Understanding the Visual Studio ALM Rangers
This page has been retired and has been migrated to our Visual Studio ALM Rangers team blog!
Updated on: 2015-01-02 |
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Who are we?We started the VSTS Rangers program in March 2006 as a joint venture between the Visual Studio Team System team and the Worldwide Communities program, part of the Office of the CTO in the Microsoft Services organization. A couple of years ago, we renamed our program to Visual Studio ALM Rangers, but the vision remained the same: to accelerate the adoption of Visual Studio with out-of-band solutions for missing features. In addition, our secondary goal is to provide the opportunity for selected Microsoft consultants, support resources and partners to interact with product group experts so we can learn from our field and partners using Visual Studio ALM products and features with customers. ALM Rangers provide the bulk of our resources which come from volunteer subject matter experts. Typically, they spend their private hours to do the Rangers project work, and, not just anyone is invited to participate — Rangers need to be knowledgeable about Visual Studio and ALM, have the desire to strengthen the community, and contribute regularly. Relying on volunteer part-time work has led us to strive for more efficiency in our projects. To achieve this goal, we have implemented 100% dogfooding with our own Agile-based (Ruck) process model. For consistency, we use the same process model across the board, even for guidance type projects. Our first three years was focused on a strictly internal team that crossed all field roles—consulting, support, sales, and evangelism. As we expanded our external Rangers communities, our goal has been to provide the same level and ease of access to external Rangers. We have reached this goal with our extranet SharePoint site and Team Foundation Service which has, as a side effect, improved our operational transparency significantly. But the top lesson learned again is to keep on learning from real world customers. We leverage our vast customer connections through our Rangers to collect their business and technical requirements and test our beta releases in pilot customer environments. We hope that this overview provides enough information to whet your appetite for more details. We appreciate any feedback and improvement suggestions. Acronyms and Terms
What do we do?The ALM Rangers are focused primarily on the delivery of out-of-band tooling and practical guidance to remove adoption blockers in real world environments. Typically an ALM Ranger solution is a hybrid of practical guidance and supporting out-of-band tooling and sample code. Figure 1 – Aspects of ALM Rangers Frequently asked questionsContact us?
Join us?
Renew membership?
Recommend a new or upgrade project idea?
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MissionThe Visual Studio ALM Rangers provide professional guidance, practical experience and gap-filling solutions to the ALM community. Core ValuesAs a team the ALM Rangers have come to value the following: Razor sharp focus onquality and detail on the work we do
Accountability and commitment
Non-stop and unrestricted collaboration
Global transparency and visibility through collaboration and shared infrastructure
Empathy, trust, humility, honesty and openness at all times
Regular dogfooding of Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management tools
Champions
Special AwardsHonorary ALM RangersWho have retired from an active position in the past, but have actively contributed invaluable passion and contributions to the ALM Ranger community. Alison Clark Andrea Scripa Ben Amodio Bijan Javidi Bill Essary Buck Hodges David Caufield Eric Charran Eric Golpe Erwyn van der Meer Gregg Boer James Pickell Jeff Beehler John Jacob Justin Marks Kerry Gates Larry Duff Larry Guger Lenny Fenster Mike Schimmel Neno Loje Paul Meyer Tim Omta Tina Erwee Zayd Kara |