Team Foundation Server - Simple Introduction for a tester

It is a tool from Microsoft for overall project collaboration. It has almost everything for a software development project such as source control, reporting, bug and requirement tracking, and team build. Before further talking about TFS lets spend some time understanding Visual Studio Team System VSTS.

MS- Visual Studio Team System is a powerful tool that integrates the entire team across the entire life cycle. It has solution to successfully, plan, build, deploy and test a project. According to Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System is a productive, integrated, and extensible suite of life cycle tools that expands the Visual Studio product line to enable greater communication and collaboration among software development teams. VSTS is divided in Integration, Architecture, Development and Testing according to different team's requirements. In general, it is designed in such a way that all stakeholders can directly communicate with each other, can view each other's task and updates. So simply sating, it is a tool by Microsoft that provides guidance and communicates which item need to be worked on. And can customize it which ever methodology you follow.
Basically, two software development best practice methodology.

1.1 One is MS Solution Framework for agile software development, it is recommended and default methodology form team system. It is best for team for more rapid, ready for change environment with communication with customer and project having small team. Agile is targeted to smaller team members on team. Team system is also highly follow the philosophy, model introduced by agile alliance. Some of these methods are *individual interaction is more important than process and tool. *Customer collaboration is highly fruitful for project than customer contracts. *Responding to change according to situation makes positive impact on project rather than following plans

1.2 Another is MSF for CMMI: CMMI is about process improvement which appeals to larger projects, typically project with long- range planning and communication are more important rather than frequent release and feedback form customer. CMMI is a model for continuous process development.

It is targeted to reduced SDLC cycle times, improved ability to meet cost and schedule target and improve quality. It is a very formal methodology for SW development. Used for environment where team needs close communications and integrated work environment. Project management – create and manage team project Work item tracking: Create and track bug, Tasks, Change management – version control management to project. Build server – build management Continuous Integration Build (CIB) Project site – SharePoint Reporting – different reporting chart can be customized For a Tester's point of view, if someone is going to join a team which is using VSTS/TFS, understanding team project's structure will make job easy.
A team project has 5 main elements. Work Items, Documents, Reports, Team Build, and Source control. A Work Item is means the work to be completed on the project. It can be a bug, a task for adding new feature, writing a business document etc. And can be created by anybody involved in. Using document feature, once cad add project related document under document node. Reports node is for project status tracking, for example a bug report, daily status report. Team build node contains team builds; one can add new team build. Source Control node, by this one can access source codes. So, in conclusion TFS glues the whole project team and facilitates to collaborate between the various team members/roles. VSTS Test edition is for testing purpose (automation). But all are integrated in visual studio environment.