Last Friday I was speaking with a friend about the value of transparency.

With Team Foundation Server it's possible to be completely transparent about current and previous projects.

Everybody (or better, every login that we trust smile_regular) could access reports, work items, documents, builds, source code, with the appropriate permissions (from no access, to read only, modify, and so on), also on the Internet (using for example the Team System Web Access power tool).

This is a HUGE step forward. But it's not enough.

 

A glass window is completely transparent, but if I don't look through it, for me it's completely opaque and its content it's completely obscure.

The tool must allow us to be completely transparent (like TFS), but it's necessary to have the will to go beyond "opaque" transparency to have a clear understanding of what's going on.

I remember the initial selling points of Windows Vista: Clear, Confident and Connected.

I think that TFS has all the three attributes, but after that there is the human factor, and sometimes (it really depends on people involvement) it's better to schedule a meeting to discuss project status, using all the data from TFS, instead of saying "the truth is out there" (in TFS... smile_regular).

It's easy to check the IIS logs (or to remove permissions to appropriate users and wait for their complaints), and if nobody is accessing the data, we can act.