: OneNote 2013,Office 2013,Tips

Planning with Iterations

One of the things some of the teams would like to start using is the planning feature in TFS.  This feature is enabled on the Stories backlog.  Over on the right there is the Forecast option.  Just turn this on and set the velocity to your teams.  Currently this is a manual task and you will need to determine what velocity to use (last sprint, an average, etc.)

Once this is set you will see a line break with the iteration in the backlog.  This is useful for your planning meetings as well as forecasting how many iterations will be needed to complete a feature (all user stories done).
The question that our team had was how many iterations do you make visible/available for planning into the future? Initially I thought having to many future iterations would clutter things so I created them but did not make them visible.  Unfortunately this does not help the end user as those iterations don’t show up for planning purposes.

Going back into the admin page for the team I then selected all of the iterations I had created.  Thus making them visible for planning.  Now we can see all of the iterations and the team was able to forecast how many until this epic would complete.

Currently we are going to try out 2 week sprints and see how that goes.  I have read others doing three weeks but as a friend told me it is much easier to think about what you can get done this week and next.  This keeps things focused and easier to manager.  We will see.  Thanks for reading.
Are you able to plan out 2 weeks ahead what your going to do?

del.icio.us Tags: Iterations,TFS