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The Semi-Finalists: Infosys' Centralized TFS Project

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PCQ Bureau
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Infosys deployed Team Foundation Server to centrally manage all its projects spread across various locations in and outside the country and help improve the productivity of its delivery force



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The delivery teams which form a majority of the workforce at Infosys were using a wide variety of software configuration management tools like VSS, Subversion, CVS, etc. However, the maintenance and administration of these setups were managed locally by project teams. This inevitably gave rise to a lot of challenges and issues. The local configuration setup and administration done by the project teams used to be a very tedious process. Data backup and maintenance was handled by the teams locally, which led to accidental deletion of the source code files. Teams also faced issues due to database corruption, network latency time, space for data storage, lack of proper support etc. ·In case of distributed development environment, it was difficult to keep the CM machine in high availability mode. Given that Source Code is the most critical aspect of any delivery organization, it was super important to build a scalable solution that could help secure the most critical assets and help improve the overall productivity of its delivery force.

The Implementation

Infosys deployed Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS) to centrally manage all projects. This Initiative has brought a change in configuration management activities that were done prior to centralized TFS setup. Apart from check- in & check-out of code, TFS provides a single collaborative platform for developers, PMs, architects, & testers. Now project teams at Infosys are empowered to do their operational project management and work item creation and allocation using the centralized solution. Centralized TFS includes both Microsoft and non Microsoft projects. Non Microsoft projects are accessing centralized TFS server using Team Explorer 2010 utility. Teams that have leveraged the centralized TFS set up have reported productivity improvements ranging from 2-5% due to enhanced collaboration, process adherence, and reduction in CM effort and other admin activities.



Centralized TFS setup at Infosys is amongst the largest TFS deployment in the world, claims Infosys.

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Managing 15k Developers & Testers

The implementation is benefitting all the delivery teams across the organization including development, maintenance and testing. Today the solution caters to around 15,000 developers and is growing rapidly. The solution provides a common platform all the stakeholders cited above.

Teams have seen overall reduction in overheads due to significant drop in administration and set up effort where TFS is not available as a service for the teams. The teams are able to leverage several TFS features for collaboration, across multiple roles, thereby improving communication across the team and traceability across deliverables. The check-in policies ensure enforcement of right process steps leading to better quality and higher productivity for the teams. The teams have also seen concrete benefits from the usage of TFS for operational work assignment and tracking.

The teams that have leveraged the centralized TFS set up have reported productivity improvements ranging from 2-5% due to enhanced collaboration, process adherence, and reduction in CM effort and other admin activities.

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