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May 2009 - Posts

Is Visual Studio 2010 really as evolutionary as we think?

As mentioned in my post Why would anyone park his Windows START button top left? I eluded to the fact that I would evaluate the Visual Studio User Interface, from my perspective, using heuristic evaluation, a topic that I covered in the book I read and Read More...
Posted Friday, May 29, 2009 4:50 AM by willys | 3 Comments

Good news for TFS 2005, 2008 and in future 2010 users in terms of compatibility … ‘ZAYD’ take note

If you review Brian Harry’s blog post TFS 2010 Admin, Operations & Setup Improvements you will notice that there were plans to support Team Explorer (TE) 2005 and 2008 to work against Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010. TE 2005 support then took a Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 28, 2009 5:46 PM by willys | 2 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – VSTS 2010 ‘101’ Guidance, meet the role images

Role Images? For the VSTS 2010 ‘101’ Guidance project we have suggested new role images to visually highlight the roles for which each of the guidance sheets are applicable. Meet the project manager, the business analyst, the architect, the developer, Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 28, 2009 5:26 AM by willys | 4 Comments
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Hyper-V: Notes to self … perhaps I will remember next time … part 3

Continued from part 1 and part 2 . Some additional notes to remember when sharing Hyper-V images: As mentioned in part 2, remove all snapshots … in essence merging all staged environments into one. Unbind all network adapters, otherwise anyone importing Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 28, 2009 5:19 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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Why would anyone park his Windows START button top left?

This post is dedicated to my colleagues Henk, Zayd and Robert … all of whom could never understand why Willy had his START button at the top left. Now on the other side of the planet, I have dragged the good old toolbar to the top again, positioning the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 26, 2009 4:50 AM by willys | 2 Comments
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Visual Studio Team System 2010 BETA-1: tentative Architecture Excursions

I have probably been one of the greatest critics of VSTS Team Architect 2005 & 2008, but when I see what has emerged with VSTS 2010 BETA-1, I need to give Cameron and his team a “hug”, because the new architect edition ‘rocks’. While there are obviously Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 24, 2009 5:10 AM by willys | 2 Comments
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The new life at Microsoft and living in Canada … what have the first 3.5 months been like?

So what is Canada like? How is life at Microsoft? These are two questions I often receive these days from colleagues and family alike … I think it is time I summarise my views after 100 days in Canada and 99 days with Microsoft. Left’s start with Canada, Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 24, 2009 5:06 AM by willys | 2 Comments
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Visual Studio Team System 2010 – BETA 1 ships! … and there is more!

We had the BETA 1 announcement, now we have some additional bits that are bubbling up. Documentation is not included in the installation, as many of you should have realised by now. The online version is available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fda2bad5(VS.100).aspx Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 20, 2009 7:22 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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VSTS work item tracking, project and process customisation … a focused blog

Kathryn Elliott has started a dedicated blog to collaborate on the customisation requirements for work item tracking., projects and processes. If you are involved in customisation, then you should definitely bookmark this site What Information Will Best Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 19, 2009 10:25 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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Visual Studio Team System 2010 – BETA 1 ships!

This is a huge and long awaited milestone and having had the privilege of working with the product group over the past few months, I appreciate the effort, the commitment and the passion that was invested in this deliverable. BETA 1 has hatched! The main Read More...
Posted Monday, May 18, 2009 6:21 PM by willys | 1 Comments

SDLC – Software Development Lifecycle … Forget about prototyping? (part 11 of many)

Hope that got everyone’s attention! The summary of SDLC posts already included an excursion through prototypes and today we will skip the good, the bad and the evil, but instead look at a few types of prototypes. We will conclude by asking again, whether Read More...
Posted Sunday, May 17, 2009 7:02 AM by willys | 2 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Project – TFS2TFS Project Copy initiative … collaboration with the field. Introducing AIT!

The VSTS Rangers Project – TFS2TFS Project Copy initiative, as referenced in my summary of projects here , involves collaboration with Microsoft engineers, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVP) and VSTS Community leaders in an attempt to ensure that Read More...
Posted Saturday, May 16, 2009 12:20 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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Erich Witt … remembering a “very” special person!

It is at times like these that one realises how precious life is and how insignificant some of our humanoid, often self-inflicted, stress adventures are. Our dear friend Erich Witt , my oldest son’s godfather, our trusted advisor, my great wine and Schnapps Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:51 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – Virtualising VSTS, 101 Guidance, … collaborating with the field. Introducing SAArchitect!

