Let us re-iterate the family>job>rangers mantra and point to our dash / flight board for the ALM Rangers and community

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We often get asked what we mean with “family>job>rangers” , what projects we working on, what projects are planned and what is really happening behind the scenes when we triage the project ideas.

family>job>rangers mantra

ALM Rangers are part-time volunteers, with a family and a professional career, typically within the context of ALM, Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. It is therefore important when planning and managing a project to remember and re-iterate that:

  • Family comes first, because a professional with a happy family is typically a happy and productive professional.
  • Career comes second, because it creates stability for the family and incubates real-world experience that will benefit the ALM community and the ALM Rangers.
  • Rangers come last, feeding on the real-world knowledge, passion for technology and scraps of spare time left over.

We therefore encourage ALM Rangers to remember family>job>rangers, break away from those bits-and-bytes all nighters, go out there and enjoy quality time with family and some of the amazing sceneries around us.
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dash / flight board

In ALM Community shipped the Flight Plan … a simple, known and informative view! we introduced an amazing ALM Community project, that is reflecting a selected TFS Work Item Query on a flight-board, a visualization that should feel natural to those travelling frequently by plane, ship, train, etc.

If you would like to understand …

  • which projects we are working on at the moment and their status, view aka.ms/vsarFlightPlan on the public domain or view the DDE Monitors at the Vancouver Development Centre and Building 18 in Redmond.
  • which projects are preparing to take-off, look for ideas image at the bottom of the flight board.
  • where project ideas are on the backlog on our ideas triage, keep an eye for the triage posts or ping me, or click on the image tile on our VSO dashboard if you are an ALM Ranger.

quarterly triage?

We are moving away from a quarterly triage (see ALM Rangers Triage #7 - What happened to your idea in UserVoice for the latest report at the time of writing) and planning to do a rolling triage and take-off of projects. Whenever there is spare bandwidth and capacity we should be able to pick the next idea off the backlog. This means that the aka.ms/vsarFlightPlan will be a near real-time view of in-flight, taking off and potentially planned project ideas in future.

Project ideas will roll like waves … sometimes large and turbulent, sometimes small and tranquil Smile

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Watch the space for an update on this latest innovation we are embracing and how we are changing the triage process to be more responsive and transparent.

how do you submit a project idea?

Read have you got an idea for a new or an existing ALM Rangers solution‎, submit your idea and encourage your communities to vote for your idea. The more votes an idea has, the brighter it will shine and the higher the perceived community value during the next triage.

Obviously you can and should also collaborate with the ALM Ranger(s) close to you or at event, such as MVP Summit, TechED or TechReady.
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ask!

If you have any question, concern or recommendation please add a comment below and make contact with your friendly ALM Rangers.