Rangers Flash – November 2012

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PROJECT NEWS

The teams pushed hard to complete most of the development tasks by the end of sprint 5 (November), encouraging everyone to re-focus on their families during sprint 6 (December) and allow the ALM Ranger reviewers to digest “what we have”.

“Shipped” image

  • Team Foundation Server Word Add-in shipped update #1 to add Office 2010 64-bit support. Checkout Jesse’s blog post if you are already on Visual Studio 2012 and Office 2013.
  • TFSBranchTool released the Visual Studio Extension allowing user to implement a consistent branching model which complies with the VS TFS Branching and Merging Guide from within Visual Studio Source Control Explorer. Watch the Channel9 video for details and a quick demo.

In-flight projects

  • Better Unit Testing with Microsoft Fakes project is going well. The eBook provides a one stop shop for developers to not only understand, but get productive with Microsoft Fakes. image
  • ALM Readiness Treasure Map team has supplemented the paper-based treasure map in previous sprints with a sample Windows 8 Store application that takes you through the ALM Readiness treasures.
  • TFS Disaster Recovery Planning team is making progress, but has been impacted by unfortunate family emergencies.
  • Rational and TFS Integration Tools sandbox team is busy upgrading and re-testing the Rational -> TFS Hands-on Labs in the IBM Rational to TFS Integration Tools - Training and Exploration Sandbox.
  • End to end guidance for DevOps bug resolution using IntelliTrace project is on schedule,thanks to a great effort by the team.
  • Test Release Requirements Guide team is busy finalising the latest service pack.
  • BRDLite version 2 has been approved, https://vsarbrdlite.codeplex.com site has been created and the team busy with the final publishing process.

Downloads Update (as 1st December 23:59 PDT)

  • Average daily downloads since 2007: 196 (5+1)
  • Total downloads since Jan/1/2007 of tracked and Dev10/11 focused ALM Ranger projects: 424039 (5+6410)

 

COMMUNITY NEWS

MSDN Magazine | Flash

ALM Ranger community changes

  • The following Associate ALM Rangers joined us in November: Edgar Vega Calderon, Jeff Levinson, Miguel Barros, Paul Elmore and Suliman AlBattat. Welcome!
  • Jeff Beehler and Ben Amodio have both been added to the honorary ALM Ranger category. Thank you both for tenacious guidance, candid feedback, invaluable passion and contributions to the ALM Rangers

What’s this … weekly fun pics

  • Michael Fourie submitted a great suggestion as shown on the right :)
  • Find the solutions to the weekly fun pictures here.

“A”-Ranger Award

  • The third “A”-Ranger Award t-shirt goes to KerryGates, for being an exceptional ALM Ranger product owner (PO), supportive VS marketing sounding board and stakeholder. T-shirt is on-route! clip_image006  “A”-Ranger t-shirt #3

Latest MSDN Flashes by … clip_image002

Mike asked “Is it Bill’s new hat?”, when the first picture snippet appeared in weekly flash.

clip_image004

        

ACTIONS

ASK #1 – Submit your ideas!

  • FY13 Triage #3 of ALM Ranger project ideas is coming up in early January. Please ensure that you add/update your project ideas on UserVoice. See Submit your Visual Studio idea using UserVoice for details and get your idea(s) on the radar.

ASK #2 – 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 #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.