Microsoft Office Project Server is a solution for project portfolio management (PPM) using SharePoint as its foundation. Microsoft has now announced that it is ending Project Server's integration with Team Foundation Server (TFS), saying that the experience does not live up to the expectations of customer. The company has instead turned to a third-party solution by Tivitie in order to meet the demands of consumers.
A blog post from Microsoft indicates that it followed up with several customers to inquire if they were using the out-of-the-box integration between TFS and Project Server, and found out that nearly all customers who attempted the integration were not using it anymore. The company states that:
Many integrations were abandoned because Agile teams track progress differently than traditional projects. Traditional projects typically plan for the entire scope of a project and use hours to track progress. Agile projects plan on demand, typically 2-3 sprints out, and often use story points to track progress.
As a result, with the next major release of TFS, namely TFS "15", the company will no longer be providing integration between TFS and Project Sever, nor will it offer integration for Project Online and Visual Studio Team Services. However, Microsoft has stated that it will provide support to the existing solution, which supports the following versions:
- TFS 2010 SP1, 2012, 2013, and 2015
- Project Server 2007, 2010 and 2013
The move wasn't met without disappointment, however, with one person commenting on the blog saying that the integration was a "TERRIBLE idea….basically your integration sucked and your whip-smart engineers can’t figure out how to deliver a good experience." Gregg Boer, the author of the blog post and the Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, responded to the comment with:
Thanks for the comment. You raise fair points. Our existing integration solution did not meet our standards.
We did explore options for making our solution better, which led us to appreciate that we have a partner in place who already had a solid solution that addresses most of the concerns of our existing integration.
Going forward, Microsoft is turning to a third-party integration solution provided by Tivitie, which passed a design review conducted by its engineering team. You can find out more information of Tivitie's website.
Source: Microsoft
