Foundation Built with TFS

This Saturday I spent with the Team Foundation System. Although I have studied most of the theory through last month about TFS but practical installation is bit difficult.

TFS was not the only requirement for my team.  I was looking for Source Safe, Standard software development process, documentation practices, web based project management, resource management, issue tracking, time tracking and reporting etc. etc. etc.

Wikipedia, one of my best friend, always provides me kick start information about any subject. You just name it, it has it.

This page from Wikipedia gives me enough information to start details research towards my KRA.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software

Although I used Project.Net and Redmine tools for the test drive, I was not happy with them for 2 reasons. First they were developed using Java and Ruby on the Rails respectively. My most of the developers are working in Microsoft technologies. We have few projects in Java  but personally I was not happy with it’s overall performance over Microsoft .NET.

The second reason was User Interface. I personally feel that User Interface is the most important part of software development.

Then I tried BugNET Project. It is purely in C#and has lot many features including Open Source. It was good for my bug tracking requirement and document management, but few annoying  bugs keeps irritating me. I tried to rectify those from my end, but it was very difficult to manage the development altogether with all my other responsibilities.

So finally I decided to go with Microsoft. I always prefer Microsoft products because integrity, scalability and data presentation. Microsoft has done deep integration with the Microsoft Office System and user can use wide range of reporting tools, including Excel and even FRx. BugNet may solve my problems for bug tracking and at some extent project management. But what about the other things like resource management and source control.

Source control is fundamental principle of modern software development. There are various source control softwares are available in the market. Recently I came across one of the study about version control systems. You can find the details below from the VSoft Study.

While observing this chart, I found that Microsoft Team Foundations is the most popular choice after Subversion. I have used Subversion two years back. But I have not yet used TFS, so I can not compare right now.

I heard that TFS is very slow and confusing. But right now we do not want to go with those, who may not provide the support in future. As a developer, I was very much interested in Open Source and Free technologies, but while managing team I need to consider various things, including Team’s capability, process mapping, learning curves and adoption and off course costing.

I don’t want any solutions right now which might be free but my developer is focusing their time on rectifying their bugs and maintaining them instead of my business.

Theories Of ERP

Recently one of our client invited tenders to develop the ERP System for one of the big rating company. The newly appointed CTO wanted a custom made system, which should be tightly integrated with existing applications including Tally, HRMS and other Systems.

But it was very difficult to integrate all the systems at the data level since existing systems were proprietary. The CTO was expecting that the solution provider should study the existing systems at the lower level and build a parallel system for the missing components. He actually wanted to fill the gap which was exists in the current system. But the business was risky. The CTO actually missed few criticle points.

Today ERP Systems have been (mis)understood as a server that integrates all business applications required by various functional entities, but the underlaying principles and disciplines of ERP are not yet very clear. This is the reason, most of the ERP systems either failed or underutilized in India. The fundamental idea that the ERP softwares Such SAP or Dynamics are not ERP but a tool for ERP is not yet understood.

I am looking for a text which can explain me not a tool but ERP concepts with its associated theory.