Tuesday, February 09, 2010
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You can now get your hands on the Release Candidate version of Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4.0 if you are an MSDN subscriber.
MS also announced that it will make the RC available to all on Wed Feb 10.
Upgrade for VS2010 and .Net 4 is an uninstall/reinstall operation.
The RC release also includes an updated TFS 2010. If you are upgrading from TFS 2010 Beta 2 to the RC build Byran Krieger blogged some instructions for doing so.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
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As you’ve probably noticed if you read my blog, the VS ALM Rangers have been busy the last week or so.
Here is a summary of what they have released already and I’m sure there is more goodness to come!
· Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance: consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.
· Visual Studio 2010 TFS Upgrade Guide: covers scenarios which may be encountered during and after the upgrade process. It provides examples of most common and potential issues. It covers scenarios related to general Upgrade Process, Work Item Templates, Reports, and Enterprise TFS Management (ETM).
· Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching Guide 2010: Branching and merging of software is a very large topic. It is an area where there is a lot of maturity in the software industry. This Ranger solution focuses on applied and practical examples of branching that you can use right now. The 2010 release includes discussions around branching concepts and strategies but also focuses on practical hands-on labs.
· Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance: Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. We provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.
· Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory: prescriptive guidance around the virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines. We help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.
Friday, January 15, 2010
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Even MORE ALM Ranger goodness can be found here.
Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance
This Ranger solution addresses the People, Process, and Technology guidance for Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. The goal of this guidance is to provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.
Visual Studio ALM Rangers
This guidance is created by the Rangers who have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. This content was created with support from Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used.
What is in the package?
Requirements Management is a vast area with many disciplines. To address your areas of interest and expertise, we have packaged the content in 9 zip files:
1. Introduction: RM Rangers Guide to the Complete Guide Start Here
2. Requirements Management Planning
3. Requirements Traceability
4. Analysis and Breakdown
5. Requirements Elicitation
6. Requirements Specification
7. Requirements Validation
8. Requirements Change Management and Approval
9. Requirements Management checklist sheet
Team
Mike Schimmel, Siddharth Bhatia, Bijan javidi, Willy-Peter Schaub, Francisco Xavier Fagas Albarracín, Hassan Fadili, Larry Guger, Sven Hubert, Thomas Schissler, Tiago Pascoal, Adam Gilmore, Mark Wildenberg, Josh Pepper, Smitty Weygant, Joseph Abukhader, Cissy Ho, Neeraj Elkunchwar, Brian Blackman, Raj Selvaraj, Tina Erwee, Ron Bucktan, Mick Miller
WOW! Unbelievable stream of goodness coming from Visual Studio ALM Rangers!!
Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory
The purpose of this project is to build prescriptive guidance around the virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines. The goal is to help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.
Visual Studio ALM Rangers
This guidance is created by the Rangers who have the mission to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. This content was created with support from Microsoft Product Group, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from the field, where the technology has been tested and used.
What is in the package?
The download package consists of two ZIP package downloads:
- Rangers Virtualization Guidance
- Focused guidance on creating a Rangers base image manually and introduction of PowerShell scripts to automate many of the configuration tasks.
- Virtualization guidance looking at the “why” and “how” to use virtualization for Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio, including planning, pre-requisite software, use of non-Microsoft virtualization technologies and introducing use case scenarios.
- Rangers Factory Package and Guidance
- Reference walk-through documentation on how to install, configure and support a Microsoft internal or an external factory to automate the installation of Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio environments.
- Microsoft Deployment Toolkit metadata and PowerShell scripts used to create a Rangers factory.
Our Objectives
- Consolidation and delivery of best recommendations and limits for the ...
- Deployment of Visual Studio
- Deployment of Team Foundation Server
- … in virtual environments
- Automation of
- Team Foundation Server virtualization
- Visual Studio virtualization
- Inclusion of non-Microsoft Virtualization technologies in the guidance
Team
Willy-Peter Schaub, Paul Meyer, Bijan javidi, Brian Randell, David Corbin, Etienne Tremblay, John Robbins, Robert MacLean, Ted Malone, Willie Roberts, Zayd Kara, Henk van de Crommert, Jason Neave, Tony Feissle
How to submit new ideas?
The recommended method is to simply post ideas to the community or to contact the Rangers.
Feedback
Post comments on the Discussions page.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
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The Rangers have been a VERY busy bunch lately and have dropped beta guidance on upgrading to TFS 2010.
