VS 2010 was released today, and it has a great many novelties on the client and .NET Framework aspects.

What calls my attention though is that we are now one step closer to fulfilling the sense of ALM 2.0 – an integrated, transparent environment where traceability among all of the aspects of software development are tied seamlessly and as a result a much better experience to live, and to manage:

• The new Testing Tools tie directly to the project data warehouse repository, bring the testing experience to new heights of sophistication and connectedness, and helping to break the “Testing silo” that many companies have been thrown into due to inadequate tools;
• Work Item Tracking now allows for hierarchical linking, a much requested feature, and ties neatly into Microsoft Project;
• The Architecture Tools moved one step closer to the same ideal integrating with Work Item Tracking;
• Build Management gets one step closer to the dreams of Release Managers everywhere by providing a Gated Check-in, and enhance scalability with the new notion of build controllers;
• New Branch visualization tools make it a lot easier to manage complex merge scenarios;
• We are closer to Application Portfolio Management with the ability to connect multiple TFS installations by using team project collections;
• Lab Management, when it is ready later in 2010 (you can use it today with a go-live license), will be the cream of the crop of this rich release as it will for the first time push the ALM boundary into Operations, something that had been announced in 2005 and finally comes true.

Cheers to the Product Team for this great release, and to us as well for the amount of time it will save us!