Visual Studio Team System

• Dave Bost is happy to hear that his article on MSDN, Installing the December CTP Release of Visual Studio Team System, is well-received [It makes it all worth it...].
• With Team System still awaiting its Beta debut, the speculation has already begun on what will be in the next version [VS.Net Team System version 2]. But it’s still good to see that this version is of great interest:

“[Adam Gallant] even stayed late and through in a bonus walk through of the Visual Studio Team System. I couldn't possibly be more excited about that system being released. I have seen plenty of earlier demos but this one had my head in a spin. It's exactly what our team has been mimicking over the past few years via Project Server / SharePoint but better suited for a development team that lives in VS. I get the info I need - they don't have to use 3-4 different systems to get it to me. I truly can't wait!” – Amanda Murphy, Catch Up

Architecture

• Tony Loton has a two-part article on MSDN about the Application Designer:
• Introduction to Team Architect Edition Application Designer, Part 1
• Introduction to Team Architect Edition Application Designer, Part 2
• Joe Sango has a post that provides a quick overview of the Application Designer [VSTS Architect Designers] and another on the Logical Datacenter Designer [More designers? Sounds logical.].
• John Evdemon has an extensive post on his blog about Don Box’s tenets of service-orientation [More Thoughts on SOA and the SO Design Tenets].
• As you may have heard by now, Visual Studio 2005 Class Designer will not support the C++ language.
• Eugene Chigirinkiy, a dev on the Class Designer team, has posted an “…overview of how the details of various diagram elements (classes, members, inheritance lines, etc) are visualized in the Properties window” to the team blog [Visualizing class and member details in the Properties window and viewing details from tooltips].
• Dennis van der Stelt has post about Team System at this week’s Dutch Dev Days 2005. Prashant Sridharan presented the keynote [DevDays Day 2 : KeynoteTT].
• Harry Pierson has a post with links to the patterns And practices And podcasts that Ron Jacobs is doing.

DSL Tools & Software Factories

• Steve Cook has posted a link to a “paper panel” about the pros and cons of UML 2.0, in which he participated [UML - the Good, the Bad or the Ugly?]. The paper appeared in Volume 4, Number 1 of Software and Systems Modeling. The link in Steve’s post didn’t work for me, but I was able to eventually find the article on the site. Try this link or this one.

Events

• Brian Johnson has a post about an upcoming Web chat on “What’s New in Whidbey?”. Eric Rudder, the Senior VP for the Server & Tools Business, is scheduled to participate [Don't Miss this Upcoming Whidbey Chat].

Project Management

• Chris Flaat’s team, like my own (we’ve adapted it for developing documentation, not software), is still using scrum. Read the latest on how it’s going for him [Sprint 5 beginning].
• Eric Landes has a post [Is MSF Agile Really Agile?] based on something Mike Gunderloy wrote in his post on the Developer Central Blog about MSF for Agile Software Development [Microsoft does agile - sort of]. I’m of the mindset that no out-of-the-box process will ever work for me, unless I packed the box. Even then, I may find it necessary to adapt that process on a per-project basis. If you take issue with part of the MSF for Agile Software Development process guidance – change it. It’s fully customizable. You can tweak it, rip & replace whole portions of it, or start from scratch. It’s not intended to be THE agile process for software development in Team System. Instead, it’s an implementation of an agile process.

Team Software Development

• Amy Hagstrom is this week’s guest blogger on the Team Foundation Team Blog. She has a post that delves into Team Project customization, which is her area as a program manager on the team [Team Project Customization Overview].
• John Lawrence shared  metrics Brian Harry collected (he could’ve blogged this, but his blog had too many cobwebs ) on our internal dogfooding of Team Foundation version control and work item tracking [Latest Team System Dogfood Statistics]. As Jeff Putz notes, Dogfooding is good for the soul.
• Roger Bonine is currently using Team Foundation version control but wishes for more documentation, which I’m happy to say is forthcoming in the Beta release [The saga of GUS].
• Adam Singer, a developer on Team Foundation version control, has posted several questions he hopes you’ll answer about checkins [Mmmm... tastes like checkin].
• Christa Carpentiere just posted a collection of links for the SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services webcast series scheduled for next week (one per day). Although reporting in Team Foundation uses SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services, these could still be of value [Reporting Services webcast series].

Testing

• Chris Menegay helps shed some light on the fact that you can load test with unit tests in Team System [Load testing unit tests with Team System].
• Steve Rowe links to a post by Stuart Feldman on the need for process in software quality assurance in ACM Queue [Quality Assurance != Testing].
• Peter Provost blogs about the Enterprise Library 1.0 Unit Tests and Scott Densmore wants to know what you think [Enterprise Library's Unit Tests].

Other

• Steve Rowe had an interesting post recently on Why building software isn’t like building bridges, to which Jeremy Kelly wrote an equally interesting follow-up, Bridging the gaps in Software Engineering. This all reminds me of Steve McConnell’s 1999 text, After the Gold Rush: Creating a True Profession of Software Engineering (which later became Professional Software Development: Shorter Schedules, Better Projects, Superior Products, Enhanced Careers in the second edition).