marcus's Team System motivation and experience : VSTS Motivation

"Recharging Motivation Battery"

marcalt — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 01:20:55 GMT

I want to be sure to get a blog post on this out as long as the impression is still fresh. Currently I am in Seattle at our so called Microsoft TechReady7. TechReady is a Microsoft internal conference that gives us the chance to hear directly from all product groups what innovation will be coming the next year(s).

TechReady beats everything I had seen before, and it is already my 2nd TechReady. This is a great effort Microsoft is doing for its employees. We have more then 5500 attendees being here at Seattle the whole week. Every day is filled up with sessions of different kinds. To give you an idea: We have around 850 sessions plus more then 350 labs. And content is delivered by more then 1200 speakers. As we are in Seattle just a bunch of miles away from Redmond we really get in the speakers who are responsible for product development and can directly get newest information, see latest builds (last night :-) ) and give field direct feedback.

This is a huge and super-super amazing conference that gives us the additional possibility to network with colleagues worldwide. Have you ever had breakfast with a couple of thousand colleagues ? I did and this is impressing.

Seattle normally known as rainy showed up from its best side and I had the chance to even get a bit of sightseeing on Saturday:

To sum up here you really gain motivation and new energy when seeing what is coming up in the Team System space. Besides meeting all the folks driving the product is a real opportunity to give feedback directly from our customers to product group.

You should be really curios to see the next CTP we plan in fall. I will let you know when this one will be available. Additionally I want to encourage you to follow PDC coverage as there we will be lifting off a bit more of what is to come.

TeamConf 2008: A Team System success story

marcalt — Tue, 27 May 2008 16:03:33 GMT

I wrote quite a lot about TeamConf 2008 beforehand but got lost in workload after the conference, not finding the time for writing a review.

The first "Team System Only" Conference world wide was a great success.
We had over 250 attendees and 97% of all attendees gave us the feedback, that they will will recommend TeamConf to others.

We had 3 fantastic days, starting off with practical half and full day workshops, one of the workshops even went till 8:30 pm (scheduled till 6 pm). In the workshops attendees had the chance to really hear practical experience around the Team System space....

The following 2 days where stuffed with great sessions and especially the customer sessions where highly rated. We had > 10 user-sessions from live VSTS customers sharing their experience and success stories. This was a tremendous benefit to the conference. Additionally Ivar and Sam had great keynotes that rounded of the conference program.

One point not to miss: Everyone really enjoyed the networking possibilities. We had a good platform for formal and informal talks in the "finger food" dinner area. This was one of the most important pieces of the conference, besides content and really made a difference according to othe revents I have been.

To sum up: We will have a TeamConf 2009. Be sure to save the date 5.-7. May 2009 in Munich.

And we look forward to see even more attendees, customer success stories and networking possibilities there.

If you are interested, you can have a look to the session content on the TeamConf website.

Stay tuned for an update: We recorded a bunch of sessions, that we will make available on Channel9 the next weeks. I will promote this on my blog.

Besides, according to my blog title: Events like this are pure "Team System Motivation"

Kevin Kelly @ TeamConf

marcalt — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 17:01:56 GMT

Another Team System Conference News:

Kevin Kelly is a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft responsible for all Team Foundation Server marketing. Before that Kevin was a leader in developing Team Foundation Server (TFS) serving as Principal Program Manager for work item tracking and version control subsystems

We have a limited possibility to setup personal meetings with Kevin. So if you plan to attend TeamConf and have topics that you want to discuss with our product marketing, please ping me and I will check wether we can arrange a meeting. A talk with Kevin or Sam at TeamConf will always be possible because they are around most of the time.

Looking forward to see you at the conference!

Tremendous Team System interest at the Launch 2008

marcalt — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:49:48 GMT

Today is the third day of the German Launch of Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008 in Frankfurt. I am more then just a bit excited: We had 6.000+ attendees at the Launch and additional 1.500 at the parallel SharePoint Conference.

