Update on Microsoft Blueprints

Update to anyone following this entry: We have now released the Feature Builder Power Tool for Visual Studio 2010 (RTM-Preview) which supercedes and, in very many ways, continues on what we were doing with Blueprints.  

Most of you who read this blog know that for the past 3 years I’ve been driveing a project that was first called Project Glidepath, then Software + Services Blueprints and finally Microsoft Blueprints. 

You may have also noticed recently that the Codeplex project where we were distributing the bits has been closed and wondered what’s up. 

We are making some changes around Blueprints. Blueprints were an important incubation whose purpose was to explore process guidance and automation. They helped us gain a better understanding of requirements for this kind of technology through customer and partner feedback.

Recently, however, we took down the Blueprints project on CodePlex and the Blueprints home page on MSDN. We did this in order to focus on the incubation internally. This work includes determining how best to support process guidance and automation capabilities in a manner aligned with Visual Studio Team System product direction.

Since February, I also have moved from focusing on evangelism to spending my time working more closely with the Visual Studio team and am looking forward to seeing what comes from that collaboration.