So it’s time again for the annual Christmas Edition of the ALM user group. Normally we do the normal “dinner and a movie” approach, maybe having a special guest speaker or some kind of presentation contest. This month I wanted to do something different.  In December, we’ll be doing an Open Spaces concept. So Open Spaces is sort of an “unconference” thing, where you enter into it with no formal agenda and let the attendees decide what is important and/or interesting to talk about. So think of a topic you’d be willing to lead, or a topic you would like someone else to lead. A few I’d be interested in talking about are transforming organizations to Agile, upgrading legacy systems to TFS 2013, and agile testing.  We will write them on a board, pick some locations for people to gather, and then you vote with your feet, bouncing around if need be.

As an added bonus, if you’ve been attending the ALM user group for a while, you know that December is “Angela cleans out her SWAG closet” month.  So I’ll have lots of fun giveaways including pens, stickers, mouse pads and LOTS of books. I’ll even have special prizes for people who lead an Open Spaces discussion during the meeting (think XBox/Kinect games, Arc mouse, T-Shirts).

So I hope to see you in Downers Grove next week.  I always enjoy our December meetings, and not just because of the cookies :)

Be sure to register soon so I can order the right amount of food!

Join Us Wednesday, December 11, 2013 from 6:30 PM to 9:00 PM
Location:  Microsoft-Downers Grove 3025 Highland Pkwy, Ste 300, Downers Grove

Speaker Bio: You, me, anyone who is interested in speaking!

Agenda:6:30pm dinner 7:00pm Open Spaces Kickoff

RSVP Now to Attend

Comparing software development to “building a house” is one of those analogies that sets my teeth on edge. It oversimplifies everything that goes into designing and building a good product, and it also creates some unrealistic expectations in terms of estimation and effort, both for development and testing. I heard it yet again recently, and it just shocked me that it’s still being bandied about these days. C'mon, don’t act so shocked, you probably have said it yourself or heard it said at some point. I know I have, on both accounts. And you know what, it's OK, I’m not here to judge you. Unless you are still saying it, then I will judge you quite harshly :)

There was a time when this was far more true of an analogy than it is today. As someone whose original passion was "architecture", as in, creating blueprints for houses, it made a lot of sense.  Plans are good, and who doesn't like structure and rules? You see, there was a time when software was created by pouring over designs for the right "feel", sometimes for days or weeks to establish a solid foundation. Remember when SOA and OOP were the hot new things?  Before a single line of code was written we had UML diagrams and if we were really fancy stubbed out methods for the developers. And sure, when building a house every angle is inspected, measured and re-measured, the location and size of every supporting wall is verified, every window placement is compared to housing codes, all before a single piece of wood was sawn or hammer was swung. Then contractors are set loose with the specs to build the house according to a well laid out plans. Except what if by the time it was delivered, the homeowners didn’t want to actually live in the house they asked for in painful detail without some major rehab? The colors are all wrong, the yard is too small, the garage is too narrow, there aren’t enough bedrooms. Could you imagine?! In home construction, nobody sane would do that, and yet it happens all the time with software. Well, there you have it, the analogy is already somewhat blown. But there's more.

You know you've been on THAT project. You know the one - late, way over budget, customers are screaming that it isn't what they asked for even though you have signed requirements specs that say it is. Heck, even if you are just NOW getting into software development you're probably going to experience this still at some point. Particularly if you work someplace that is still stuck in a Project Plan driven mentality, a.k.a. "Waterfall" ::cue dramatic music::  Who just let out a little shudder? Now don't misunderstand, I'm not a hater, waterfall-based methodologies can work well in some scenarios, but generally even waterfall enthusiasts are not following a strictly traditional waterfall approach. And to be fair, even "real" waterfall, as I learned it back in college in the late 90's, dictated iterative practices. But often that little nugget gets lost in translation in favor of forever marching forward through a seemingly unending tunnel of quality gates, attempting to hit arbitrarily established milestones. So back to my original point. Building software is not just like building a house, or maybe the more correct way of conveying my thoughts is that building software SHOULD not be like building a house. And if it is at your company, I do not want to work there. Unless you're looking for me to facilitate an intervention of sorts. Let me explain...

