Ken's Place

VS2010 RC Available

kenm — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:27:00 GMT

Live from Redmond: If you have not heard the VS2010 Release Candidate is available for download. You can get more information, and downloads from here.

Ultimate Event Demo Images

kenm — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 17:28:00 GMT

Hope everyone had fun digging out of the Mid-Atlantic snow storm. Sorry for the late post, I gained power back late Sunday, and then jumped on a plane to Redmond for a week of training on the new lab management and testing tools.

As promised, I am putting a link to Brian Keller’s post listing the various images available for download for VS2010 ALM tools. This image also contains the sample application IBuySpy and TailSpin Toys.

Have a great week and let’s hope this next snow event is not as severe.

Brian’s Post

Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Ultimate Events

kenm — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 02:27:52 GMT

For everyone that has attended the Ultimate events in Malvern, DC, and the upcoming Reston event on February 4th. I have consolidated the event decks in one location. You can download all the decks from my Skydrive link below. Thanks to everyone who had a chance to attend the events!

Pittsburgh Ultimate event

kenm — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:07:05 GMT

I would like to thank everyone who could attend the Pittsburgh 2010 Ultimate event yesterday, we hope it was a good learning experience and an enjoyable one. As I had mentioned several times during the session, I have placed the content available for download. Below is a link

A few VS2010 sessions

kenm — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 16:01:53 GMT

In December I did a few live meeting sessions on the new VS2010 SharePoint tools, and the new Quality and Testing tools in VS2010. If you are interested in viewing them the links are below.

Developing Quality Applications in Visual Studio 2010

Painless SharePoint Development in Visual Studio 2010

2010 Ultimate events

kenm — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:32:00 GMT

If anyone is interested in a full day session on VS2010 ALM tools, we in the east region are hosting some events up and down the east coast. Here are dates and links for all the events.

January 21st, 9 AM-4 PM, Iselin, NJ

January 21st, 9 AM-4 PM, Pittsburgh

January 27th, 9 AM-4 PM, Charlotte

January 28th, 9 AM-4 PM, Malvern

January 28th, 9 AM-4 PM, Durham, NC

February 2nd, 9 AM-4 PM, Waltham, MA

February 2nd, 9 AM-4 PM, Atlanta, GA

February 3rd, 9 AM-4 PM, DC

February 4th, 9 AM-4 PM, Reston

February 11th, 9 AM-4 PM, Fort Lauderdale, FL

More Information about Historical Debugging in VSTS 2010

kenm — Fri, 15 May 2009 06:33:48 GMT

IanWho’s blog has a great post about historical debugging in VSTS 2010. If you are not aware, the next release of VSTS will provide a significant enhancement in testing and test management. Part of this great solution is the ability to play back important points in program execution. You can read it here.

Details on TFS Administration

kenm — Wed, 06 May 2009 15:35:51 GMT

The TFS 2010 release will contain some exciting changes in administration for TFS. Brian Harry outlined the changes in a recent blog post. Here is a link to read all about it:

TFS 2010 Administration Changes

Events around Pittsburgh

kenm — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:32:06 GMT

Over the next few weeks I will doing a few sessions around VSTS 2010 in the Pittsburgh area. So if you would like a preview of VSTS, and discussion feel free to join me in a few locations

This Saturday April 4th I will be speaking at the Pittsburgh Code Camp on VSTS 2010. If you have some extra time, feel free to come out! Several of my colleagues will be doing sessions as well. For more information travel to the Pittsburgh Code Camp for more details.

Tuesday April 14th, I will be doing a similar presentation at the Pittsburgh .NET Users group. If you have not been to a user group session, they great an well run events. Great work by Craig Oaks and David Hoerster in leading the user group!

Blogger Found!

kenm — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:07:45 GMT

It has been awhile, since I have blogged, but look for some information coming soon! With all the excitement around VSTS 2010, it is definitely an exciting time here at Microsoft. It’s great to hear customer successes around using VSTS to manage their day to day development, and it is a pleasure to work with customers around VSTS.

