What does TFS cost?

Ever been given the run-around on what it actually costs to have TFS running?
Let’s see if I can break it down.

Note: I’m using retail prices for these examples, so this is the ABSOLUTE maximum that you would pay. There are a couple of licensing agreements that could see you paying a great deal less.

We all know that you get a TFS Server license and CAL when you have an MSDN subscription, right? So if you license your developers with MSDN subscriptions you have the right to install TFS and each developer with an MSDN subscription is allowed to access TFS. If you do not have MSDN subscriptions or have a “Partner Action pack” then you would need to purchase a $499 Server license and a $499 CAL per person accessing TFS unless they fall into an exempt list (discussed a bit later)

What the TFS Server license includes is obviously the ability to install and run TFS and it grants “limited rights” licenses to use:

• SQL Standard
• SCVMM if you have any of the following subscriptions
  • Ultimate
  • Premium or
  • Test Professional 

The “limited rights” means that you are only allowed to use SQL for TFS and SCVMM for Lab Management. If it is going to be used for anything else, you need to license it separately and obviously if you already have SQL or SCVMM licensed you can use those.

So now you have TFS and some of the components, but you need to install it on an operating system which will need to be licensed separately. If this is going to be a production server (basically the definition of “production” is that there are big problems if you lose it), the OS licensing is NOT covered by MSDN, you would need a separate server license ( About $882 for Windows 2012 Std ).

So we have TFS and we can install it on a server. Here is the tricky part…regardless of the fact that Windows 2012 is a per-processor license, you still need a Windows Server CAL ( $199 for a 5 CAL pack) for anyone who is going to connect to TFS (whether they are exempt from a TFS CAL or not)

So we end up with something like this:

TFS CAL Exceptions

As mentioned earlier, there are a couple of exceptions with the requirement of a TFS CAL. You do NOT need a TFS CAL when (snipped from the VS 2012 licensing white paper):

• Entering work items through any interface, and viewing and editing work items you created. This enables users to enter and edit their own work items of any type.
• Accessing Team Foundation Server reports. Any read-only data that comes from the Team Foundation Server SQL data warehouse or is surfaced through SQL Server Analysis Services would be a report, but custom reports could also be written to call into Team Foundation Server APIs and could also join that data with other data sources.
• Accessing Team Foundation Server using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager. This enables operations staff to take operational issues encountered in production and raise them as issues to the development team, automatically creating a work item in Team Foundation Server.
• Accessing Team Foundation Server using the Feedback Client for TFS. This allows the user to provide Feedback about an application into Team Foundation Server.
• Viewing static data that has been manually distributed outside of Team Foundation Server.
• Up to two devices or users that only access Team Foundation Server to perform system administration, such as creating Team Projects or Project Collections.

TFS Express

Microsoft has also brought out TFS Express which runs on SQL Express and is limited to Version Control, Work Item Management and Build. TFS Express does not provide any of the reporting capabilities or allow for SharePoint integration.

It does however allow up to 5 users without the requirement for a CAL, only the 6th person and up will require a CAL. So this makes a good starting platform for smaller teams. The OS still needs to be licensed though.

Levels of CAL

It also needs to be noted that there are “levels” of CAL’s when looking at TFS. To use the Backlog and Sprint Planning Tools and the Request and Manage Feedback features you need to have either a VS Ultimate or Premium MSDN or a Test Professional MSDN subscription.

Summary

So let’s take a simple scenario. You are 5 developers with MSDN subscriptions. To run TFS in a production environment the costs look like this:

TFS	$0 (covered my MSDN)
TFS CAL	$0 (covered my MSDN)
Windows Server	$882
Windows Server CAL	$199
Total:	$1081

If you do not have MSDN subscriptions the picture would look like this:

TFS	$499
TFS CAL	$2495 ($499 * 5)
Windows Server	$882
Windows Server CAL	$199
Total:	$4075

I hope this clears up some of the questions that I get posed fairly often.

References:

• Visual Studio 2012 and MSDN Licensing Whitepaper (October 2012)
• Microsoft Product Use Rights October 2012
• Microsoft Store
• Windows 2012 Server licensing & pricing FAQ

SA Developer Meet : TFS and Visual Studio 2012

We have organised a SA Developer meet in Cape Town, Wednesday 31st of October.

I will be covering some of the new features that really get me exited with the new release of Team Foundation Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012.

I have some goodies and trial versions for some of the lucky people that will be attending.

Book now, seats are filling up!

FREE Visual Studio ALM preview! - CAPE TOWN

Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 2012 is here, and during the months of November and December Team Foundation Consulting will be offering your company a FREE 1 hour ALM session.
These sessions will cover some of the new features available in TFS and VS 2012 and aspects of ALM.

All sessions will be presented at your premises, and availability is limited.
To book or enquire about a session please email info(at)teamfoundation(dot)co(dot)za or contact us via our contact page.

Note: Min 5 attendees required for sessions.

JHB - sessions will be made available in January/February 2013 - email us if you are interested and we will advise you when the sessions become available.

Cape Town Software Week

The coming week (13 – 19 October) will be a busy week in Cape Town.
Starting on 13th with Software Week then ending with Microsoft TechDays on the 19th.
Cape Town Software week is going to be a very interesting week, covering everything from skill mentoring through to business and industry insights, really something that is a “must attend”.
I’ll be involved in some of the technical and skill mentoring sessions over the weekend..
see you there..