Imagine you want to have a custom house built. And let's say you already know more or less what you want. Tudor style, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms, eat-in kitchen, with a detached 2 car garage. Maybe you even have an existing blueprint because plenty of houses like that already exist, so why re-invent the wheel right? Work begins, and the house starts becoming real. But even after several weeks of work, while things may start to look like a solid shell of a structure, you cannot live in it.  Well, not legally anyway. There is probably no plumbing yet, certainly no electricity, perhaps the roof is not even yet in place. You also cannot decide you now want something more Spanish style, single storied and sprawling, with an attached garage and a courtyard garden in the center. Well, technically you COULD decide to do that but it would require MASSIVE structural rework, new permits, perhaps a different construction crew, and of course SIGNIFICANTLY more time and funding to complete. OK, so I suppose this is one parallel you can draw to software development, but again this is more of an issue in waterfall shops, particularly if you are already deep into development before someone realizes a much earlier decision was a poor one. Many thousands of man-hours will get wasted, people may lose their jobs, customers will be unhappy, and you likely will end up with a Spanish tiled, Tudor style home with a semi-attached 2 car garage that has a courtyard in the center of it. So with building a house, you will not realize the value of the product and be able to use it until the last finishing nails are hammered into the last room, and major feature change requests will almost always be unfeasible to honor even early on in the construction process without MASSIVE negative consequences. Do you want to build or pay for software that is built that way? I certainly don't. 

I don't see housing contractors ever building homes one fully functional room at a time, allowing the home owners to live in it long before it is finished. I do not see them redesigning the blue prints and only ordering enough supplies for each room about to be built to incorporate changing design trends, evolving safety codes, nor do I see them accommodating the ever-changing whims of the owners.  "Oh. You've decided you want an open floor plan instead of separate kitchen and dining rooms? No problem, we're just finishing the main bathroom and haven't even framed the rest of the first floor yet..." Yeah, no. I also do not see those contractors getting the homeowner's signoff on each finished component before moving on to the next one, incorporating feedback and change requests, continuing this iterative process until the house is complete. Maybe you're thinking, "well, we don't have the ability to do any of those things today when we design, code, test, and deliver software either". I'm sorry to hear that. We should talk, there's a 12 step program to help you, and you've already admitted you have a problem which is the first step to recovery. Well, there ISN'T a program, sadly, but I often joke that there *should* be.

Now this is an easier problem to solve in software. Software teams CAN be flexible, adapting to changing needs of end users. Software can be delivered in small, working, usable pieces to deliver value as soon as a few weeks after the project begins. And it doesn't have to cost more. It can actually cost FAR less if you do it right. This is part of the reason I am such a proponent of Agile and Scrum. But honestly that is another topic and this post is already long enough so we'll defer that conversation for now.

So here is one place where building a house and building software ARE remarkably similar.  Estimates. Regardless of what a contractor tells you, no one knows for sure exactly how long building a house (or software) will take. Sure we can ballpark it, but every job is different. People will sometimes push back and call that a copout consulting answer, but it's the truth, and I try not to make a habit of lying to the people paying me to work for them. And if you demand exact delivery dates, are unwilling to compromise on features (maybe the rotating shoe rack in the closet really isn't NECESSARY), and have immovable end dates, well, you may want to refer back to the 12-step program that I mentioned earlier. No one can account for bad weather, people getting sick, catastrophic hardware failures, or that the latest version of the .NET framework that was just released has added complexities that cause even the most experienced programmers to take 50% longer to get things done for a few weeks. Should you go so far as to expect the team to commit to dates, deliverables, AND cost - to the point they take a hit if any of those things slip - well, prepare yourself for a sandbag big enough to hold back a hurricane, or to have people eventually seek alternate employment. NO ONE wins. And yet these kinds of unrealistic expectations reoccur everywhere I turn in the tech world. Maybe someday more software teams will be able to hold stakeholders and end users accountable for the quality of requirements, and refuse to take on change requests after work has begun without serious concessions, seems logical and fair. Ahhh, dare to dream :)

So now can we stop comparing software to building houses? Please and thank you.

