release_team's WebLog

With the successful release of Whidbey Beta1 a few weeks ago, we’re now moving toward Beta2. The next key milestone between now and Beta2 is “ZBB.” It is critical to close down on open issues during the drive to ZBB, because doing so significantly impacts...

Wow! It’s hard to believe but we’ve completed 5 weeks of “Ask Mode”. Every day for the past 5 weeks, representatives of each product team in the Division have met daily for 2 to 3 hours reviewing each change that is going into the product. We look first...

We’ve been driving our bug counts down over the past few months, with an eye on what we call ZBB . We " went dark " a few weeks back, which had a significant impact on the overall bug count and really improved the quality of the product. We’ve fixed a...

As we drive towards Whidbey Beta 2, the Product Metrics/Release Criteria are a main guiding principle in assuring we are shipping the right quality product. These metrics/criteria are made up of a number of goals and test coverage requirements (approx...

Have you ever been asked to change something when you felt you were done? It happens; customers provide feedback, security reviews reveal vulnerabilities in a design…there’s always a reason for a change. A “DCR” is a Design Change Request and are designed...

The past few weeks have been pretty busy for me. In my last blog I mentioned I was working on planning our "Security Push", which is a time we allocate in our product cycle where the top priority and focus is security. Having this kind of time is very...

Two weeks ago, we entered a phase of the Beta 2 product cycle we call “Tell Mode”. This is the point which marks the transition to the end game for Beta 2. Here’s what has happened so far, and an idea of what’s to come for Beta 2. ZBB : 11/19/2004 Security...

Most of you are already aware of the Visual Studio 2005 Community Technology Previews (CTP) and are familiar with the philosophy and benefits of the CTPs – you get working bits more frequently, great opportunity for feedback from you to the product teams...

Whidbey Beta 2 Go Live...

Two weeks ago, we entered a phase of the Beta 2 product cycle we call “Tell Mode”. This is the point which marks the transition to the end game for Beta 2. Here’s what has happened so far, and an idea of what’s to come for Beta 2. ZBB : 11/19/2004 Security...

Check off another mini-milestone for Whidbey! Beta 2 Tell Mode is over, and we started "Ask Mode" today. Over the course of the last week, we finished up a round of what we called “aggressive” integrations of the source code branches and are currently...

Whidbey is progressing toward its ZBB date, with only a few more weeks to go. For the past week, and the following, teams within DevDiv have “gone dark”. ZBB is about dropping to ‘zero’ bugs and getting ready for the final Beta and ultimate release. In...

Many I’m sure have heard the “Warteam” meetings at Microsoft and probably about as many stories to go along with them. Here in the Developer Division (DevDiv from here on out…shorter to type) we have a meeting called “Shiproom”...

SQL Server 2005 (code named “ Yukon ”) is built on the Whidbey platform. The integration of the Whidbey .Net Framework with the SQL server engine is well known; this provides the “SQLCLR” functionality that enables managed code stored procedures, user...

During Whidbey Beta 1 we built a web application for reporting the division release criteria called DDMetrics. This tool served its purpose for Beta 1 and Beta 2. Now... it is time to take it to the next level and start using an incredibly awesome tool...

I’ve been spending the past two weeks focusing on pulling together our security efforts for Whidbey. See Soma's blog on security in our division. We have scheduled a multi week period before our Beta2 when the whole division will be focusing on security...

As we begin to close down on Ask Mode for the Platform and Design Time teams we enter the final stage of the release, Whidbey RTM Escrow. DevDiv Whidbey RTM Escrow – the phase before the completion of the RTM milestone where the product goes through...

I suppose the first place to start in writing this blog is to begin with an introduction, including; who is part of the team, what is the “release“ team, and why they are so important for shipping software. At the 30,000 foot view, the...

Funk legend Rick James passed away at age 56 last week. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5625044/ Please join me in a moment of silence to remember the Super Freak of Funk… Developer Division VBL (Virtual Build Lab). The concept of Virtual Build Labs is replicating...

Since we started this blog I have spent some time updating my music collection. In fact, as I type this I am listening to the band “Shadow’s Fall”, really, really loud. There is nothing like some aggressive guitars to help stir the creative...

I just came back from a 5 month parental leave two weeks ago. I was terrified of the first week back; everyone told me it will be hard to all-of-the-sudden be away from my baby girl, but that it will get better later. It wasn’t as bad as I had prepared...

On Monday (6/20) the Platform teams (those teams shipping in the .NET Framework Redist) entered DevDiv Tell mode, I see this as a very exciting time of the product cycle! It is one where you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, while at the same...

Soma received a few questions on his blog from folks who received the Release Candidate at the PDC about what works with what. The PDC was tricky because we wanted to have a set of bits that teams from Microsoft could standardize on AND we wanted to hand...

I mentioned in my last blog that we’re heading towards a first step in the "Final Security Review" for Whidbey. A couple of weeks ago, our central security team finished a 9 week long Penetration Testing (pen-testing) effort of Whidbey. They had 8 people...

Last I blog’d I talked to the Product Metrics/Release Criteria … and now we’ve released Whidbey Beta 2! It has been a long but satisfying road… As you can see from Chris blog below “ In the home stretch… ” he mentioned stress was going to be a wild card...