The Mindjet Labs

Scenario: 

A software development organization uses Microsoft Visual Studio Team System to manage all of the bugs reports, features requests, scenarios, and development tasks for the entire company.

• A team within that organization uses MindManager to create a map of software requirements for a software development project that is starting up. 
• Once the team agrees upon all of the aspects of the project, a team member then opens the VSTS task pane in MindManager and connects to the team server by pressing the Connect button.
• In the Connect form specify the team server's address and port (like http://devserver:8080).  If the server requires login information (other than the default user credentials, then enter them in the form and press Connect. 
• If successful, a list of projects on the server are listed.
• Select a project from the list and press OK.
• At this point a MindManager creates a business type for each work item type in a few seconds and lists the different work item types in the task pane. 
• Select topics that represent specific types (bugs, features, tasks, etc) and double-click on the types to assign the types.
• Once a topic is assigned to a work item type it is in a "pending" state with a yellow icon, and is not yet on the team server.  you can double-click on the topic's data container where the properties are listed to edit those properties. By default the topic text is put into the work item title and the topic's notes are put into the work item's description.  When you press OK after editing the properties, that topic is published to the Team System.
• You can select multiple topics and assign a work item type to them as a group.
• If the work item topic hyperlinks to an http:// or https:// address then a hyperlink is added to the work item's link list.
• If the work item topic has another work item topic as its parent topic or subtopic, then a related link is added to both work items' links list.
• If the work item topic has a relationship pointing to another work item topic, then a related link is added to both work items' links list.
• You can also publish the topic by pressing the refresh icon to the right of the topic text.
• Once a topic is published, it is linked to the work item on team server and it's icon changes from yellow to green.
• If you edit the work item in Visual Studio or in the Team Explorer, then the changes will be reflected in the topic in MindManager when you press the Refresh button for that topic.
• Pressing the Publish and Refresh button will first try to publish pending work items to the Team System and then refresh all existing work item topics.
• Each work item topic has a Help option in its context menu. The help describes the work item and all of the fields.  This information is taken directly from the project definition file.
• All of the properties that are visible on the editing form in Visual Studio or Team System are visible in each topic. Press the Show All Properties button to show the properties that are in the tab pages on the editing form.
• Once the work items are created, the requirements map is put in a shared location, possibly with Microsoft SharePoint, and can be opened and refreshed to track the progress of the project.

• 1/15/2007 Fixed winzip problem with installer, Added domain parameter to work with CodePlex projects (Thanks to Brian Sherwin).
• 12/7/2006 Updated installer to work on Windows Vista; signed installer.
• 4/25/2006 Fixed bug where work item properties were not editable in MindManager once they were published.
• 4/20/2006 Fixed bug where topics without notes caused errors when assigned a work item type
  
  Made topic text update to work item title when refreshing.
  
  Changed logic so that once a work item is published, its work item type cannot be changed.
• 4/17/2006 Initial Release

Background

Kevin Kelly, a Mindjet MindManager user and Microsoft Program Manager for Visual Studio Team System came up with an idea last year: use Mindjet MindManager to define software requirements and then have those requirements instantly uploaded into Microsoft Visual Studio Team Server where they can be tracked as work items.

Once Mindjet MindManager 6 came out in the September 2005, such an integration became much more compelling and possible as a way to demonstrate new features in MindManager 6 such as task panes and business topics and to show how MindManager could easily integrate with a powerful project management system. Since Mindjet has a large number of users in software development, this seemed like an appropriate challenge, so Mindjet worked with Microsoft to get it done.

The Challenge

In 4 days, build a MindManager add-in in C# that integrates with Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) in the following way:

• A software development team uses Mindjet MindManager Pro 6 to develop a requirements map for a software development project.
• MindManager connects to VSTS to get the work item type definitions.
• The project manager takes the map that was used in step 1 and then assigns work item types to topics in the map.
• The work item topics are uploaded to VSTS and a link to each one is stored in the map.
• The map can be easily refreshed to reflect the current status of the work items represented in it.
• The work items can be edited in either Visual Studio or MindManager and they are kept in sync.
• The map that was used to develop the consensus and buy-in can now be used to track the project through to completion.

The Result

Through the Microsoft Visual Studio Industry Partner program, I attended a 4-day Dev Lab at the Microsoft Platform Adoption Center at the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington. There, I had at my disposal systems, software, and staff that were capable of answering my questions about the potential integration. In this environment from a standing start with absolutely no experience with Visual Studio Team Server, I was able to get the basic functionality complete in one and half days and in three days I was able to meet the challenge. BONUS: When you install the add-in, the complete source code to build the add-in is also included in the Source directory in the installation folder.

Thanks to:

• Kevin Kelly
• Tom Crozier
• Terry Clancy
• Gregg Boer
• Mareen Philip
• The staff at the Microsoft Platform Adoption Center

Without the support of these Microsoft employees (and many others) I could not have done this.