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Technical design document

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Posted on by sri17

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Hi All ,

I'm aware about the purpose of the TDD.

The question is that do we have any option in VSTS to meticulously track the information what TDD contains or still we need to follow the traditional process of manual TDD ?

Does MS has any option in online or any tool available to track those changes against customizations which done by vendor ?

Any insights would highly appreciated ?

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Martin Dráb 237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I'm not sure what you manual process you want to solve by tools. Tools can help you, but they don't do thinking for you. And creating technical specifications is primarily about thinking - what requirements must be met, what's the best design for them etc.

Where VSTS can help you is putting the specification to a structure (the spec may be linked to a user story or a feature, it can have an area), you can link the spec and the implementation, you can store documents in version control and so on.

Regarding "to track those changes against customizations", I'm not sure how you distinguish "changes" and "customizations", but if you mean tracking what changes have been done for a particular requirement, VSTS can do that. When developers check in code, they can associate changes (changesets) to one or more work items (such as task or user stories). Then you can easily find all changes done for a requirement, why some code has been written, which work items are included in a build and so on.

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Ludwig Reinhard Microsoft Employee on at

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Hi sri17,

I have not seen a specific VSTS element for TDDs. To track the TDD specifically you can create - for example - a new backlog item to which the TDD document is attached or a link to a sharepoint where the TDD document resides. I was once even working on a project where TDDs were not used but rather VSTS elements that tracked and detailed all the information that we recorded in a TDD document in the past.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,

Ludwig

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sri17 346 on at

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Hi Martin , Ludwig ,

Thanks for the information .

During customizations against any change request ,it might required to add new tables , new forms, fields ,and fields to be added existing table , form , add new line of code or need to add new classes or modify existing classes ....based on the requirement changes will be done and objects will undergone the changes .

The question is that assume developer had not prepared any TDD ,then does it possible to track above mentioned object changes by any other developer ?

Do we still need to follow the traditional process by maintain the manual TDD documents and store somewhere in the sharepoint or without having TDD also does it possible to track the minor changes also ?

If yes ,what is tool give such a detail information or advance features available which you follow in your implementations ?

Thanks in advance.

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Martin Dráb 237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

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As I already said, you can link your spec with actual code changes in VSTS, so any developer can see the link, find all changes for a given requirement, find all requirements associated with a particular class, see for which requirement a particular line of code was created and so on.

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sri17 346 on at

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Thanks for the reply Martin ,

[quote user="Martin Dráb"]As I already said, you can link your spec with actual code changes in VSTS[/quote]

What do you mean by spec ? Is it a document to be prepared by developer ?

Please explain.

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Martin Dráb 237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

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A spec means a specification. You have some kind of functional requirement for which you create the TDD, so you would have a work item in VSTS (e.g. a user story) representing this requirement. You can put your TDD there or you can have a TDD document linked to it. And when code changes are checked in, they can be linked to this work item too.

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sri17 346 on at

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Thanks for the reply ,

[quote user="Martin Dráb"]You have some kind of functional requirement for which you create the TDD,[/quote]

[quote user="Martin Dráb"]You can put your TDD there or you can have a TDD document linked to it[/quote]

Based on the above statements , TDD is mandatory to be prepared by developer and without TDD ,it's not possible to track object changes against the customizations.

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nmaenpaa 101,160 Moderator on at

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It is perfectly possible to track object changes without TDD. For example you might have a VSTS user story for the functional requirement. You can force developers to add a link to a VSTS item when checking in. When developers check in code regarding your user story, they associate their changeset with the VSTS user story id. Now you can track all customizations regarding that user story.

TDD (Technical Design Document) is meant for describing what technical changes (dev work) are needed to fulfill a functional requirement.

Documenting your design and tracking changes are two different things. But of course you want to have a link between your FDD, TDD and VSTS changesets.

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nmaenpaa 101,160 Moderator on at

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Anyway I don't think you can avoid TDD with any change tracking tools. Design needs to be done before implementing the changes. So it's impossible to avoid the need for design by generating it afterwards by tracking / analysing the changesets.

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Martin Dráb 237,880 Most Valuable Professional on at

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I didn't say anything about what kind of documents you must create and who should write them. It completely depends on your methodology. For example, whether a document is written by a technical architect or a developer has absolutely no impact to how code can be linked to work items in VSTS.

All what I said about TDD is that if you want to write a technical design document (which is what you said), you surely must have a requirement that you're designing and that all documents (such as TDD) and code should be tracked against this requirement. In VSTS, you'll create a work item (such as a user story) and link documents, changesets, related work items or anything you like.

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