16:30 EST – Day 22, On the plane again after 27h shore leave home. My bags didn’t make it from New York to Montreal but I got them at 9pm yesterday just in time to do some washing and repacking. I’m now on the way to Kokomo Indiana (I know less exotic than New-Zealand and Argentina but I’m sure the people there will be as great as everywhere else). This will be my 3rd stop and the 4th for Sandman and Chief. I think I’m back to the correct time zone (in my body anyway) and I’ll be staying in the same time zone this week.
Argentina was great, the people there were very hospitable and we had a great time. As I do more and more of those sessions, I recognize that it’s not about the technology, it’s about the people. We all want to work better and more efficiently but to do that we need better tools and tools that less us communicate better, this is what Team System it helps people work more efficiently and communicate better. Does it solve every problem, heck no, but it’s a great V1 I can’t wait to be on some discussions with Microsoft on V2 and see what they are planning on improving on. When we talk to executives and project manager is when the rubber hits the road, they need convincing, they don’t yet see the value of Team System, but I think we put it well in perspective for them and they “get it” after the first day. We’ve uncovered an interesting behavior in the integration with project that I will share with you (in a few paragraphs). After our first day we cover the basics and answer a few internal concerns and we get smiles from then when we show them how Microsoft Project can round trip info from TFS and that devs will have almost nothing to do to get them that info.
Developers really dig the integration, man I’m telling you integration is key here. I say MORE integration in V2!!
Back to Argentina, Buenos Aires was a very big city similar to Paris in many many ways, I enjoyed walking around town on our only day off there. We also took a city tour (best way to see a city when you have no time). I have put a few pictures here for your viewing pleasure. So I know have an Super Hero alter ego, you know me as the Frenchman, but my other personality as now fully asserted itself in Buenos Aires, I think it was the air there, I’m now Camera Man also when you give me a camera, I have no fear, moving taxis are just an annoyance I toreador then like they weren’t there, Sandman and Chief think I’m crazy, I jump in the middle of the road to take that perfect shot ignoring all danger (well not quite mom ;-)) and as you can see in the picture I’m sharing with you I get some pretty good ones. So right now, I have 500 pictures of New-Zealand and 300 of Buenos Aires, still plenty of traveling to do.
What I love the most about those trips is the people I meet and the various cultures we interact with. Argentineans are warm and welcoming and very latin ;-). Like I said before going about and hearing everyone talking in Spanish was great and we learned a few important words like hola, de nada, gratias and a few more, On Saturday, Luis, his wife and little baby girl brought us to the leather district where we add a great time looking for bags for our wives (Chief and I). We then had a relaxing lunch with them before coming back home. The funny thing, as we were eating lunch the owner turned on the TV and the final of the Rugby match of which we saw the Semi Final two weeks ago in Wellington was on (how weird is that) and they looked like they were playing in a field of fog ticker then I’ve ever seen. I don’t know who won but I sure hope it was the Wellington team for my boys back there.
The feedback we are getting from the various sites is very positive, the folks feel more connected by us going to see them and appreciate our candor and the fact we poke fun at each other as we talk about the technology. They usually want more and are all eager to start using Team System. Aaron and I have worked together for the last two years and knew each other well before this world trip but Wayne is fitting right in. I couldn’t imagine spending 8 weeks on the road with anyone else right now (except maybe my wife ;-)).
Techno babble: So the default behavior of the mapping between TFS and MS Project when using MSF Agile or CMMI is to not bring down the Start Date and Finnish Date from TFS down in Project so when connecting and bringing down Work Items they are all set to today’s date. That might be ok the first time you get the TFS tasks and set the start and finish dates by publishing back to TFS. But the next time you open in project (if you have not saved that project file) you will again be shown today’s date for the start date + duration will calculate finish date relative to that start date. For a lot of PMs this will not work to good. So the trick is to change the mapping in TFS for the team project in question to for the two dates so that they are not publish only. See this post on MSDN forum for a procedure on how to do this.
I’m going to land in Chicago in few minutes but will be back in a soon with more adventures from Kokomo.
The three amigos will be in be in Kokomo this week
Cheers,
The Frenchman “Camera Man” ET.
1:30am EST – Day 23, Just got to my room in Kokomo, Chicago is the most hellish place on earth ;-). I manage to add a new location to our WWT, Grand Rapids Michigan, we landed there to refull before making it to Chicago. I then managed to get on plane at 8pm to make the 30 min flight to Indy, but had to wait for 3.5h before leaving… Oh well the joy of air travel.