Check it out here
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
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Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance
Welcome to the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance! Steven van Niekerk (Technical Lead / Architect, BB&D South-Africa) initiated this project with his question “Can you tell me about TFS and VSTS in 5 minutes?”
The Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.
The artifacts include an overview document and poster that allows you to quickly focus on individual areas like testing, by providing crisp and compact guidance sheets and quick reference posters. You can take these to your 5-min coffee break discussions or use them as a stepping stone to the more detailed and in-depth guidance you will find on MSDN.
What is in the package?
The download package consist of three ZIP files containing a number of quick reference posters and quick reference sheets in XML Paper Specification (XPS) format:
- Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance – Overview
- An overview of the guidance and focus areas, contained in one index table and overview quick reference poster.
- Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance – Basic Guidance
- A collection of basic guidance sheets, focusing on the “what” are the key features and “why” to consider them.
- Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance – Supporting Guidance
- A set of documents and quick reference posters, supporting the basic guidance sheets.
Our Objectives
Deliver a set of 5-minute 101 reference for each topic area of Visual Studio covering:
- A "What is" section
- A "What are the new and important features“ section
- A "Quick Reference Poster” section
Sunday, January 10, 2010
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At one of the clients I am working with we had a strange issue this week. A new employee joined the development team as a QA lead and was given a laptop to use that is a couple of years old. The firm has been in the process of upgrading their equipment to Windows 7 and thus far hasn’t really had any issues.
Well, on this particular computer, our WPF application would install (it’s click once) and open but then hang. Very odd indeed. In looking at our application log, I found many instances of this exception being logged.
1/6/2010 2:18:24 PM: Application Exception: Exception Source: PresentationCore
Exception Type: System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException
Exception Message: Exception from HRESULT: 0x88980406
Exception Target Site: SyncFlush
The user also strangely reported that the application did work as long as they didn’t have an external monitor connected.
Some Googling led me to believe it may have something to do with video drivers after seeing others with driver issues plaguing WPF applications.
Updating the graphics (intel onboard) driver didn’t resolve the issue. After some more googling on that chipset and driver issues with Win 7 I found that many people were complaining about game and video not functioning with that driver. The apparent workaround was to disable hardware acceleration in the driver. Sure enough, that resolved the issue with our WPF application.
Man I’ve come to the conclusion that video drivers are in fact the #1 issue with all Windows machines. I don’t know how many times a machine has worked flawlessly except for issues with the video driver. Microsoft obviously needs to put more pressure on the video chip makers to improve the quality of their drivers.
Anyway, there is a few hours that I didn’t get to spend on the actual application. Custom software is tough enough without having to troubleshoot the laptops and desktops they are running on.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
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I’m really not one to reflect. I prefer to live in the present and consider the future. As such, rather than saying goodbye to 2009 I’m saying Hello to 2010.
I’m looking forward to my first full year at Imaginet Resources Corp. I’ve started to grow the ALM practice and think 2010 will see some of the seeds planted in 2009 blossom.
I’m looking forward to embracing Lean Software Engineering practices. I’m starting 2010 by attending a Kanban Coaching Workshop in Feb. I’ve been spending some time reading about Kanban and considering it’s application within organizations and on projects. I really like how the industry is moving toward blending and combining practices from multiple methods really focused on value in the context of a particular organization.
I’m REALLY looking forward to the release of Visual Studio and TFS 2010. I’ve been using the Beta 2 for some time now and have helped some customers implement it. I think 2010 will see us really engage organizations to use the toolset to support their delivery lifcycles.
On a more personal note, I’m hoping that 2010 sees continued health and prosperity for all my loved ones. I hope to try to spend more ‘quality’ time with my family during those times I am not travelling.
So, “Hello 2010'”. It is great to meet ya!
Technorati Tags:
2010,
Imaginets,
ALM
Sunday, December 20, 2009
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We are in need of a new vacuum. Not my usual blog material, but I’m fishing for advice.
Criteria:
- My daughter has asthma so a HEPA filter is a must.
- Prefer upright to canister
Questions:
- Bag vs. bagless. Our prior vacuum used bags and the expense of buying bags was never a big deal. I could go either way. Is there a benefit other than cost of bags?
- Are Dyson worth the $500+ price tag? Seems that there are bagless HEPA hoover, bissell, eureka and others for half the price or less. I can afford the dyson if it is in fact worth it.
Advice:
- What vacuum do you have?
