Today we have published another group of Team Foundation Server specs for the Rosario release.  Getting feedback from the community is the most important part of the spec sharing process, so now that the specs are live, please give us your comments!  The last round of specs generated a lot of great discussions around the new features we are adding, as well as sparking discussion around new features requested by the community. 

This newest set of Rosario specs covers some great features, including:

·         Team Foundation Server Bug Submission Portal

·         Send Mail from TFS

·         Work Item Tracking Linking

These specs can be found on the Rosario spec sharing site (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb936702.aspx) and feedback can be directed to the Rosario spec discussion forum (http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDNWorkShop/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1981&SiteID=64).  Be sure to let us know what you think!

Way back in the early days of Orcas, much of Visual Studio participated in an effort to share specs with the community.  The TFS PM team contributed several specs to that site, and the feedback that we harvested through the Connect site helped us to build the right features.  As we are always trying to get more feedback from the community, we have created another site to share the specs for Rosario. 

Rosario Feature Specifications

Something that we have decided to change this time around is the method of acquiring feedback.  Previously feedback was a very individualized process: a member of the VS community read a feature spec, thought of something to share with the feature team, and submitted a bug that only a few people ever read.  This time around, we want to change that process to increase the visibility of an individual's feedback and to foster a discussion around the new features.

Enter the MSDN Workshop forums.  By posting comments and questions for each of the specs, the entire community (including the feature teams) will be able to see what people are thinking about the new Rosario features. 

In order for this to be a success, we need your feedback.  So if you are reading through one of the Rosario specs and have something to share, please leave a comment.  Thanks for the help!

-Matt

The reason that I've created this blog is to share some of the things that we do on the PM team with the community.  Much like other PMs at Microsoft, our responsibilities include:

Currently, we are winding down the Orcas release and at the same time ramping up our Rosario efforts, so I expect the content in the near future to reflect the design, planning, and development pieces of the software development lifecycle.  As we move forward with Rosario and on to the next release, the content here should reflect how the role of a PM changes to follow the product lifecycle.

More to come on the design and planning process...

-Matt