So hopefully you already caught part 1 where I extolled the virtues of Work Item Reporting. This time, I have moved into new territory!  I am in the middle of a big, slightly nasty, TFS upgrade and TPC consolidation project.  First thing is first. Attaching a legacy Team Project (TP) to TFS 2013 “upgrades it” but only in the sense that it works on TFS 2013. So you get everything you had before, but not necessarily ALL of the new stuff in 2013.  You probably have very little of the new features in terms of the “agile planning tools”. There were changes made to the underlying TP Process Templates to support new features like, the “Feature” feature :)

I apparently had been taking the TFS Configure Features Wizard (CFW) for granted. “The what?” you say…  Yeah, the thing that gets launched when you upgrade to TFS 2013 and you try to open something like the Product Backlog while connected to a legacy (pre-2012) TP. So if you’ve seen this message, the link at the bottom launches the CFW:

Often if you have an older, customized template (like modified CMMI 4.2), you can run into issues with the wizard.  You may be familiar with errors like this “[Error] TF400654: Unable to configure Planning Tools. The following element contains an error: RequirementBacklog” or “[Error] TF400654: Unable to configure Planning Tools. The following element contains an error: TypeFields/TypeField[type='Order']“. Makes sense, there are some HUGE deltas between older templates and those in 2013.

So the CFW is super easy to use if you can upgrade with the OOB templates, especially if you’re just upgrading one version behind. And how often does THAT happen in the real world? Right. In our case we have TPs coming from TFS 2005, TFS 2008, AND TFS 2010 and all the templates are customized versions of CMMI. Oy. I decided to begin by upgrading the 2010 TPs since they were the most straight-forward and had the least amount of differences as compared to CMMI 2013. So, that is the main focus of THIS post.  I will share experiences IRT other template versions later.  So if you start with MSDN you’ll see a tangle of different articles when it comes to upgrading to new templates. A few important points about process templates:

1. A) In case you did not know, you can’t just swap templates out once you have created a Team Project and started using it, you HAVE to upgrade the underlying template of a team project itself to make changes ::opens giant can of worms:: OR if it’s a major change, like going from CMMI to Agile, just trust me on this -- migrate to a new Team Project.
2. B) Template upgrades can be scripted but at the end of the day it is very manual, and fairly time consuming because of all of the testing required.  XML can be tricky for even the saltiest of us developers.  In the old days it was ALL manual all the time and all command line, but over the years a host of helpful add-ons have become available like the process template editor in the TFS Power Tools, and the TFS Team Project manager tool.
3. C) Changes to a base process template (so at the TFS Collection level) do not automatically filter down to TPs created with that template, wouldn’t that be awesome and terrible at the same time?!  You must manually apply any template changes to all TPs that used that template, if you want them to remain consistent.  I bet now you really regret spinning up new TPs for every single one-off project your IT group dreamed up huh?

But now there is another way, the Configure Features Wizard ::duh duh DUUHHHH:: I will admit, I did not thoroughly RTFM the first time through and missed out on the full power of this little tool myself. To be fair, the last time I had a massive mutli-version TFS consolidation this tool didn’t even exist.  Of course now that I know what to search for, I turned up this AMAZING post of Edwald’s on how the wizard works, as well as this MSDN article that details how it is working its beautiful magic under the covers.  To sum up why it is so awesome, it allows you to specify your template changes once, and then easily rinse and repeat with a click of a button. No scripting or command line necessary. Unless you like that sort of thing, or have a bajillion TPs, then have at it, but use this handy script to iterate through all of your projects.

So how does it work? I still contend there is some black magic involved, but more likely it was a lot of late nights by some wicked smart TFS dudes. Essentially, you need to create a new copy of the legacy template that was used to create the team projects that you wish to upgrade to 2013, and then retrofit some new shinies from both 2012 and 2013 into it. I first downloaded CMMI v5.0 (which they had customized and re-uploaded without renaming – ACK!). Next I had to do things like add in a handful of work item types (Code Review and Feedback for 2012, Features for 2013), update my WIT categories, as well as add the Process Configuration file specific to 2013.  For all other work items I was able to simply replace the 5.0 WIT definitions with the 2013 versions, and then retrofit the client’s customizations back in. I used the heck out of the Team Project Manager Tool to compare them and see exactly what was customized.  Be careful here and read both the 2012 changes AND the 2013 changes that need to be incorporated, so you don’t duplicate effort.  For instance, the 2012 changes have you add 2 configuration files, but then both of those files are replaced by the single Process Configuration file for 2013. When I was done, I had a new version of the process template (with a new name!) that I could use with the wizard to convert the old TFS 2010/CMMI 5.0 TPs to 2013. It also contained all of the customizations that were done on the template before the TPs were created.  Last, I uploaded that bad boy to the TFS Server, navigated to my legacy TPs one-by-one, and launched the Configure Features Wizard. I ignored the recommendation of CMMI 2013, and picked my updated CMMI 5.0 template:

When the wizard runs, the super-simplified explanation is that it performs a DIFF on the team project and the modified process template, and applies the changes to the TP so it now matches the template. I KNOW!! So update the template once, run as many times as you need.

