How to include multiple Earned Value charts on the same graph

1. Ensure that you have your Earned Value data series all in the same workbook
2. Ensure that the date series' for your Earned Value series are actually formatted as dates
3. Start by rendering the first Earned Value series as a SCATTER PLOT with straight lines
4. Edit the chart data to add subsequent Earned Value series until they're all on the same chart

TODO: Update this post to include screen shots.

How to quickly graph a comparison of projects with PDEx in Excel 2016

1. Select your projects in Windows Explorer, right click => Open 
2. Once all of your projects are loaded into an instance of Microsoft Project with PDEx installed, go to the "Project Design" tab and click on "Compare": 
   
3. In the window that opens up to compare your Projects, go to the Summary tab:
   
4. Click somewhere in the table of values and press Ctrl+A to select all of the cells: 
   
5. Press Ctrl+C to copy the contents of the table to the clipboard.
6. Open a new Excel workbook, and on a blank worksheet, go to cell A1: 
   
7. Press Ctrl+V to paste the table of values from MS Project into Excel: 
   
8. Select a SINGLE column of data across projects that you'd like to graph and click on the quick action icon in the bottom right, e.g. Total Cost:
   
9. In the Quick Action dialog that appears, select the "Charts" tab: 
   
10. Click on the "Scatter" chart type to generate a Scatter plot of the data points. This will generate the series on the Y-axis, with default serial numbers as the X-axis:
    
11. Right click on the chart and select "Edit Data" to edit the data series:
    
12. In the "Select Data Source" dialog that appears, select the created data series and click on the "Edit" button to edit it: 
    
13. In the "Edit Series" dialog that appears, select the cell that's to be used for the series name, and the range of cells that are to be used as the X-axis for the data series. Then click Ok to save the changes, and OK again to close the Series editor: 
    
14. Once back in the main Excel window, with the Chart still in Edit mode, go to the top right of the data area and hover over the corner until you have an "Expand" mouse cursor: 
    
15. Click on the corner anchor and drag to the right to include extra data series extracted from the neighbouring columns: 
    
16. Now that you've got all of the series you want to include on the graph (Cost in our case), you'll need to pare down the X-axis to have the series' fill out the chart. Right-click on the X-axis and select Format Axis: 
    
17. In the "Format Axis" pane that appears on the right side of the Excel window, set appropriate X-axis bounds: 
    
18. In order to match the graphs we see in the Project Design manual which include data labels that have the names of the corresponding project variants, start by right-clicking on one of the data series and then clicking on "Add Data Labels": 
    
19. This will add default data labels with the Y-values of the data points to the series. However, we want to use the names of the corresponding projects, so we have more work to do. Right-click on one of the data labels and click on "Format Data Labels ...": 
    
20. In the "Format Data Labels" pane that appears on the right side of the Excel window, select "Value from Cells". This will cause the "Data Label Range" dialog to appear: 
    
21. Click on the textbox in the "Data Label Range", then select the cells under the "Project" column, EXCLUDING THE "PROJECT" HEADER. Then click OK: 
    
22. You'll now have your chart for your project comparison data, with (at least one) series set up to look just like the Project Design manual: 
    

Happy charting!

The Tech Lead's New Project Checklist, propagated

A while ago a virtual colleague recommended this article on a forum:

https://insimpleterms.blog/2017/08/07/the-tech-leads-new-project-checklist/

It's a checklist for all the items a Technical Lead  should enumerate on a New Project. It's a good read if you're in (or could potentially be in) the position of leading a team in a technical project.

Migrating code in TFS from one Team Project to another Team Project within the same Team Project Collection

My company has frequently had the issue of moving code around within the same Team Project Collection as shifting desires and motivations for the organization of our code have swayed our company. Previously, we've used tools such as the TFS Integration Platform available on code plex. That project has its share of issues, namely that:
a) It was half baked to begin with
b) It's no longer maintained and doesn't work for versions later than TFS 2012.

Fortunately for me, thanks to a fortuitous Stack Overflow post, I've found the following script to recursively move the content of one folder to another folder, and it even works across Team Projects within the same collection (but not across Team Project Collections):

Param(
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)][ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()][string] $SourceFolder,
    [Parameter(Mandatory = $true)][ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()][string] $TargetFolder
)

Get-TfsChildItem $SourceFolder |
    select -Skip 1 |  # skip the root dir
    foreach {
        & "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\TF.exe" rename $_.serveritem $_.serveritem.replace($SourceFolder, $TargetFolder)
    }

In order to run the script above, you'll need both Visual Studio and TFS Power Tools installed. When you install the Power Tools, you'll need to ensure that the PowerShell module is selected in the installation options. Also, because the path to the Power Tools PowerShell module isn't put in the PSModulesPath by default, you'll have to manually import the module into your PowerShell settings like so (before you run the script):

Import-Module "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2013 Power Tools\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.PowerShell.dll"