I'm currently working on the Scrum Methodology plug-in for Visual Studio Team System project that I mentioned last post.
One of the common issues that happen during the development of a new Methodology Template is that some part of the project is mis-configured or missing as a new template may consist of Work Items, Work Item Queries, Reporting Services files, VSIP plug-ins, documents et al. Because there is no way of compiling the solution and seeing if you get build errors - you have to upload your new methodology template and then attempt to create a new project. During the development phase, more often than not, this will fail.
When the project creation process fails, log files are left in your %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temp folder. Generally two files are generated - a log file (called something like ProjectCreation_07-25-2005_01.45.34.log) and a temp file (called something like tmp10E9.tmp). You can change the extension of the .tmp file to .zip and you will see that it contains the Methodology Template that you were trying to upload.
If your methodology template contains a VISP plug-in, be aware that you can only add a new Team Project using your template in the Experimental version of Visual Studio that is available once you've installed VSIP. If you try and create a new Team Project in a non-experimental version of Visual Studio you will probably get one of the following errors when you select your methodology:
Could not load plugin "[Plugin Name]" for methdology "[Project Name]", please select another methdology. See log file for more details.
or
"Failed to import process template" with the following exception in the log file:
Exception Type: Microsoft.VisualStudio.TeamSystem.ELead.ProjectCreationNew.ProcessTemplateLoadFailure
Exception Message: Bad plugin found in Template Metadata Xml
Of course, if you obtain a valid VSIP package load key (which allows you to run your VSIP package on end user installations of Visual Studio) you should not see these types of error.