Also, since Spring is started, maybe it is time to do a little spring cleaning on the old blog, new color scheme, something new and fresh!

Upcoming Webcasts

kenm — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 15:52:00 GMT

Here are few upcoming live sessions that may interest you.

Introduction to TFS

Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server is an integrated collaboration server for Visual Studio Team System. It combines team portal, version control, work item tracking, build management, process guidance, and business intelligence into a unified server. It allows everyone on the team to collaborate more effectively and deliver better quality software. Discover how TFS can help your team deliver better software.

Host and Moderator Sajee Mathew
Sajee is a Developer Technical Specialist for Microsoft in the NY city area. He has been with Microsoft for 11 years, most recently with Microsoft Consulting Services, helping customers build software on the Microsoft platform.

Click here to Register Now!

Date: Friday, July 11, 2008
Time: 1:00–2:00 EST

Integrating TFS & Enterprise Project Management
Project Managers and Development teams may be the “Odd Couple” of the 21st century, working together but having different approaches and perspectives. Integrating Project Server and Team Foundation Server helps them work better, together. We’ll show how to link two different processes running side-by-side in each system, and cover some of the reasons to integrate the two systems, including:

Project Management is tracking more than application development, but not all of application development. Integrating lets each camp focus on what's important to them.

EPM is getting more formal, with more documentation. Application development is getting leaner. Integrating lets you loosely couple EPM and application development so that they can work together while working differently.

Host and Moderator David Scruggs
David is a Developer Technical Specialist for Microsoft, and loves the fact that he can get on betas. He has worked with design, CM, RM, and software engineering tools for years, and enjoys finding the latest new capability. He has BSEE and MSEE degrees from Georgia Tech.

Click here to Register Now!
Date: Friday, August 15, 2008
Time: 1:00–2:00 EST

Configuring Team System Session

kenm — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:41:00 GMT

If you had a chance to attend the Configure Team System For Your Environment session, well thank you! We hope sessions like these help in the education around Team System. As promised I have linked the slides here, this deck contains links to various resources for Team System. If you did not have a chance to attend the session, a recording will be made availble. I will also post by the end of the day, two other sessions that have been announced. As always, if you have recommendations for topics feel free to let us know!

Ken

MSDN Session on Team System

kenm — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:33:00 GMT

Later this month i will doing a session on configuration of various Team System compenents. If you are interested please free to register. Here is the invite!

Configuring Team System For Your Environment

Working with customers on Team System we get questions around the configuration of the Team System environment. From external users using Team Foundation Server to setting up test rigs for staged load tests. We will cover some of these typical scenarios in Team System, and make you aware of various resources that you have access to, to help guide your deployment.

Host and Moderator

Kenneth McArdle, for three years Ken has been a VSTS Technical Specialist for Microsoft, and is a Certified Technology Specialist for Team Foundation Server. For years Ken has worked in field with enterprise customers on their SDLC tools and process. “It’s been a great experience working for Microsoft the last 3 years, because the marriage of process and tools can truly be realized with Team System.”

Configuring Team System For Your Environment

Click Here To Register Now!

On Demand Event ID:

1032378715

Date:

Friday, June 27, 2008

Time:

12:00–1:00 EST

Calling all VSTS Mid-Atlantic users Part 2

kenm — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 07:42:00 GMT

Thank you for those of you that have emailed me about the user group. Apparently when I recently remodeled my blog the anonymous post setting was changed. So for those of you who were interested in commenting on whether you were interested in attending user group sessions please feel free to comment again.

Calling all VSTS Mid-Atlantic users

kenm — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 07:23:00 GMT

If you are a VSTS user in the Mid Atlantic area and you have interest in a VSTS user group, please feel free to reach out to me. While talking with a technical fellow in the community this evening, we had a good discussion about building a VSTS community and user group in the Mid Atlantic area. So please free to comment if you would have interest in attending either virtual meetings, in-person meetings, or would like to help in building this user group community. Of course everyone is welcome to the community developers, testers, project managers, or anyone that just has passion around process and the Team System tools to support them.

