Some of you might have noticed the tidal wave of shipping that happened last week. The Rangers have done it again and this time in impressive style with 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 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.

Each one of these projects was chosen in part due to field and customer demand and were directly informed by practical experience from MCS consultants and MVPs involved in the projects. As such, they’re field tested and customer ready materials available in advance of the product release. Follow the links above for more details on each of the releases.

When we started the Ranger program 4 years ago, we had the simple vision of accelerating the adoption of Team System but at the time we were playing catch up with a v1 product already in market so we were left trying to fill in the gaps. Now, we’re gearing up to release a v3 product and the Rangers are running ahead of the release laying the groundwork with customers and the field ensuring that everyone gets off to a running start. It’s a much better place to be and I can only imagine where we’ll be 4 years from now!

Congratulations to all involved and especially to Bijan and Willy for their undying dedication to the Ranger mission.

jeff