Introducing the Visual Studio ALM Rangers – Steve St Jean

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This post is part of an ongoing series of Rangers introductions. SeeRanger Index (Who is Who?)for more details.

Who you are?Steve_MtEvans

Steven St.Jean is currently a Senior ALM Consultant with Microsoft’s Premier Developer Support team. Prior to that he worked at Notion Solutions for 6 years as a Senior ALM Consultant. He has 20 years of industry experience, the past seven focused on assisting clients with maturing their development processes including the use of the Microsoft tools stack.  He is a former Microsoft MVP in Visual Studio ALM, a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer in Team Foundation Server (TFS), an author and technical editor of a number of books pertaining to ALM and TFS.  He speaks on various ALM process and tooling topics at user groups and code camps.  In his free time he enjoys spending time with his wife and daughters, travelling and photography. You can find his technical blog at https://howstevegotburnedtoday.com and his Twitter handle is @SteveStJean

What makes you “tick”?

I really like the idea that we can “do better” at the process of software development from end-to-end.  We can partner with the rest of our company and our customers so that we no longer are in “Information Technology” but rather are in “Business Technology”. We are part of the business. There is no artificial barrier between “us” and “them”.  Everything we do has a direct impact on the health and profitability of the company. 

Where you live?

about 3 miles from Walt Disney World in Winter Garden, FL.

Why are you active in the Rangers program?

The Visual Studio ALM stack is made for “everyone and no one”. It is a platform that we can use to support our process improvements in software development.  With Flexibility comes Complexity and Complexity can lead to frustration.  I want to provide guidance and tooling to help folks adopt the VS ALM stack with less frustration.

What is the best Rangers project you worked in and why?

The Azure Resource Manager template for a Secure SonarQube installation project has been the most enjoyable because I was able to solve a problem that the development community was having while learning some new technology (Azure Resource Manager templates, PowerShell Desired State Configuration).