What needs improvement with TFS?

While there are always areas to improve, I am content with how TFS is structured now, particularly the Azure version. There might be some complexity in its off-cloud versions.

The product access management features and connectivity need improvement. Rights management is also complex and could be simplified. Additional automation features would be beneficial.

From a reporting point of view, it could be more convenient for filtering and segregating. It could have been even better.

The manageability and performance of the product are areas of concern where improvements are required.

Merging branches is definitely one of the more challenging aspects for people new to TFS.

If you've got 100 iterations and you create a new story and try to select which iterations, it doesn't default to the current iteration. You have to scroll right down to iteration 100 in the drop-down list. It would be good if it defaulted to the current iteration rather than having to go down a long drop-down list to select it when it's right at the end. IBM ClearCase has something called a Version Tree, where you can see all the commits and updates to the configuration as a series of nodes in a tree diagram. You can also do mergers from the different branches using that. I'd like to see some kind of visualization tool for TFS that would make life much easier.

Since the TFS was an on-prem solution, the private network accessibility was restricted.

TFS needs to be stable.

The tool needs improvement in stability.

We encounter issues with backups.

The solution's pricing and setup process needs improvement.

The solution's server, in terms of deployment, needs improvement.

As an end-user, I expect the solution's performance to be faster while staying as stable as possible. To be frank, we never considered the need for additional features in the solution. I don't have any specific suggestions for what could be added since the tool is already very streamlined. It is a stable tool without any issues; everybody in my company is happy with the solution. We follow a streamlined process at work with a specific set of steps from point A to point Z in a thorough manner. If there was something tedious, time-consuming, or repetitive in the solution, I could have spoken about what additional features I wanted to see.

The user interface could improve and test management was not useful in TFS.

The overall reports in TFS could improve. Additionally, there should be an easier way to migrate from an older version to a newer one. In a future release of TFS, they should be more integration and DevOps features added.

I am looking for some pull request features, like Git. I do not see a pull request option for branching and merging. I would also like a true command prompt like Git.

It would be better if we could bring it out on the cloud.

TFS's CI/CD, project pipelines, and management development could be improved. TFS is also an older product, so it's not making the advances that other products in the market are.

I only use 1% of the functionality, so I am not familiar enough to know what needs to be improved.

The price could be cheaper. We're going for a cloud solution that will give us similar functionality and integration with our other products that we are customizing, like SFD. At present, those codes aren't many.

I would like to see TFS improve its web interface as there are some limitations with IDs and the integration behind it and with open-source tools like VS Code. As a version control, we have found some inconsistencies related to updates from previous versions. If you set up the Git repository, and you want to change it back to TFS, it is a bit confusing now in the latest update. We were hung up when two repositories were intermingled together. We were confused about why the Git project was not converting to TFS. I believe Microsoft is supporting the Git repositories. The TFS TFVC is not user-friendly because, for Git repositories that you have already created to use the TFS repositories, you need to go back into the ID to Video Studio when the TFS repository comes up by default. Using the web interface, by default you get the Git repository. For a team that is not familiar with this and is not using the ID as a video studio or VS, code management gets difficult. Even with VS Code as an open source ID, TFS at the backend as a repository is difficult and integration is complex.

They have room for improvement in merging the source code changes for multiple developers across files. It is very good at highlighting the changes that the source code automatically does not know how to handle, but it's not very good at reporting the ones that it did automatically. There are times when we have source code that gets merged, and we lose the changes that we expected to happen. It can get a little confusing at times. They can just do a little bit better on the merging of changes for multiple developers. When you restructure your source code, the historical information doesn't directly come across. It doesn't link when you move those source folders around. I would like to see that ability. The whole source code control system should show you the history of all the changes you made to a bunch of files. If we take a folder with a bunch of files and move it from one place to another, the history is gone. It just doesn't bring over the history of everything that was moved. That has prevented us from restructuring some of our source code to suit the larger number of developers that we have. I haven't called Microsoft to see if there is help that they can give me on this because on the web and on their sites, I can clearly see that that is just the way it is, and we're not doing something wrong. So, that is something for which I would really like to have the ability. I can't recall the versions, but when I upgraded from one version to another, it didn't retain history as well because they made some fundamental changes. It might have been from 2012 to 2015. I upgraded and moved it to a new server, and it lost the historical information. We needed the old stuff running so that we could access the historical data. So, the upgrade path wasn't that easy. I don't know if that's the case anymore. When we go to 2019, we'll be finding that out.