The VSTS Rangers Projects as referenced in my summary of projects here , involves collaboration with Microsoft engineers, Microsoft Most Valued Professionals (MVP) and VSTS Community leaders in an attempt to ensure that the value proposition and value-add Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2009 6:36 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – Feedback on TFS|VSTS 2010 CTP testing … no, we are not behind the wave :)

We have been doing extensive testing of the installation and configuration of TFS and VSTS 2010, using the Community Technology Preview (CTP) releases on the run-up to the TFS|VSTS 2010 BETA-1 release, to enable the VSTS Rangers projects to dogfood the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, May 13, 2009 11:22 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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Radio TFS – Virtualizing Team Foundation Server

… new episode is available for download, featuring Paul and Martin sitting with Brian Randell to talk about his two major passions in technology life, Team Foundation Server and Virtualization. Go here for more details. … Brian A. Randell is a senior Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2009 11:55 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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Hyper-V: Notes to self … TechEd 2009 revealed some great enhancements!

Just I am getting to grips with the current Hyper-V world, I heard the knocking on the wall … it’s TechEd 2009 and a Tsunami wave of enhancements have been announced so far: 64LP Support … the scalability support is phenomenal. While Server 2008 Hyper-V Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2009 7:22 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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Hyper-V: Notes to self … perhaps I will remember next time … part 2

Continued from Hyper-V: Notes to self … perhaps I will remember next time … the beating and the lessons learnt continues… Before you ship, delete all snapshots Snapshots are intended for short-term snapshots, not as a long-term and wide-distribution service. Read More...
Posted Monday, May 11, 2009 8:23 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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TFS Migration … worth mentioning the migration tools partner ecosystem

While we are busy working in the next era of the TFS Migration and Synchronisation Toolkit, go here and here for more information, we must also point out the Team Foundation Server Migration and Integration Solutions page, which summarises the general Read More...
Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 4:26 PM by willys | 1 Comments

Note to self: Read my own books and learn from my own mistakes

After spending two days and nights stressing and fiddling with a WSS error as part of the TFS 2010 CTP installation for the VSTS Rangers Virtualising VSTS images, crawling uphill like a stubborn Swiss mountain mule, I finally admitted defeat, came to Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 10:33 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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The important ingredients to successful solutions … or in fact, what is a successful solution?

I completed the brownbag session as outlined in Introducing Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) & VSTS Rangers today and some interesting questions were raised, which in conjunction with recent threads on the South-African blogging community server http://dotnet.org.za Read More...
Posted Thursday, May 07, 2009 12:34 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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Building Sandcastles … great Codeplex artefact for the documentation focused!

As part of the VSTS Rangers projects (see list of current projects here ), we are running a number of team technology briefing and training sessions. Today’s session “ VSTS Rangers Project - TFS2TFS Project Copy: Sandcastle briefing” was intended to introduce Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 5:03 PM by willys | 2 Comments
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Chatter: Haggling about the details, using potentially insulting and explosive terminology and forgetting the most important IT solution rule

On the community blog server, http://dotnet.org.za back home in South-Africa, I noticed a series of WTF (will not elaborate on the acronym, unless it stands for w ord t o f ield) which is turning ugly. So much so, that I felt like placing my Swiss steel Read More...
Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 3:24 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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Hyper-V: Notes to self … perhaps I will remember next time

In Hyper-V … you learn something new every day, after spitting like an angry Cobra I mentioned the first snake pits, that I stumbled into in my excursions into the hyper-v world. For one of the VSTS Rangers projects, I have spend most of the weekend building Read More...
Posted Monday, May 04, 2009 5:10 PM by willys | 2 Comments
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WCF Master Class in Zürich … be warned in Switzerland, a great WCF session is looming!

Here is the info about the class, the WCF Master Class in Zürich which I tripped over. Based on feedback from colleagues in South-Africa who have attended these classes and personally knowing Juval, I can only recommend this event to everyone who is exposed Read More...
Posted Monday, May 04, 2009 4:44 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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Rambling – on a personal note; why we are still shell shocked after landing in Canada

We recently (already 3 months) landed in Vancouver, Canada. Coming from Africa the impact was immense and we are still being shell shocked every day with more events, such as the following top seven: There are simply no high walls, electric fencing, burglar Read More...
Posted Monday, May 04, 2009 4:43 PM by willys | 2 Comments
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