Now, if after the team projects were created off of that old template, you had some template cowboys who went in customized the crap out of team projects in an inconsistent manner, or did not also make that change to the underlying base template as well, you may end up needing to upgrade those team projects by hand and/or resolve any issues encountered during the wizard to upgrade them to 2013 completely. No easy button there. And maybe start being more careful about who you let customize process templates and team projects going forward! ;)

Now you have a simple way to upgrade all of the team projects created off of that old, custom template up to 2013.  At least for 2010.  Next we tackle all of the 2008 TPs.  And my understanding is that if you have 2005 TPs, just play some Taps and migrate what you need to a fresh, new 2013 TP.

I’ve been hearing about St. Louis Day of .NET for some time now but up until recently I just hadn’t thought to attend.  I mean, we have TONS of events in Chicago, so I always made excuses.  This year, Polaris Solutions has stepped up to support STLDODN as a Platinum sponsor.  We're planning on not only participating, but we have a few folks speaking, and we are even hosting a booth so be sure to stop by and say hello! I’ll be the redhead, also, the only woman in the booth so I’m easy to spot :)  If you wanted to catch one of our talks, here is the run-down:

Chris Kadel will be participating in the TFS pre-compiler on Thursday Nov 14th from 8:30am to 5pm: http://www.stldodn.com/2013/pre-compilers.  It is a FULL-DAY hands-on workshop and it’s only $75 to attend, so sign yup fast. You can’t get training like this for such an amazing price anywhere else that I know of.

A Pragmatic Intro to Unit Testing by our very own Josh Gillespie

Advanced OOP by our newest team member and former Softie Clint Edmonson

Agile Testing in a Waterfall World by your truly!

Application Architecture Jumpstart also from Clint

Dude I Just Stepped into Your Code from Josh

If you haven't registered yet, click on "Register Now!" at the top of the website and find out why people love this event so much.  http://www.stldodn.com/2013/what-is-the-day-of-.net.

So in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, Microsoft released a new version of its Visual Studio ALM Tools including Team Foundation Server, Microsoft Test Manager, and Visual Studio. I know! Feels like 2012 just launched doesn’t it? With their new release cadence, if you blink you could miss a new version, or at least a few updates. It’s pretty amazing actually.

While there is an official BIG launch party happening on November 13th in NYC, you can also logon for the virtual launch that day if you can’t get away to the Big Apple on such short notice.  Although right now you don’t appear to be able to actually register for the virtual launch – DOH!  For now you can at least add it to your calendar, hopefully they will fix that soon.

I also just heard that there are also some smaller in-person launch events around the U.S, possibly hitting a city near you.  Sadly I will miss the Chicago launch event on November 20th, I’ll be at the MVP summit in Bellevue Washington. Not a bad trade-off though ;)  But if you’re in town, check out the Chicago event details and register quick before it fills up! And check back with the events site often because more cities will be opening up soon.

Agenda

Location

Drury Lane Convention Center

100 Drury Ln
Oakbrook Terrace Illinois 60181
United States

Some events are not listed on the events site yet, so here are some other cities coming on-line and a link to get registered:

I wanted to be sure to share out the slides that were presented at the testing events that I recently spoke at. If you happened to attend one of the events where Chris Kadel presented, he should be posting his slides shortly. Now in case you’re reading this post and thinking “what on earth are you talking about Angela?”, Microsoft recently began a tour of the central US focusing on efficient testing, and even if you did NOT attend, you may find the following information useful so read on…

These events lasted a half day, and covered manual testing and collaboration with MTM, automated testing with Visual Studio, and managing environments and automating the Build-Test-Deploy scenario with TFS Build and Lab Management.  My slides are posted on SlideShare, and the agenda is below.  There are still some events open including St Louis, Kansas City, and Minneapolis MN so you may not have missed it entirely.  Sign up soon because these events have been selling out!

