Rangers Flash – April 2012

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PROJECT NEWS

Visual Studio Readiness “GIG” Wave #1

  • https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=244348 is still the most current update on the latest wave of ALM Ranger projects, whereby all projects with the exception of ALM Assessment and BRDLite have shipped a BETA. We are expecting that all projects will SIM-SHIP a release candidate … watch the space!

Coded UI for Word Add-In

  • Michael Fourie is hard at work include a version with the SIM-SHIP wave that introduces Visual Studio 11 support.

Downloads Update (as @ 4/25 23:59 PDT)

  • Average daily downloads for new projects since SIM-SHIP: 506 (March Flash: 221)
  • Total downloads since Jan/1/2009 of tracked and Dev10/11 focused ALM Ranger projects: 323,143 (March Flash: 309,367)
  • Daily download averages and daily download trend reports for the Readiness “Gig” are shown below:
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COMMUNITY NEWS

Rangers Index

ALM Summit Brazil

Sechseläuten

MSDN Flash

TFS Iteration Manager Visual Studio Add-In

ECOSYSTEM NEWS

Infrastructure Update

  • The infrastructure working group (Jeff Bramwell, Jim Szubryt, David V. Corbin, Robert MacLean and Prasanna Ramkumar) is hard at work to implement the new infrastructure we need for the new Ecosystem and to present a user friendlier experience to all ALM Rangers.
  • The following innovations are in progress:
    - Dashboard improvements … owned by Jeff
    - Maintainable contacts and activity … owned by Robert
    - User friendly Rangers Wiki … owned by Jim
    - Queue of ad-hoc and tangible tasks … owned by David
    - Transparent Rangers nomination queue … owned by Prasanna

UserVoice

  • Please start using these UserVoice channels, else your “voice” will not be heard!
  • Visual Studio ALM Rangers (private) – If you are an ALM Ranger submit suggestions and allocate your votes in this forum. If you do not have access, please contact willys@microsoft.com.
  • Visual Studio (public) – If you are not an ALM Ranger, submit suggestions and allocate your votes using the Rangers Project category tag. Point your customers, partners, colleagues and friends to this channel if they have an idea, but are not ALM Rangers.

ACTIONS

ASK #1 – Quotes anyone?

  • As always we would appreciate quotes from you or your communities in terms of the ALM Ranger solutions. Good news and positive quotes are invaluable!

ASK #2 – Pictures anyone?

  • For the upgrade and planning project session I would appreciate if you can send me pictures we can use that show installations / environments that could probably have used a bit more planning … again a picture speaks a thousand words.
    ChuckCharles Sterling “Chuck” and his AJ – Amberjack Winking smile

ASK #3 – Tell us about your successes!

  • One thing we love is celebrating your successes. Unfortunately not being omniscient we simply don’t know about many of them. So if you have done or know of some outstanding contributions/actions please send them to Chuck and Willy to post in our internal newsletters that go to our upper management and the MVP leads.

ASK #4 – Important Surveys

ACTIONS – ALM Rangers Only

ASK #5 – Contact details

  • Update your personal contact details in the Ranger Contact Details to avoid losing access to the ALM Ranger infrastructure if you have not already done so.
  • We recently added a shirt-size field and defaulted to L.

ASK #6 - Achievements

  • Update your personal activities in the Ranger FY12 Activity list to ensure your contributions will be recognized! FY12 list will be frozen mid-May.

Last but not least, a great illustration from https://ScrumShortcuts.com:

Sgandup

For more information refer to: Rangers Website | Rangers Solutions | Rangers Blog | Understanding the Visual Studio ALM Rangers
To include content in future Ranger Flashes: Send your one-two liners to us latest a week before the last day of the month