It's been almost a year since I transitioned away from my role as an evangelist for Microsoft's ALM/DevOps offerings into a role as a program manager on the Visual Studio Online / TFS team. It's been a fun ride and I learn something new every day from my outstanding co-workers.
But the #1 question I always get when people learn about my new role is "What about the ALM virtual machines you built?"
I'm pleased to say that the ALM VM has landed in good hands with my colleague Sachin Hridayraj. He has taken over this deliverable and has already started to make his own improvements to it. You can check out the brand new Visual Studio 2015 version, complete with a revised set of hands-on-labs and demo scripts, over at https://aka.ms/ALMVMs.
I downloaded and installed the TFS 2015 VSALM and it works great. I shapshotted it and then upgraded it to 2017. In our environment we only implemented TFS App Server, SQL Server for the DB,s and a Reporting Server. The initial roll out did not have SharePoint integration. During our TFS Administration training class we were tol to avoid storing attachments in the TFS database. The suggested storing documents and or screen shots in a file share and just put the links into TFS to the documents. This is proving to be tedious, and is eroding confidence in the system.
We were told if we had the SharePoint integration we can store the documents in SharePoint and they would be linked. I’m wondering if I can demo SharePoint document storage capability with this VM.
I don’t know how to demo that functionality? Can someone give me some pointers on how to configure the VSALM vm do I can use SharePoint to store attachments and have them linked to Work items?
Hi Patrick, there are a lot of factors to consider but generally speaking I would not be too worried about storing attachments in TFS. It’s really just a function of the amount of disk space on your data tier, and disk space is cheap in 2017. 🙂
SharePoint integration with TFS isn’t something we’re actively investing in, and it was never really all that integrated to begin with, but if you need to provide docs on SharePoint (e.g. because of their support for versioning) you can use a work item Hyperlink link to point back to it. This is something we do pretty regularly here at Microsoft.
Mid of last century, most companies could expect to last forever. In today’s fast changing world, companies are chased by disruption everywhere: A shrinking life expectancy of companies on the Fortune 500 index from 75 years to 15 years as reported by Steven Denning (on Forbes) speaks a straight language: Fast Innovators – hungry for success – disrupt established markets.
do companies leapfrog industry borders and sell additional products and services into existing markets and leave established market leaders perplexed behind.
Modern ERP need to support this fast and dramatic shift without losing its capabilities to run like a clockwork.
If they play it right and exploit new market trends, they can pitchfork themselves way ahead of competition.
The new technical possibilities and customer behavior makes the digital storefront a MUST have in the digital economy. Companies want to be where the customers are. It is a logical consequence of the Segment of ONE. Customers want to be treated as individuals, not in a segment with others any more.
But what´s next after digitalizing my storefront? It creates a huge new promise to the market, that needs to be fulfilled.
But the commercial feasibility depends not only on the technical ability but mainly on the degree of automation your system can provide. Else you burn money with every single transaction across your company.
As a learning, we can´t consider an intelligent ERP simply as a technical upgrade or a chance for another minor or major optimization. The technology is here, to fundamentally rethink and redesign your core business processes to the better.
As complexity often hinders the ease and speed of transformation, core business processes need to be reimagined and modified. That way, companies can simplify their work processes and recap benefits in the long run, provided proper measures are taken to redesign their processes and convert to the intelligent age.
To make this measurable, a value lever model based on 3 main levers was defined, embracing efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.
Efficiency is the ability to do things right by achieving more outcomes with the same input or less effort. This can be achieved, for example, by giving people the right information in the right context. With faster and embedded analytics through a digital core, they can make decisions more efficiently.
Effectiveness can be described as doing the right thing. Simplification enables businesses to focus on fundamentals and scale them accordingly. They can now spend time on value-adding tasks since many processes are automated.
Agility is a mix of flexibility and speed. The pace of adoption to change defines a company’s success. It is only possible with a digital core and the flexible extension of a modern platform.
To get your point of view, we are running a master thesis and are collecting your feedback as valuable input for our considerations.
Please find below the link to the thesis survey. The target group of the survey are Experts/Leaders from non-IT industry who use enterprise software solutions as part of their work.