Heroes Happen Here:

All Team System sessions and we had 5 Team System only ones, where crowded. The rooms where full and we had rooms for 600+ people! We had great feedback and super interesting discussions on all kinds of Team System topics. The Ask the experts booth for Team System was really overrun during most breaks. For me this was one of these events where you really feel proud to belong to the Team System family and this motivates for every minute I invest in Team System.

Perfekt organisiert!

marcalt — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 18:46:18 GMT

Ich freue mich Ihnen eine Roadshow der Extraklasse ankündigen zu dürfen.

Basierend auf fundierter Praxiserfahrung von mehreren Jahren Team System Expertise hat Microsoft gemeinsam mit der AIT (Applied Informations Technologies AG) Ihnen eine Abendveranstaltung der besonderen Art zusammengestellt. Lernen Sie wie Projektmanagement und -steuerung in professionellen Händen aussieht und wie der Visual Studio Team Foundation Server in praktischen Projektszenarien wirklich funktioniert.

Lassen Sie sich davon überzeugen wie auch Ihre Softwareentwicklung in Zukunft "perfekt organisiert" werden kann und minimieren Sie Ihre Projektrisiken:

Themenauszug:

• Kaizen - Umsetzung der Theorien auf die Softwareentwicklung: Welche Leitlinien für prozessorientiertes Handeln entstehen daraus?

• Szenarien aus dem Alltag der Softwareentwicklung - Risiken und Fehler: Wie können alle Teammitglieder aktiv unterstützt werden? Und werden Missverständnisse im Projektverlauf reduziert?

• Projektmanagement und –steuerung: Was sind typische Qualitätsprobleme und wie kann man diese lösen? Auf welche Art tragen Build Prozesse zur Verbesserung der Produktqualität bei? Welche Vorteileentstehen durch mehr Transparenz in der Zusammenarbeit?

• Nutzenvergleich: Die integrierte „Application Lifecycle Platform“ versus einer zusammengestellten Produktlandschaft: Welche Vorteile bieten sich bei der Versionsverwaltung, beim Bug- und Work-Tracking, beider Code Analyse und der Ermittlung von Metriken?

Direkt anmelden unter: www.aitag.com/tfsseminar

Announcing 1st Team System Conference April 2008

marcalt — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 21:18:52 GMT

As you may have noticed it has been a bit quite around my blog. Actually I was off for summer vacation and since then I am trying to catch up with all news and information that has come up during this time. It seems to be a mission impossible, so I will need to stay a few more days with a long backlog and blogging must be delayed a bit. But one thing I really want to let you know is the fact that we will have the 1st Team System Conference here in germany in April 2008. Be sure to save the date.

Call for paper is already open and I am super excited to see this event get a big Team System best practice exchange between customers, interesseted parties and the growing german speaking Team System community. The event will be german speaking and we hope to see many folks from swizzerland and austria as well. Look at http://www.TeamConf.de for details!

Data Modeling for DBPro Database Projects

marcalt — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 10:46:48 GMT

Doing Demos with the DBPro Role usually really excites folk out there because we have functionality that they never saw before like DB-Unit Testing... When you ask customers before the demo for their expectation on the product, they often say data modeling. I am glad that we are now able to close this gap through our partner CA and their Erwin Product. Erwin Data modeler R7.2 fully integrates into Team Systems DBPro Product and you can download a eval and watch a demo here.

Be aware of the following: The Erwin integration needs DBPro Power Tools as prerequisite and actually the tool doesn't show any errors when this one is not present. The roundtripping works fine, you just don't get any data into Erwin :-) This was really hard to find as Erwin was released before the Power Tools were out. So if you tried this before and it didn't work, be sure to retry it with installed Power tools.

What does this look like - Erwin integrates into data menu and starts a reverse engineering when you choose "Edit Erwin".

What you get afterwards is the Erwin Data modeler, that allows you to do real modeling. You only need to save the model to also update the DBPro Database Project to the current structure.

Erwin saves its model at the level of the DBPro Project and includes it into the solution explorer. This lets you take the model under source control together with the rest of your DBPro Project.

Double-Clicking on the Erwin model opens it and automatically synchronizes all changes that where made in the Database Project into the Erwin model. A real smooth integrated user experience, if you got Power tools installed.