I haven't been able to get access to the test case management and execution because it requires an extra license fee. It would be helpful if that was made available to all the users who have already bought TFS.

The solution should have better dashboards.

TFS isn't a great tool if you're on the cloud, so the cloud version could be improved.

Nowadays, the shift is from Waterfall to Agile, so many vendors have come up with their own products. For example, Jira has many built-in features which support the PI planning. Overall, I think it would be useful to have something similar where Microsoft comes up with supporting concepts of scaling Agile in TFS so that clients don't have to look for a separate tool. That would be helpful. With the latest version, I'm not too aware of whether Microsoft has implemented the PI planning features, the collaboration features, in TFS or not. But I think that would be one of the features that might be helpful to the development teams and for the overall planning. There have also been some security glitches with this solution.

It has been really dated. When you start to work more in an agile environment, it is not really that flexible. They tried to replicate the look and feel of Jira, but it is not quite there. It was nice to use in the past, but it is not as flexible now with the changing development environments and methodologies. It should have some of the things that Jira has, such as boards. We're focused on the scrum boards where you can actually drag and drop work from one queue to another. There should be more flexibility where you can just drag and drop as a user and have more visibility about what's active, what's not, and what's assigned to you through dashboards.

The project management side should be addressed and the project and release planning should be somewhat extended. The solution cannot be used as a project management tool on its own. Although clear, the installation is of medium difficulty. It could be better and easier.

The overall ability in the Agile process has some room to improve, even though it is interconnected. When I worked on Jira, it had the capability of better linkage. When it comes to project management, we are having trouble with burndown charts, which we can't seem to display. As a result, we have created new tasks and realigning our process. Rather than creating larger tasks, we are creating subtasks such as development tasks, QA tasks, and deployment tasks. An area of improvement is when there is a login for a specific user story present, it should display automatically. This is an area that where we are having difficulty and struggling in. The scalability can be improved. Linkage and task management are two areas that we are having difficulties with. It could be more like Jira, which has a number of different plugins. In addition, I feel that the status should include additional options. For example, they offer fewer options for a specific task user story or bugs. I'm looking for specific options that aren't currently available, such as active status, new status, or what's currently in progress. I would like to see an in-progress capability where you can mark it active, but you can also write that it is in progress. When I look at the dashboard, there is nothing there to show me what has been done or why it is active or not.

In the TFS tool, we, essentially, made the test cases and test tools. The execution of test cases could stand improvement. They have provided many ways to manage the execution, but they can streamline it to one or two ways. People do not wish to try all the alternative methods.

Currently, we are looking for a solution with which we can incorporate third-party development sites or third-party project teams into the system. Because it is on-premise, it is a bit problematic because we need to have a VPN or something else in the system. A cloud-based solution would be better for us, and that's what we are looking for. Our biggest problem is the external connection, which, of course, is limited by our own IT. It would be good to have some kind of publishing service for this external connection. It might be there, and it might be that our IT is making it impossible for us. Its template editor could be easier to use. Currently, customizing the project templates according to your needs requires some work.

This solution is quite old and it is already being bundled as Azure DevOps Server. In an upcoming release, more integration is needed.

There are many things that I cannot do, and I have a lot of bugs. For example, if I want to merge two branches together, sometimes TFS will merge them automatically and I couldn't find the changes and had to check them myself. That wasn't very good for me and I couldn't understand all of them and wasn't able to interact with them. The merging could be simplified and improved. I would like to see more features included for branching so that it copies your source code to the other branch, and have it in a separate folder.