- Are you happy with it?
- What would you buy today?
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
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Today is TechDays in Winnipeg. Today I’m doing a session on upgrading to TFS 2010 and new features in VS 2010. Tomorrow I’m doing a session on Configuration Management with TFS. I’m looking forward to presenting in Winnipeg again.
Just a suggestion to MS organizers though. Perhaps October might have been a better time to do Winnipeg…
Yes, that does say ‘Feels Like’ –37C. The sad thing is that it’s warmer today than it has been in about a week.
Technorati Tags:
TechDays,
TFS 2010,
TFS
Wednesday, December 02, 2009
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Well, it turns out that there is a bit of a setup process that needs to be followed to get it working.
It’s all outlined in the Visual Studio Team Test blog entry here.
Basically, you have to install and patch Windows Media Encoder to get the Test Runner to capture and index video.
I know I was puzzled by this and suspect that many of you have been as well.
Technorati Tags:
VS 2010,
Beta 2,
MTLM
UPDATE: There has been an updated version posted which resolves the Rules editing problem mentioned below. Way to go TFS team!
A TFS 1010 Beta 2 version of the TFS Power tools has been released as announced by Brian Harry.
I've been trying out the Process Template Editor (PTE) and have had some issues with this Beta release.
First, the connection dialogue when working with Work Items doesn’t quite function correctly. The work around is to type in the fully qualified URL to the Team Project Collection rather than using the URL builder fields:
http://yourtfsserver:8080/tfs/YourProjectCollection
The other problem that I’ve found is that you cannot add New rules to a Field. You can view existing rules on Fields but cannot add a new one. The only way I’ve found to get around this is to add the rules to the XML document directly after setting up the fields. This also applies to any field rules in the workflow of the Work Item.
Call to Action:
Get the tools at the Visual Studio Gallery (the new downloads location for the Power Tools):
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/0e69a28f-020c-488b-80b3-f4c89a20621d
Log any issues you find to the Connect site:
https://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio
Kudos to the TFS team in getting these tools out to the community during this Beta period.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
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The latest version of the Scrum for Team System * process template has now been released. This version is designed to work with Team Foundation Server 2010 (Beta 2) and introduces enterprise features to Scrum.
You can download the server and client side tools (free of charge) from the following forum post:
· SfTS v3 Beta 2 released - Download now.
Please use the below forum for all your SfTS version 3 feedback and questions.
· SfTS v3 Beta 2 forum
Additional Links
· Simon Bennett discusses the new Template and enterprise level scrum in his blog:
http://consultingblogs.emc.com/simonbennett/default.aspx
· Crispin Parker discusses the new template tools in his blog:
http://consultingblogs.emc.com/crispinparker/default.aspx
· Simon Bennett and Stuart Preston present the new template at PDC:
http://microsoftpdc.com/Sessions/FT09
* Version 3 (Beta 2)
Note: You have received this email because you choose to when registering to download the SfTS template or when you created a Task Board for Team System account. Please respond with the text “Unsubscribe me” to remove you consent to receive future notification emails.
Regards,
Scrum for Team System
_______________
Support Group
EMC Consulting
www.emc.com/consulting
Transforming Information Into Business Results
Technorati Tags:
TFS,
VS2010,
Beta 2,
Scrum
Thursday, November 12, 2009
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I’m preparing for a few presentations I’ll be giving next week at TechDays 09 in Calgary.
For me, preparation starts with the material. What is it that I’m trying to say and what are the important points I need to make.
Then I do a few dry runs where I go through the slides and demos by myself. This is usually not an ‘out loud’ preparation but rather just for me to ensure that things flow and I know what NOT to do in my demos.
Lastly, I try to do one or two ‘out loud’ dry runs. I find this part the hardest. For some reason I find it uncomfortable to talk to myself out loud. If possible, it’s best to have someone come over that you can ply with alcohol so you can present to them. They don’t even need to pay attention, but having a face to talk to that isn’t your own is easier to me.
Any techniques that you other presenters out there use? I’m always looking for improvement.
Technorati Tags:
Presentations
Monday, November 09, 2009
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Microsoft has purchased Teamprise, who created a Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse as well as extensions for doing Java builds with Team Foundation Server.
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/nov09/11-09TeamprisePR.mspx
This is big news since many of the industry experts from the analyst firms have cited lack of multi-platform support for Team Foundation Server Client as a weakness of the platform. Eclipse is now a fully supported MS environment for ALM.