Into Visual Studio Team System » Announcements & Releases

ALM Track at DevConnections in Las Vegas

pietergheysens — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:56:13 +0000

This week I’m in Las Vegas (on invitation by IDesign) for the launch of Visual Studio at Devconnections. The Launch Day of Visual Studio 2010 was great but on Tuesday and Wednesday there’s also a promising Application Lifecycle Management track I want to follow.

Improving Your Software Development Processes with Visual Studio 2010 (Joel Semeniuk)
Defining and Managing Software Requirements with Visual Studio Team System (Joel Semeniuk)
Implementing Scrum Using Team Foundation Server 2010 (Richard Hundhausen)
Agile Database Techniques Using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 (Richared Hundhausen)
Modeling and Visualization in Visual Studio 2010 (Joel Semeniuk)
Team Foundation Server 2010—Migrate or Integrate? (Richard Hundhausen)
Lab Manager – The Ultimate “No More No Repro” Tool (Steven Borg)
Visual Studio 2010 Quality Tools for Developers (Steven Borg)

I will also be present at the IDesign booth to promote IDesign’s unique Training Classes in Europe. A training class that’s already announced is the Architect’s Master Class with Juval Lowy in Belgium in the week of October 11, 2010.

And this all happens in the Bellagio at Las Vegas! Looking forward to a great week here!

Feedback VS2010 Beta2?

pietergheysens — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:05:41 +0000

So, you are playing around with VS2010/TFS2010 and you have some remarks, suggestions, bugs, … Please go the Microsoft Connect site for product feedback and bug reporting.

Today I filed a suggestion for the next release of Team Foundation Server: Build Definition History. Unfortunately it’s still not possible to view history of changes made to the Build Defintion: “Drop Location”, “Build Agent”, “Trigger”, … On the Microsoft Connect site, you can easily look up other wanted featured and vote for them … but first vote for my suggestion!

Since a few weeks, there’s also a feedback survey running on Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET Framework 4 Beta 2. If you care about the product and want your voice heard, please take some minutes to complete this online survey!

New challenges with Sparkles

pietergheysens — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:24:54 +0000

As from July 1, 2009, I will leave Compuware and start my own company Sparkles to head for some new challenges.

Sparkles wil offer high quality consultancy services on managing the Application Lifecycle with Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server. Sparkles will also offer advanced training classes by international experts on software development.

Next planned exclusive seminars in Belgium (Crowne Plaza – Antwerp):

October 2, 2009
Microsoft Technology Roadmap with Michele Bustamante
October 5-9, 2009
.NET Design Master Class with Dino Esposito

VSTS 2008 Database Edition GDR R2 released

pietergheysens — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 21:37:09 +0000

A few days ago the GDR R2 was released of the VSTS 2008 Database Edition. One of the interesting features of this release is the fact that the Database Edition doesn’t require a physical SQL Server Database anymore on the development machine. It is no longer necessary to install an instance of SQL Express or SQL Server prior to using the Database Edition.

In my opinion the Database Edition is one of the most underestimated Team System Client Edition. It’s THE tool to manage database changes and to extend your team’s productivity and to improve collaboration with the database team. On top of the inner strength of the standalone edition, it’s now free if you already have a license for the Development Edition. Be sure to check it out if you’re faced with all kinds of custom work to manage your different database environments in your development lifecycle.

Visual Studio 2010 CTP Expiration

pietergheysens — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 15:16:27 +0000

In case you didn’t know about the VS2010 CTP Expiration : now is the time to disable time synchronization under Virtual PC 2007! Otherwise, after January 1, 2009, you will no longer be able to launch the Visual Studio 2010 CTP …

VSTS2010 : The Big Picture

pietergheysens — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 20:28:56 +0000

Taken from the Microsoft Developer and Designer Tools 2008 Product Guide :

Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is an integrated Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solution comprising tools, processes, and guidance to help development teams improve their skills and work more effectively together. Visual Studio Team System enables your development teams to collaborate and communicate more effectively, ensure software quality, and gain visibility into the software development lifecycle.

What will be different in Visual Studio Team System 2010? VSTS 2010 will bring some new capabilities that make it easier for all contributors on the software team to participate throughout the life cycle; from the core developers and testers to the wider team of project managers, designers and business analysts.

The picture shows that there will be only 3 client editions of Visual Studio Team System. Hey, what happened to the Database Edition? Well, in VSTS2010, the feature set of the Development Edition and the Database Edition will be merged into 1 single product : the Development Edition. Read more on this in the press release of September 29, 2008. New is that there will now be support for working with Team Foundation Server in the Expression Tools. There will also be more support for SharePoint development and on the other side SharePoint won’t be required anymore to install Team Foundation Server. The Test Lab Managementproduct is a new server product that targets large organizations who want to test a variety of configurations in a virtual lab environment. With that new product you will get the ALM experience on top of virtualization.

In my journey so far to explore VSTS2010 I’ve seen a strong focus on the Team Architect Edition and the Team Test Edition. There are also some big improvements in the Team Foundation Server product. VSTS2010 can really be seen as a very big release : v2 of Team System after v1.5 in 2008 and v1 in 2005. Before the release of Visual Studio Team System in 2005, Visual Studio was only a tool for developers to write code. With the release of Team System in 2005, Visual Studio became an integrated collaboration tool for all stakeholders in the development process and that was a big change! With the upcoming release of VS2010, Microsoft continues to focus and invest in a solution for managing the entire application lifecyle.

Stay tuned for what’s new in the different editions of Visual Studio Team System!

new release of TFS Power Tools

pietergheysens — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 21:00:32 +0000

The TFS Power Tools (October 2008) are released …

The Visual Studio Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server Power Tools is a set of enhancements, tools and command line utilities that improve the Team Foundation Server 2008 experience.

3 major new components are included in this release :

Team Members
Windows Shell Extension
PowerShell Support

Read more about this release on the blog of Brian Harry.

Download the release here.

Rosario becomes Visual Studio 2010

pietergheysens — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:30:52 +0000

On September 29, 2008, Microsoft unveiled the next version of Visual Studio : codename Rosario will now officially be replaced by Visual Studio 2010, pronounced as Twenty-Ten or Two Thousand Ten.

Highlights of the new version include the following :

Modeling tools
Improved efficiency throughout the test cycle
Substantial improvements in collaboration capabilities

Another announcement was that the feature sets of the Team System Edition for Software Developers and the Team System Edition for Database Developers will be merged into one single product for the release of Visual Studio 2010. As from October 1, 2008, owners of a license of VSTS Team Dev 2005/2008 become now also the owners of a license of VSTS Team Database as a benefit to Software Assurance agreements.

More information on Visual Studio 2010 can be found here.

A bunch of videos on the next version of Visual Studio Team System have also been posted on Channel 9 due to the Week of Team System 2010. Good stuff! Can’t wait to see some live demos at PDC in Los Angeles. On November 27, 2008, I will try to redeliver some content on the new features of Visual Studio 2010 on the Visual Studio User Group event at Compuware.

A little bit of codename history :

Whidbey became Visual Studio 2005
Orcas became Visual Studio 2008
Rosario became Visual Studio 2010

More on Microsoft codenames at Wikipedia.