Currently, there are a lot of products for managing the product backlog. The usability of TFS is not that great. Integration from an agile perspective could be improved. Jira is far better in this regard.

I would like to see better integration between TFS and third-party tools such as Jira. For example, integration with SharePoint is not very straightforward and we need to do a lot of manual work. The user interface could be improved to make it simpler and increase usability. Making it more user-friendly would be a good thing. While it is okay in some regards, it does not compare to tools like Jira. There is some complexity because there are a lot of features, but usability can still be much better and it would be more comfortable to use.

TFS has to be more user-friendly. We could have some friendly dashboards, which I feel is missing here, where I can easily plug in the dashboard and use it. Part of the test case upload is there, but it's an addon that is not being used at this time. Creating dashboards is complicated. The dashboard and the customization of dashboards is an area they have to work on. It needs to be improved. I would like to see improved dashboards with easy plug and play. There should be multiple templates that would be easily and readily available where I can track and create my view. This is what I feel is missing or needs improvement.

The reporting functionality is something that they should work on. The dashboards can be improved. Migrating from version to version should be easier.

The continuous integration and continuous delivery should begin with DSS. It doesn't right now. That needs to be changed. The phased release process could be better. Instead of shelving the call and unshelving the call, it should be done in phases. In an updated version, this should be something they adjust. It needs a more effective release process. There should be management of the project built-in.

They should have design patterns in TFS for the development team, and design patterns for the QA. QA around the world basically does the same thing, and also development. Similar to Scrum, they should have something already built-in. I would like to see templates for design added, and the option to make it more complicated.

When you are trying to connect from Visual Studio code to TFS the integration isn't so easy and I think that could be improved. There's one feature we'd really like to see. If I want to scan through how many files have checked out by name, there are no extensions or plugins available for us to readily get the information from TFS because it's being managed by someone else. As a development partner, we're dependent on them for the details and our preference would be to have the ability to do that ourselves.

I would like to see the reporting features expanded so that I can see details on the users connected to all of the projects. As it is now, I can see the details of a single project by selecting it. However, I cannot see all of the scheduled projects at once.

There are a lot of places that Microsoft can improve this product, as well as their support. The program and portfolio planning facility can be improved. As it is now, you can't do portfolio program planning functionality across multiple project Areas (vs. Team areas within a project area) because you cannot link items across projects. Reporting can be done using Power BI, but real time connections are difficult. You can use connectors and external integrations but you cannot do it with the tool. It needs to be better. It is difficult to customize.

I would like to see TFS integrated with a project management solution, such as Microsoft EPM. Right now, it is isolated from EPM but if we could somehow connect it, then that would help a lot. As it is now, the results are not easy to report to project managers, which makes it difficult to estimate both cost and the time to completion. The interface can be improved and made more user-friendly.

The test management interface is not very handy. I would like to see improved metrics in MTM.

One of the areas that could be improved is to have an effective full life-cycle management. For example, when the developing team has an issue with a bug, they can relate and tag sources and builds to that bug, but after that, it's not easy to track if those builds where in fact deployed. In the next release, I would l like to see a modern solution with a full integration of the real life-cycle.

In the next release, I would like them to include integration for various projects, similar to what JIRA has, and they could create this feature on the dashboard. If they could create a feature to allow us to see the dashboards with all of the products, it would be useful.

The dashboard needs more enhancements.

More options could be provided from the perspective of requirements management, which would help product owners to use the tool effectively.

Since it is Microsoft, it is technology agnostic, thus it does not really fit into various different technologies in the organization. We are also using Microsoft Teams. The two products function separately. There is not enough collaboration between Microsoft Teams and TFS.

Right now they are up to standard. All the features that we needed are included currently in TFS, including Git repository which allows our developers to perform their code-testing without impacting by uploading the latest code in TFS. It fits all of our needs.