New Team System Stuff - 2004-09-21

The Life of Brian

First off, congrats to Brian Harry - as of today, he's now the Product Unit Manager (PUM) for Visual Studio Team Foundation. I couldn't find a link for a good description on what a PUM is, but just understand that at Microsoft the Development Manager, Test Manager and Group Program Manager in a product unit all report to a PUM.

Of course, it's not the first time Brian has been a PUM for a huge, pivotal, v1 project. Previously, Brian was the PUM for the CLR. He's also known for creating the original versions of Visual SourceSafe and a marathon post he made on the DevelopMentor list about resource management and deterministic finalization.

TheServerSide.net just published a video interview with Brian: New Tech Talk: Brian Harry on VSS, the CLR, and Team Foundation. In it, Brian discusses the past (VSS & CLR) and the future (Team System).

Sharing Work Items

Joel Semeniuk, an MSDN Regional Director in Winnipeg, MB, Canada, has been playing with the work item tracking features of Visual Studio Team System. He apparently likes what he's seen so far, but one thing he wants to see is a way to view work items from the project site on SharePoint. Currently, you need to use the Visual Studio IDE, Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Project. All of those options require bits to be installed. I'm not quite sure what's in the mix for this outside of reporting, which isn't available in this release.

Constantly Testing Patience

Joel also had a post that bears repeating here - Visual Studio Team System in the Beta 1 Refresh release is not itself a beta. It's a Community Technology Preview (CTP) build. The idea behind CTP releases is to provide bits earlier and more often for your consideration. If we had gone the traditional route, you would see fewer problems with setup, but of course the majority of you wouldn't see any of Team System until sometime early next year. That's when the first beta of Team System will ship. CTP releases are for those that want to be on the bleeding edge. They can be painful and unforgiving, as many have found with trying to digress from the Installation Guide. It can only get better.

Oops, Don't Miss It!

Just a reminder that OOPSLA '04 is coming to Vancouver, BC, Canada in October! As Ajay Sudan posted in one of the Whidbey newsgroups recently:

Microsoft will be presenting several new advances around Software Factories and Domain Specifc Languages (DSLs) at OOPSLA and GPCE '04 on October 24-28 in Vancouver, British Columbia. In addition to two keynotes, Microsoft will be presenting several tutorials on topics including Generative Software Development and Domain Specific Languages. Please see the abstracts below or the conference site for more information. https://www.oopsla.org . Hope to see you there!

Ajay Sudan
Technical Product Manager
Microsoft Corporation

Microsoft is a Gold Corporate Supporter for this event.

You've Got a Friend in Pennsylvania

Geoff Snowman, an MSDN Developer Community Champion for the Mid-Atlantic region, indicates that the next meeting of the Lehigh Valley .NET user group will feature a presentation from MSDN Regional Director Mitch Ruebush. Mitch plans to present on Visual Studio Team System. If you're in the area...

.NET-based URL123.com is Growing

Ironically, it's getting big because it's good at shrinking. URLs that is. I first talked about URL123.com in this post, which presented my bias towards using .NET-based businesses. It's always nice to see sites that adopt .NET succeed. It's even better when it's a site you like to use and its owned by someone you know. Keep the features coming, Francesco!