Database Professional News

marcalt — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 16:25:44 GMT

I just catched up with a big bunch of news around the Database Professional and I am more then excited about the variety of features that got into the Product without having a major release. First of all and already a bit "outdated" is the

DBPro Service Release 1 from end of July that can be downloaded from here. SR1 brings a bunch of smaller feature changes and fixes and sets the stage for Power Tools. See KB Article for Details and Gerts Blog for Database References Details.

Additionally the just released

Power Tools are impressive. Features like Static Code Analysis for T-SQL, a RegEx Editor for Data Generation Plans, a bunch of new Refactoring possibilities just to mention a few. See Gerts blog for an overview and more details or just download them here.

Do not miss the corresponding channel9 video on the SR1 and Power Tools release including a sneak preview in the next power tool content.

Last but not least I want to point you to a Whitewater on the Database UNIT Testing with DBPro.

And as I am really excited of this feature here a few screen shots from the T-SQL static code analysis:

Choosing rules to enforce:

Running static code analysis:

Investigating the results:

Using TFS from Windows Exporer

marcalt — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 17:45:45 GMT

This is on of these VSTS topics that really keep me highly motivated in the Team System space. More and more really cool tools and add ons get released and the VSTS community is growing faster and faster.

These days more per accident then per intention I fell over the Dubbelbock tool from Benjamin Day Consulting. First I was really excited of the name, as I come from munich Dubbelbock beer is a thing that I really know :-) But functionality is even cooler:

It implements a feature, that tools like Subversion offers today and we dind't have. The possibility to do all source control action just right away out of the Windows Explorer. This means CheckOut, CheckIn, Version compare... is available from Windows Explorer Right Click menu. Excactly this features are now also available for TFS:

In the picture above you can see the whole functionality and it is really super easy to use. Commands like CheckIn use normal Dialogs with all TFS funcionality. No need to start Visual Studio any more, but please keep buying it :-)

Additionally a new functionality called WorkItem stencil is in beta. This brings you the possibilty to fast and easy create work items from Task Tray similar to Fissum Client but it has the cool feature define prefilled fields. For more details see Bens blog.

Get the Rosario CTP

marcalt — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:57:22 GMT

After a week of time letting Orcas Beta 2 settle down we released the Visual Studio Team System Code Name "Rosario" August 2007 CTP. This is a great step in involving our customers in our plans for the next big Team System release. As Orcas is the product you should be looking today and planning with Rosario gives you a sneak preview on our investment in the 2 pillars "Testing & Application Quality" and "Business Alignment". Rosario gives a first look into both areas with a bunch of features that will come:

The most important ones are Hierarcical Work Items, Named (user defined) Work Item Link Types as well as a greatly improved Test Case Management and a Manual Test Runner. Where to go:

You can get all information from here. Be sure to also download the documentation, especially on the TestRunner, this really will save you time.

Brian Harry has a good overview over the new Work Item possibilities, so I won't repeat this here.

I will post a bunch of screens on the Manual TestRunner stuff within the next days.

And to excite you a bit here a first look at the TestRunner. Recognize, that this is not part of the Visual Studio IDE, what shows our targeting towards real Tester audience.

Great: First Rosario Preview is just around the corner

marcalt — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 09:04:38 GMT

This is the news I really have been waiting for quite a while. Brian Harry just posted that we signed off the Rosario CTP8 and that it will be available for a first view in a week or so. I am really looking forward to see the progress we made and to hear what feedback you have on the first sneak Rosario preview. The primary features in this CTP include new tools for the manual tester and work item linking and hierarchy support. Brian will post more details the next days, so stay tuned!

Be also aware of the fact that Orcas Beta2 is also ready to go and will be released in the near future. This guarantees us an exciting summer period with tons of stuff to examinate and look at. Have fun!

Other valuable Team System blogs

marcalt — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:27:02 GMT

It seems like the last year more and more information is first, often only, posted on blogs. This often makes it really different to stay up-to-date with the newest information. Especially in the Team System space we have a tremendous number of great blogs out there. I want to point you to a few ones I track on a regular base.... Have a fun and exciting reading:

English blogs.

