Agile SCM Talk

There are a number of tools out there for time tracking and some that work with TFS. For example, see the TFS Timesheet application on Codeplex. The problem is that developers have to leave the IDE.

Some people are often surprised to hear that many people think this is a big deal. I am one of the many. The reason is that I have observed this over the past 20 years. It is because it is. A reasonble explanantion is that developers have a very focused work context that takes time to get into.

Unlike email and other office applications that professionals use concurrently with much ease; with respect to this topic, doing development is more like playing chess. How well will a chess player do if they have to answer the phone and read an email between every move? In SW parlence, this is called "context switching." It has a signficant negative impact on the quality and productivity of a developer's work. That's one reason leads and project managers are needed.

So, there is one tool on Codeplex that integrates into TFS and the VSTS IDE and that's TFS Working On. I haven't tried it yet as I'm using the 2010 beta and there's not a compatible version. But I look forward to the 2010 relelase and giving it a spin.