In a previous article , I talked about how TFS treats check-ins as atomic transactions. In a nutshell, when the check-in is initiated, Visual Studio will provide TFS with some basic information about the check-in. like the number of files and the work item(s) associated with it. When the transmission...

Brian Keller has updated the Visual Studio 2012 ALM VM and hands-on labs to include VS 2012 Update 2 . All labs have been revised slightly based on Update 2, with two labs gaining new exercises which demonstrate Update 2 capabilities. It’s a pretty large download and Brian offers a good technique for...

When I talk to customers about how they keep track of changes of their source code, you may (or may not) be surprised with what I hear. They range from using some source code control management (SCCM) tool to archive files using ZIP or RAR files. Hopefully you're using a SCCM tool. As part of the development...

One of the aspects of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) is that its about process. The other two being people and products. Part of the process is managing the portfolio of projects an organization is responsible for, manage the people that can work on the projects, and keeping track of the tasks...

I've been talking to a lot of customers recently about Team Foundation Server (TFS) as a source code control management (SCCM) tool. Some are coming from Visual SourceSafe while others are coming from other SCCM tools. Regardless of what SCCM tool they're coming from, the subject of branching always...

Last week, Microsoft released System Center 2012 Service Pack 1 . Having been an operations manager before, there’s a lot of enhancements that would have made me happy in that former life. What really gets me excited is that this service pack are the features added to the Operations Manager because...

A lot of operations folks I come across love the fact that TFS (Team Foundation Server) doesn’t require a full time administer to keep tabs on the environment, configuration, etc. With that said, the usually follow-up that statement with this question: “if no one is babysitting it all the time, what...

This is certainly an exciting time at Microsoft. Just a few months again, we launched Visual Studio and .NET 4.5 to the world. At the same time, we also launched Windows 8 to the world. And since then, we’ve be releasing new versions of every current version of software we make (SharePoint, Office, Project...

At last year’s //Build conference, we announced the preview of Team Foundation Services hosted on Windows Azure. For about 6 months, the only way to get on the services was if you were given a registration code from someone from Microsoft. Then we removed the registration restriction and made it available...

A lot of customers as “how does Microsoft fair in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant” when it come to ALM. In the most recent report posted on June 5th, Microsoft was positioned as the “leader” for Application Lifecycle Management. You can read more about the Magic Quadrant methodology here . Their evaluation...

Today at TechEd North America 2011 , Jason Zander (CVP of Visual Studio) talked about Visual Studio vNext. Specific features of the framework and tool itself were not mentioned, but features expanding our vision of how Visual Studio expands our Application Lifecycle Management footprint took center stage...

As a developer, I never really spent a lot of time focusing on SharePoint. In the past, I would rather code it myself rather than try wrench my code to work with another platform. But as SharePoint has matured, I see a lot of possibilities of SharePoint as a platform to integrate with. If you’re a SharePoint...

There was a lot of great things showcased during the first day of the Microsoft PDC 2010 on Oct 28, from development on Windows Phone 7 to new features available to Windows Azure. What was really neat to watch was Brian Harry up on stage during the keynote and talking how they got TFS to work on Windows...

Today, Microsoft released the Microsoft® Visual Studio® Scrum 1.0 to the web, a Team Foundation Server process template to support Scrum software development. This release complements the MSF for CMMI Process Improvement and MSF for Agile Software Development process templates. The process template was...

Visual Studio Lab Management 2010 is an integrated toolset for development and testing teams that enables them to setup/tear down and restore virtual environments to known states for build automation and test execution. You might be saying to yourself that setting up and tearing down virtual machines...

As a recovering software development manager, one of the things that always drove me crazy was the inability to provide the Project Management Office (PMO) with timely updates or getting my team updates on their upcoming tasks without doing a lot of cutting and pasting between project plans and developer...

Microsoft and Northwest Cadence are proud to offer this four hour live event – during which we will demonstrate the testing and quality assurance lifecycle using Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server. Join us as we dive into the testing tools and testing process you can use to dramatically improve...

With the release of Visual Studio 2010 last week, my peers and I have been bombarded with a number of questions about the release. We were pretty before the launch showing Beta and RC1 bits, but now that it’s released and a reality, the flood gates have been opened. A number of people together this list...

Couldn’t make the VS 2010 Launch Event on April 12, no worries. Join us for a free, in-person event you won’t want to miss Join a select group of developers for an event near you and get hands-on experience with Microsoft Visual Studio ® 2010. Learn about the rich application platforms that Microsoft...

The Visual Studio Ranger team has recently released five detailed guides in advance of the VS2010 and TFS2010 releases. 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...

Today, November 9, 2009, we announced that we’re acquiring Teamprise. Teamprise is both the name of the a company as well as technology that allows non-Visual Studio developers to connect to Microsoft’s Team Foundation Server (TFS). As a software developer, there are time when you need to use a development...

More and more information is becoming available every day on the new MSDN and Visual Studio 2010. For starters, the entire MSDN site has gotten an entirely new look. It has three different views: Classic, Lightweight Beta, and ScriptFree. You can switch between the different views by either select the...

If you’ve been keeping up some of the other Microsoft blogs that cover Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server, you’ll have seen hints that TFS 2010 Beta 2 is going to be available very soon . So what does that mean? It’s going to available for you download and try as soon as it ready. Sorry, like all...

I had been using an internally build of a VSTS 2010 Beta 1 virtual environment for quite awhile so I never installed the Beta 1 bits myself. Recently, my external hard drive decided it was going to start have some issues, and that eventually lead to the corruption of my virtual image. I needed to get...

Expression Studio 3 and Expression Web 3 60-day trial editions are now available for download . These tools will enable you design and development more richer looking .NET applications and coupled with Silverlight 3 and .NET RIA Services, you’ll be able deploy your applications to anyone who has a Silverlight...