How do I integrate better with the team?
QA is near the end of the process chain, so one of the best things they can do to be successful is improve their efficiency and collaborate better with the development team. In this session, we want to answer all of these questions: What if you could draft and select test cases early in the project and ensure you have test coverage by assigning them to requirements? What if the bugs you discover could automatically include data about the underlying behavior of the application and the machine it’s running on?
Are you getting enough information about a release to know what to test? Which new features have been implemented? Which haven’t? Which bugs are supposedly resolved? We’ll discuss how to take advantage of the opportunities for improving collaboration between testers and developers.
What should I automate?
While manual testing is always going to have its place, there are several types of tests that can be automated for efficiency. In this session, we’ll discuss everything from automating functional and load tests to the automation of writing test case steps and designing for reuse.
How do I set up a dev/test environment?
Today’s applications are more complex than ever and it can be very challenging to set up and maintain these environments. Many organizations resort to a small number of shared environments, but you are trying to keep up with frequent developer builds, concurrent projects, and ever-changing data.
This session introduces Microsoft’s Lab Management solution which allows developers and QA to self-provision their own environments. We’ll look at you can take advantage of virtualization (on-premises or cloud) to create environments, roll them back to known states, and attach them to bugs while minimizing the labor in your data center.

Are you picturing a redhead dancing around a large bedroom singing about string and warm woolen mittens?

Yeah, it’s kinda like that. Only I’m no Julie Andrews, I don’t actually have a very good singing voice, and our house is not nearly that fancy :)  Also, instead of brown paper packages I am singing the praises of the MTM Test Hub, Work Item Charting, and awesome things like that.

As you’ve probably heard TFS 2013 released yesterday. A full day ahead of time, I know!  And like any passionate ALM consultant I’ve been using TFS 2013 for some time now. If you’re taking advantage of TFS Service, you have been too whether you knew it or not. So on to my first favorite thing about TFS 2013. Work item charting. The concept of work item charting is a pretty simple one, and frankly one customers have been clamoring for since TFS 2005. Business users do not want to have to learn SSRS to get quick, custom views that they can use to analyze work items.  And frankly, while Excel ad-hoc reporting is much easier than SSRS, it’s still not an “EASY button” solution for simple work item based charting/reporting. Thanks Staples for giving me that reference. 

So let’s divine in a bit shall we?  We will be working with one of my pet projects, a Scavenger Hunt application for the phone (if someone creates one soon, I’ll know where you got the idea now!) Assume we have some simple queries, for instance one which pulls back ALL tasks in a team project. This could be a lot to take in analyze, especially on large, established projects with multiple teams. So, below we have work items, tasks, bugs, etc.  All assigned to various people, planned for different sprints, and so on and so forth. 

But what if I wanted a quick visualization of work item types, or work assigned to various team members across the entire project? Not a super easy way to do that in any of the previously available reporting methods.  Here is where Work Item Charting comes in.  You might notice a new menu item called “Charts” (circled above) in the web tools for TFS 2013.  When you switch your view to Charts it will show you any existing charts for that query, as well as the ability to create new charts.  So in my case, I already had a chart out there which breaks down all work items by type. Marginally useful, but maybe another chart TYPE would actually be a better way to visualize the data.  So the first thing I want to do is try different chart types, and see if something else strikes my fancy:

I *love* that as you make choices in the edit box, it automatically gives you a preview of the resulting report. That will save SO many clicks.  So I changed the chart type to a stacked bar, changed the sort and saved the report.

A bit more useful, but I’d like another view available, this time including assignment data.  But I’ll need to make some changes to my query, because if I try to simply show this in a new chart with the existing data, you’ll notice I do not even have an option to group by assigned to:

Think of the query as your chart data source, meaning all rows returned will be displayed, and even more importantly, only the fields returned by the query will be available as well.  So if my query returns work item type, title, and state then those are the only fields that I can report on. AND only fields with a reportable type of “dimension” can be used for grouping. These little nuggets often trip people up, they assume all of the fields for the returned rows are available and available for grouping/sorting. So I need to go back to my original query, and add the assigned to field to add that data to my chart:

Now when I go back into my charts, I have another field that I can use for pivoting my data!

Well, I could certainly spend FAR more time on this topic, but I just wanted to give you a little taste of one of my favorite features of TFS 2013 – Work Item Charting.  Next up, the new web Test Hub!

If you attended the September meeting, this is not *quite* a redux.  I’ll be talking about a variety of ALM features, some that I covered at the Downers Grove meeting last month.  BUT this time around I will also be joined by 2 of my smarty-pants colleagues from Polaris.  Landan Rotter will be talking about the new integrated deployment tool, InRelease, and will be doing a hands-on demo for your enjoyment.  Chris Taylor will also do a deep dive on data driven CodedUI testing as well as an awesome walk-through of setting up Lab Management to support automated test execution! 