The truth about having your own business…

“A business can be likened to a ‘jealous lover’ in that it will demand most of your time, it requires significant commitment,
sacrifice and passion, and it will interfere with most of your plans”
- Denvor Phokaners

Process and the tool

Microsoft has a very competent ALM story that is being backed up by the Microsoft Visual Studio ALM “suite”. Don’t take my opinion for it though; Microsoft must be doing something right in this space to be one of the leaders in Gartner’s “Magic Quadrant for Application Life Cycle Management, June 2012”.

One thing I can point out in the diagram is that Microsoft is not the only player in the ALM space; there are a fair number of people with varying degrees of success battling it out.

The thing you should be aware of is that the tool itself is not the be all and end all of a “proper” application life cycle. I have come across a number of companies that are looking for a “tool” to solve a process problem.

The company feels pain in the way that they are doing things and then starts looking for a tool that will “solve” the problems. When the tool does not fulfil the need 100% they start looking at the next one (in some cases they have literally been looking for years).

The problem is that in all likelihood they will never be able to find the “right” tool, regardless of how complete a story the tool caters for, or how competent or proven the tool may be.

“Then what should we do?”

Glad you asked.
Firstly, take a deep hard look at your current process, highlighting the problems. It is important to be honest with yourself in this step. You will base your plan of action on the outcome of this step. (You may consider doing an ALM assessment that may give you some clarity on your situation or level of maturity https://www.microsoft.com/assess/almassessment/default.aspx ).

Next, find people that have had similar problems, or look at best practices that are being adopted and how they may solve your problems.

Next you need to make some hard decisions.
How are you going to change to relieve the problems? Something needs to give; some decisions need to be made. You cannot expect to follow the same process and somehow the problems will reduce or disappear (as Albert Einstein once said "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results"). The best development team can only do so much; the rest is up to the process that governs the day to day and week to week actions.

Finally you can start looking at the toolset that will support the process, taking note of the following (just to name a few) aspects:

• How do the various aspects of ALM integrate with each other?
  Do you have a single up to date and accurate “high level” view into the various aspects without needing to dedicate a person or resources to compile these reports or statistics?
• What value can you derive from the tool?
  Does it provide you a rich functionality with regards to reporting, accessibility, integration and/or usability?
• How well integrated is it in your day to day activities?
  Is it available when and where you need it to be with as little as possible context switching between applications or environments?

In conclusion, it is important to note the following:

• You cannot solve a process problem with a tool
• The tool needs to support and automate your process, bringing together information from every aspect of your project!

 

In need of process, ALM or Team Foundation Server adoption guidance?
Give us a shout!

It is good to be busy.. or is it?

As you may have noticed I started and run my own business.
(I’m sure that this must be a parents worst nightmare.)
“Mom, dad… I have quit my job and I’m going into business on my own.”
I can just image them thinking to themselves “aarrggghh – should probably clear out his old room…”

Two years later and I’m struggling to keep up with the work load, every time my parents ask “how are things going?” and I reply “very busy”. Then the inevitable reply comes (with a hint of relief no doubt) “that is good”.

One thing I fear that they are missing is that there are in fact various different types of “busy”. I have tried to explain it before, but I think I’ll just send them to this post in the future..

Lets break down busy. In my opinion, there are a different levels of busy and where some are good others are down right bad.

1) Busy with things that pay you “decent” money

This is a good busy. This is you doing work and being paid for it at a decent rate. If you are not doing work under this category in any way, form or shape you could effectively be losing money. You should spend most of the time busy with this type of work or with activities that will induce more work under this category.

2)  Busy with things that merely pay

Yes, this does differ from number 1. As with anybody that is still finding their space and niche, you tend to take on “other work” that you do not charge the “full” rates for. This could include long term jobs, (in my case) maintenance work (something like retainer) or just plain work you cannot justify charging the full rate for.

Don't get me wrong, this type of work is important when things are slow, when you do not have any other income in the month this could be a “life saver”.
However, when this work starts getting to the volumes that the “initial allocation time” starts increasing uncontrollably, problems start occurring.
You spend more time on this than being focused on either performing or hunting down those “decent” income jobs, effectively losing potential revenue!

3) Busy with things that do not pay……..yet

This is a difficult one. These things you need to do to ensure future revenue. In my case these activities would include for example doing presentations at events or going to see clients to discuss or chat about their problems or even writing blogs. This is a good place to promote myself and my business in terms of who I am and what I can do, basically marketing.

As I mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph this is a difficult one in that it takes a fair amount of time, yet you do not have direct returns.
Without it however, you probably will not have any “returns”.
This is something that you do “need” to do, and in my case probably after hours and over weekends (if you are not busy with something in one of the other categories).

4) Low/no income and very low/no real gain

Unfortunately this is a nasty one. Think of those “quick” projects that just kept on going forever, without payment and with scope creep through the roof. Promises that payment will come if you deliver x,y and z, but on delivery it is not good enough and the requirements have changed etc. etc. etc.

You have made commitments and there is no easy way out of this. Every moment that you are spending on this one you are losing out on any of the other categories.
Other than to just walk away I do not really know how else to handle these.
Obviously things like reputational risk come into play, just in general leaving a bad taste in the mouth.

 

I think these (or a combination of these) cover the main point of being “busy”. So next time someone says they are busy, ask them is it a “good busy” or a “not so good busy”.