Requirements in VSTS

kenm — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 15:17:00 GMT

We recently released a white paper on requirements management in VSTS. It is a good document explain what we support and can do with requirements in Team System. it will also give you some insight into our direction for Rosario.

Requirements Management White Paper

I also just got back from Rochester, NY and would just like to say thank you to everyone who attended the GetReady event! It was a pleasure discussing Team System and best practices with everyone.

VSTS Resources

kenm — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 16:29:00 GMT

As VSTS continues to grow in the market, we always seem to get questions around resources and where to find them. With changes to the VSTS 2008 site on MSDN, information is much easier to find, but I still felt the need to create a document outlining a lot of this information. So I have included a link to a living document that will provide links to updated information on VSTS. This will include whitepaper's, webcasts, integrations, etc. Enjoy!

VSTS Resources Document

TFS to ClearCase conversion

kenm — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 18:59:07 GMT

Some exciting news came out yesterday about TFS. If you are interested in converting from ClearCase to TFS, that process has now become easier. We have released the TFS to ClearCase conversion tool. One thing I would like to point out about the conversion tool is the ability to do bi-directional synchronization, this is a key feature because it usually not a one time move of all projects from one server to the next. For more information about the tool check out our TFS Conversion Blog.

Building Cool Silverlight Applications

kenm — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 17:16:28 GMT

If you are in or around the Malvern, PA area on October 18th, you may want to register for our Silverlight event. I am currently writing this from the Pittsburgh event and is being well received. You will see in action how to embed video in your applications and how the Expressions tools can help you build them. Whether your a developer or designer this is the event for you. Seating is limited so please don't forget to register.

Long time

kenm — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 16:58:22 GMT

Well it has been awhile since I have posted, it has been a busy summer with a lot of exciting things going on around VSTS. Look for a good number of posts in the coming weeks that outline some exciting things that we will be doing around VSTS.

If you like webcasts and are looking for more information around VSTS. My colleagues in the north have created a webcast series focused on topics such as TFS 2008 to Application Lifecycle Best practices. Here is a link:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adamga/archive/2007/07/31/visual-studio-accelerate-webcast-series.aspx

Visual Studio Team System Chat – This Friday

kenm — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 15:17:00 GMT

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the in the Visual Studio code name “Orcas” Beta 1releases for Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

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Power Tools 1.2 released!

kenm — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 16:46:00 GMT

A new set of power tools for Team Foundation Server has been released! This new package contains many new tools, but what is most exciting for me is the process template editor. Here is a list of tools available in the package and a link to download.

Workspace Command (tfpt.exe) - Use the workspace command for additional workspace operations not supported in the currently shipping Team Foundation Server command line (tf.exe).
Treeclean Command (tfpt.exe) - Use the treeclean command to see and optionally delete files in the current directory and all subdirectories that are not under version control.
Process Template Editor - A tool to provide UI for authoring work item types and some of the associated Process Template components.
Check-in Policy Pack - A set of handy check-in policies to address needs customers have expressed.
Build Test Tools Task - A tool that allows running unit tests by simply specifying the DLLs or even specifying a file name pattern in TfsBuild.proj, instead of using .vsmdi files to specify tests to run.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=7324c3db-658d-441b-8522-689c557d0a79&displaylang=en

Bug Capture

kenm — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 17:13:00 GMT

I hope everyone had a safe and happy New Year! I ran across an interesting post yesterday from our U.K. Sales team on an IE plugin for TFS. Basically it alllows you to capture a screenshot, css info, html source, user environment, etc when the user finds a bug in a web application. This will help promote better communication between testers and developers. If you are interested check out the details in this post .

Database Professional has launched!!

kenm — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:08:00 GMT

Thank you to everyone that had chance to attend the launch events for VSTS for Database Professionals. It is exciting to see that after a year after launching VSTS we are able to add to the suite with new exciting tools for SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 DBAs and developers. For those of you that are interested I have included two links to the powerpoint presentations for the launch event.

Database Change
Database Test

Visual Studio Team System Chat - Wed, Nov 8th

kenm — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 02:13:00 GMT

Join the chat on Wednesday, November 8^th, 2006 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.

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