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September 2009 - Posts

New VSTS Rangers Project - VSTT 2010 "Team test" Guidance

Geoff is heading up this exciting project. Included in this post is the vision and the objective of the project, whereby I am more than happy to discuss more details with you if needed. For the sake of text re-use, all text indicated in italic has been Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 30, 2009 4:16 AM by willys | 0 Comments

TFS Migration Tools: Conflict resolution … a peak at the (less painful) future: Part 4

In this post we will focus on version control (VC) conflict resolution, removing one more work around from our hands-on-lab (HOL) environment and looking at another common conflict. Let the games begin. Remember the following notice in the HOL manual? Read More...
Posted Friday, September 25, 2009 10:21 PM by willys | 0 Comments

Windows 7 … two utilities that are really “cool”

Talking about the usage of an operating system is not normally something tend to get excited about … I prefer dabbling on the engine and the plumbing under the bonnet. Two utilities have, however, become good friends of mine as they are adding immense Read More...
Posted Friday, September 25, 2009 10:19 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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Software engineers enjoying a day out in the fields …

As part of the MCDC Cares event the MCDC volunteers delivered a number of field, invasive plants and other maintenance projects, and harvested 1,020 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables for the Richmond Food Bank which will help to feed over 200 households. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 23, 2009 11:14 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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TFS Migration Tools: Conflict resolution … a peak at the (less painful) future: Part 3

MigrationConsole A small nugget in the latest build is hidden within the MigrationConsole. For those that remember having to edit the migration console configuration file, editing the configuration unique the identifier to force a reload and having to Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 23, 2009 11:02 PM by willys | 0 Comments

TFS Migration Tools: Should we opt for migration or synchronization? Part 1

With Team Foundation Server 2010 lurking over the horizon, there are many of us thinking “how will we move from our TFS 2005 and TFS 2008 environments to TFS 2010”. A valid and good question and one that has been the topic of a number of posts around Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 19, 2009 3:26 AM by willys | 0 Comments

Brian shares great VSTS 2010 Tech-Ed slides from BraziL

If you have not subscribed to Brian Keller’s blog, then it is time to do so. In his recent post Slides from my TechEd Brazil Sessions , he has made two excellent presentations on Visual Studio Team System 2010 available. Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 19, 2009 2:59 AM by willys | 0 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – VSTS 2010 101 Guidance BETA-2

Good news, Steven has given us the thumbs up for BETA-2, after already giving us the same positive feedback for BETA-1 at the beginning September. He thought we could not improve or impress him any further … as always, the VSTS Rangers proved him wrong Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 17, 2009 7:50 PM by willys | 0 Comments

TFS Migration Tools – news and stats

In terms of the TFS Migration Tools  the VSTS Rangers are busy wrapping up the hands-on-lab documentation and planning the recording of the basic and advanced walkthroughs as two separate videos. At this stage the planned mid-October release for Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 16, 2009 7:23 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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TFS Migration Tools: Conflict resolution … a peak at the (less painful) future: Part 2

We promised a less painful future, but in TFS Migration Tools: Conflict resolution … a peak at the (less painful) future: Part 1 we again had to fiddle with the configuration file to add a manual rule as part of the new hands-on lab. Hmmmmmm … But there Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 16, 2009 7:22 PM by willys | 0 Comments

VSTS Rangers – realizing a dream around the world and pinpointing the secret ingredient

The Question … After I have recently been asked by a friend what makes the VSTS Rangers program so exciting and I myself have often wondered why Bijan literally blossoms every time when asked “so what are the VSTS Rangers”, it is time to write a few words Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 15, 2009 9:31 PM by willys | 2 Comments

TFS Migration Tools: Conflict resolution … a peak at the (less painful) future: Part 1

In the TFS Migration Tools – Getting Started hands-on-lab (HOL) document we introduced the basics, stepping around all possible conflicts with care. For this that know the Migration Toolkit (and its predecessor), the conflict resolution command line tool Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 13, 2009 10:12 PM by willys | 0 Comments

VSTS Rangers Projects – Virtualizing VSTS 2010: Who are the Leads?

We introduced the leads for VSTS Rangers Projects – VSTS 2010 101 Guidance: Who are the Leads? … let’s continue the introductions, by chatting about the next project which is close on the heels of the VSTS 2010 101 Guidance project. As always you can Read More...
Posted Sunday, September 13, 2009 10:11 PM by willys | 0 Comments

Weekend is starting off on a very good note :) … South Africa 32-29 New Zealand

The mighty Springboks clinched the Tri-Nations Rugby Cup in a nail biting final. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/8252078.stm for the details and glorious pictures :) These are the moments we miss not being back home. However, we will nevertheless Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 12, 2009 8:55 PM by willys | 1 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – TFS Migration Tools: Who are the leads?

We introduced the leads for VSTS Rangers Projects – VSTS 2010 101 Guidance: Who are the Leads? … let’s continue the introductions, by chatting about the third project I am responsible for and have the pleasure of working with a great bunch of leads and Read More...
Posted Friday, September 11, 2009 11:42 PM by willys | 0 Comments

VSTS Rangers … what has transpired over the past 7 months?

Yup, I have been with Microsoft and the VSTS Rangers for just over 7 months now and it is amazing how quickly time flies and how much has changed. On the personal front my boys have all grown by close to the length of two blue badge access cards, my oldest Read More...
Posted Friday, September 11, 2009 12:18 AM by willys | 0 Comments
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Colleagues never understood why we battled with bandwidth and downloads were long and often frustrating adventures

My colleagues in the UK and US could never understand why I used to complain about the lack of bandwidth back home, where downloads that take me minutes today, used to take hours, days, weeks, … creating initiatives such as the Information Camel (disk Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 10, 2009 5:50 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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Unhappy with Agile … revert to Waterfall. part 2 – What are the options?

In Unhappy with Agile … revert to Waterfall. Is this really The answer? we had a discussion around Agile and Waterfall. Since the dust has settled on that post, I was wondering … ‘so what are the options”. Well, there are gazillion software processes Read More...
Posted Wednesday, September 09, 2009 4:55 AM by willys | 1 Comments
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VSTS Rangers Projects – VSTS 2010 101 Guidance: Who are the Leads?

I believe it is time to introduce the feature area leads of this exciting initiative, which will be releasing the second BETA package drop to the Team System MVPs shortly. The feedback we have received from the reviewers, especially from Steven , has Read More...
Posted Tuesday, September 08, 2009 6:02 PM by willys | 0 Comments

Unhappy with Agile … revert to Waterfall. Is this really The answer?

Getting off the track I recently noticed a question on a distribution list that I have seen and experienced so many time before. A team tried the “Agile” community, failed and plans to move back to another methodology, such as the prescriptive CMMI or Read More...
Posted Monday, September 07, 2009 4:08 AM by willys | 2 Comments
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Team System MVP colleagues put Portuguese and Spanish on the Menu

First Ramon delivered a book in Portuguese , see Ramon puts Brazil on the TFS map with the “Managing software projects using Visual Studio Team System” book for details. Now Francisco delivers a range of screencasts in Spanish , which you can find here Read More...
Posted Saturday, September 05, 2009 7:27 PM by willys | 0 Comments
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What is ALM and are the relevant publications too dry for the developers?

If you are expecting a lengthy discussion in ALM and/or SDLC, then you may want to skip this post, because the core theme of this post is to figure out how we can make the related content relevant and appealing to all stakeholders of software projects, Read More...
Posted Thursday, September 03, 2009 6:01 PM by willys | 2 Comments
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