Initial Assessment - MSF Agile Beta

After spending all week in training, I've had a few minutes to look into MSF Agile beta again.  Without regard to the actual content, as I'm still going through it, it definately seems a lot more detailed and complete, as would be expected.  My biggest complaint is that it seems to have lost the overall flow.  That is, I can look at any individual Workstream/Activity/Step and determine who does it, what the dependencies are, what it consists of, and what the exist criteria.  Unfortunately I can't easily map the dependencies for each workflow to the other workflows.  I suppose that some argument can be made that "VSTS will lead you through the process", but I'd still like to understand to goings-on in MSF Agile.

Otherwise, the layout is good, the delivery looks fine but the navigation isn't always intuitive.  I always seem to find another link that provides more depth into other areas of the documentation.  Although the process seems to be pretty detailed, providing step-by-step in most (perhaps all) cases, I work best with examples and templates.  There are screen shot examples of Work Products, but no actual documents samples or templates within the HTML section of the guidance.  I finally noticed that there are acompanying subdirectories that do contain some templates:

• Project Management:
  • Development Project Plan.mpp (haven't opened)
  • Project Checklist.xls (two copies - both empty)
  • QoS Requirements.xls (empty)
  • Scenarios.xls (empty)
  • Test Development Plan.mpp (not checked)
• Requirements:
• Persona.dot (nice/simple 2-page template)
• Scenario.dot (simple template for describing a scenario)
• Vision.doc (Template as a document for Vision)
• Vision.dot (Template for Vision - slightly different text than the above)
• Security:
• Security Asset List.xls (List header)
• Threat.dot (simple template for describing a threat)
• Test:
• Test Approach.doc (Empty sample containing coverage and techniques matricies, etc.)
• TestApproach.dot (More polished template version of the above)

Hope this little review helps others who are interested in the MSF Agile beta but haven't had time to dig yet.