Best practice for SCTM vs development projects?

[Per _stman]

[Migrated content. Thread originally posted on 07 February 2012]

Hi!

I'm trying to get a grip on how to best structure our SCTM projects.

We have development projects that release versions of one or more products (each dev project produces a new version of one or more products and release these at one point in time)

Question now is how to best structure the test projects in SCTM? I want to be able to reuse tests from previous versions in later versions, e g in the project developing version 4.0 of a product, I may want to create execution plans containing tests that were created in version 3.2, or extend/develop exiting tests according to new features/requirements. Typically, I want to be able to add to tests created in previous versions.

Also, we have the situation of managing tests that relate to patches and hotfixes of already released versions.

Are there any recommendations/best practices on whether to use one SCTM project per development project, or whether using a single SCTM project for all dev projects and maybe use baselining to separate the different dev projects?
What about managing tests for patches?

[Florian Guenther]

Hi,

our recommendation is to go with a 1:1 relation between a dev-project and an SCTM project. Once a project is finished create a baseline which can then be used for patch testing.

There will be some enhancements around new releases and how to manage your assets in upcoming SCTM version. But for now the described approach above is our recommendation.

Regards,
Florian