Rob Carons Blog

Brian Harry's blog

Visual Studio Team System User Education

Eric Lees Blog

Jeff Beehlers Blog

Nenos Blog

German blogs:

German Team System Blog

Also I want to point you to the German Team System group on XING (https://www.xing.com/net/vsts/).

Need for Team System Guidance

marcalt — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 16:17:35 GMT

Talking with really many customers every week the question on Guidance and Best Practice pops up nearly all the time. While this was hard to answer a year ago we recently published a big bunch of Guidelines, How Tos, Videos... that really helps to get a faststart on setting up and working with Team System. A bunch of important links I want to share with you today:

General Guidance:

Branching / Merging / Source Code Dependencies:

Additionally you may want to have a look to Channel 9 Videos, e.g. in the Team Foundation Server Tag.

Visual Studio Team System integriert das V-Modell XT

marcalt — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:48:57 GMT

Das speziell im öffentlichen Bereich sehr wichtige V-Modell XT soll in Zukunft auf als Prozess Template für den Team Foundation Server zur Verfügung stehen. Gemeinsam mit dem ZfS der TU München und der Firma ZÜHLKE planen wir im Laufe des Jahres einen Generator für die Transformation des V-Modell XT in ein valides Team System Template zur Verfügung zu stellen. Damit ermöglichen wir es die sehr mächtigen Team System ALM Möglichkeiten mit den stärken der V-Modell XT Vorgehensweise zu kombinieren.

Detaillierte Informationen dazu finden sich im Whitepaper "Integrierte ALM Unterstützung für V-Modell Projekte auf Basis des Microsoft Team Foundation Servers". (oder auch als XPS).

Update: Inzwischen ist das Whitepaper auch als MSDN Artikel verfügbar.

(Rechtlicher Hinweis: This is a preliminary document and may be changed substantially prior to final commercial release of the software described herein.The information contained in this document represents the current view of Microsoft Deutschland GmbH on the issues discussed as of the date of publication. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information presented after the date of publication. This White Paper is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT.)

Around extensibility and integration

marcalt — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 16:12:56 GMT

Beeing at quite a lot customer sites the last weeks I am really excited that it seems to make more and more fun talking to customers and partners about Team System. One big reason for me is that our partner and "Open Source" Ecosystem gets broader and broader. These days I more and more point my customers to TeamPrise Eclipse integration. What these guys have built is really great. A fully fleched TFS - Eclipse integation that they just added value through delivering NANT scripts and Cruise Control integration. I really encourcage you to have a deep look into their offering unter http://www.teamprise.com . Or just look at the 10 minutes demo they offer under: http://www.teamprise.com/product/2.0_product_tour.html.

As many of you may know, the Microsoft Open Source Plattform CodePlex is based on TFS. This enables a great IDE experience when using Visual Studio 2005. To make this interessting to the Eclipse comunity as well Teamprise announced that they offer free Teamprise licences for CodePlex users: http://www.teamprise.com/news/2007/03/teamprise_enables_crossplatfor.html

Another realy exciter for me has been the announcement of devBiz aquisition with the availability of the WebAccess to all out customers. See my former post on this topic. It is great to see how customers get really excited when they these the possibility for Non-Developer Roles and the great functinality TeamPlain offers.

And yesterday I had a further look on CodePlex finding this smart little solution called Fissum. Fissum is a Tray Icon that enables you direct access to Team Systems Work Item system, on your fingertips. A real small but great exciter you should look at: http://www.codeplex.com/fissumm

And don't forget to look at other TFS CodePlex projects.

And when I would ever get sad telling these stories, what really didn't happen yet, I won't have any problems holding my personal motivation to a top with telling details on our just disclosed roadmap...

From a Tech Sales perspective these days are really fun and busy wih more and more custromers coming on stage and wanting to get an deep insight on Team System. In my opinion a great success that has just began to rock....

Looking forward to the next month with Team System and more exciting news!