SSW TFS Smashing Barrier demoed at ALM conference

Adam Cogan demoed SSW’s TFS Smashing Barrier at the ALM Conference @ Luna Park yesterday. It’s a neat little user control that has always existed on the SSW website (visible only to internal staff) that allows a user to quickly report an issue on the page and to find out:

• What active tasks are there for the current web page?
• What tasks have been completed for the current web page

It helps stop the following common scenario:

• Tristan: “Hey! This button is atrocious. You should fix it”
• Mark: “I think we’ve got that captured already. Let me check”
• … 5 mins later …
• Mark: “Yep it’s already there.”
• Tristan: “Oh… Okay”
• Mark: “Now what was I doing again…”

5-10 mins might be wasted here

What we want to happen is:

• Tristan: “Hey! This button is atrocious.”
• Tristan: “Let me check the backlog on this page”
• Tristan: “Oh it’s already there”

Only 2 mins of Tristan’s time is wasted here

Precious time saved when the information is right in front of the user already.

Here’s what it looks like:

TFS Smashing Barrier was well received with about 70% of the attendees thinking it was a great idea.

Great work guys.

Comments

[Martin Hinshelwood]

Thats fantastic. I love this control. I would like to have the Build number from Team Foundation Build added to it so that bugs can be logged and tracked against the correct build. We would also be able to see which tasks and bugs are currently in the build that the customer is viewing, thus allowing us to query against "Bugs and Tasks closed in this build".

[Peter]

Can I easily add a screenshot to the work item that I create?
Or does it automatically create a screenshot of the page that I am looking at...
That would be an awesome feature!!!