Visual Studio ALM 2013 tools are going to release THIS FRIDAY, October 18th, ahem, THIS THURSDAY October 17th, and the big launch is November 13th. If you’re interested in participating in the virtual launch event on November 13th, be sure to check out the VS 2013 Launch Site and sign up soon!  And in the mean time, get ready for what coming by learning more about what's new and cool. And if you can’t wait until RTM, you can still get downloads of TFS and VS 2013 RC today.

Parking downtown is a bit costly, but Aon parking is pretty reasonable if you get there after 4:30pm and leave by 10pm. Check out www.SpotHero.com, they might just save you some serious cash.

Meeting Date:  Wednesday October 30th

Agenda:    6:30 - Dinner, 7:00 Presentation

Location: Microsoft-Chicago 200 E Randolph, 2nd Floor, Chicago

Registration:      http://chicagoalmug.org/

PLEASE NOTE: Security is strict at the Aon center.  You MUST register as building security will NOT allow individuals to access the building without being pre-registered.  Their rules, not mine.

I’m totally stoked to be the latest Chicagoan to be named an ALM MVP. There are currently only 114 ALM MVPs worldwide (that I see on the site anyway), and I am proud to be counted amongst these awesome folks. Sadly, the site is not quite updated so you won’t see yours truly listed just yet.

Wait, “what the heck is an ALM MVP you say?” I know, that is a lot of acronyms there.  In case you’re not hip to Microsoft lingo, that’s an Application Lifecycle Management Most Valued Professional.  This essentially means that in the areas of ALM (TFS, Visual Studio, Microsoft Test Manager, SDLC, etc.), I’ve made significant enough contributions to the community at large to get some serious props. And it’s been a fun ride, and I certainly don’t plan to slow down :)

This is not to say I know EVERYTHING there is to know on the topic of ALM, oh how I wish there were enough hours in the day.  But on any given day you’re likely to find me Installing/upgrading/customizing TFS, scouring MSDN forums, leading a class through the ropes of agile development, or perhaps giving a talk at a local user group on adopting a new ALM strategy in the real world.  I’m definitely passionate about what I do.

Anyway, that’s it for now! Just a little update on the latest excitement in my professional life.  Hope to catch you at a conference or user group near you soon! And don’t forget to stop by the Chicago ALM User Group sometime.  We will be posting details on out October meeting soon!

And because I’m always striving to do thing my mom can brag about, here is a picture of me being all giddy about my award :)

So let’s start by explaining what was happening. I had just unraveled a mess of TFS/SharePoint/Reporting security that rivaled improperly-put-away-Christmas-lights levels of tangled.  All kinds of duplication, broken inheritance because of inexperienced admins adding individuals (instead of the AD groups I had setup) at every level of the SharePoint hierarchy, you name it!  So one day I get a head-scratcher of an issue from a business user who is customizing a TFS SharePoint portal for a project.

They were trying to edit the queries behind a couple of custom TFS web parts and were getting “403 Forbidden” errors at seemingly random times.  It would work on Monday but be broken on Tuesday and work again Wednesday.

I was not getting that error, but of course I am god of everything as the TFS admin, so there is little I cannot do.  But I also noticed not many other folks were experiencing the issue, well, to be precise not one other person was receiving the error.  In the same AD groups, in different AD groups, nada.  I verified all of the groups this person belonged to, checked and rechecked his AD group membership, made sure SharePoint still had all the correct security inheritance in place. Nothing was out of place. And every once in a while the user would be able to complete that same action again without the error. Seemingly, whenever I went in and performed the action he was being denied. What the WHAT?!? Now I was *really* intrigued. 

Needless to say, we did fix the issue, but not without some serious internet scouring. I was about to post to MSDN forums when i stumbled upon the issue.  This obscure Microsoft Support post fixed our problem.  So I should note for background purposes that this TFS instance began as a 2008 installation running against a super old version of WSS.  It has been upgraded twice, by me, and we are now happily running on TFS 2012.3 with WSS 3.0, and hopefully soon to be TFS 2013 and the latest release of SharePoint Server. The server had SURELY gone through the security updates described in the Support post.  But since no one used the TFS SharePoint sites until I came along and fixed all of the security, no one had encountered this super old issue until very recently. Luckily I was on-site when it did, because while frustrating, it was also fun to troubleshoot.  I am weird that way :)