Steve’s Newsletter – May 2011

I receive a lot of email each week from you asking very specific, and valuable questions. It’s my hope that a newsletter like this will help me communicate important announcements, tips/tricks, and other items to help you and your team ultimately be more successful! Whenever I post a new newsletter, I will send email notifications to those of you who would like to be contacted. If you don’t want to receive email notifications, just let me know !

Announcements

• The introduction of Code Metrics generation from the command line has made it much easier (i.e. not impossible) to create metrics as part of a build.  There’s a rich solution built as a custom build activity, and a “poor man’s” way to do it.
• Brian Keller blogged about two great uses for the new OData Service for Team Foundation Server 2010, including the market’s first WP7 app for TFS.
• There’s a terrific article in the MSDN Magazine - Visual Studio TFS Team Project and Collection Guidance, written by my peer ALM Rangers.  This article very helpfully describes how and why to subdivide TFS instances into Team Project Collections and Team Projects.

Events & Training

• Be sure to take advantage of our ALM Catalyst Live Workshops where you can learn all about Microsoft’s ALM solutions in an interactive, online forum. Topics include SharePoint ALM with TFS, migration planning for VSS-to-TFS conversions, and others.  Oh, and these workshops are free!
• Attention Utah! – Don’t miss out on this free seminar coming to Lehi on May 24th!  Using the Visual Studio 2010 ALM Tools to Improve Your Software Lifecycle Management
• Hey Denver! Be sure to come to the Windows Phone 7 Unleashed “Learn – Build – Win$” event on Saturday, May 14th! It’s an all-day workshop (BYOL – bring your own laptop) that will give you the skills needed to create the next killer app for WP7. Build the best one of the day and win cash!
• User Group Meetings
  • Colorado
    • Denver – “Blended SharePoint 2010 / ASP.NET Solutions” by Dave Milner
    • Colorado Springs – “C# Async: Today and Tomorrow” by Joe Mayo
    • Fort Collins – TBD
  • Arizona
    • Phoenix (SEVDNUG) – “iPhone/iPad Development with MonoTouch” by Donn Felker
    • Tucson – “Developing an application around SQL Server Spatial data types” by David Rabb
  • Utah
    • Northern Utah – No May meeting (was moved into April to accommodate speaker)
    • Utah – TBD
    • Utah County – TBD
• May Webcasts
  • 5/6 - Real World Business and Technical Benefits of ALM with TFS 2010
  • 5/11 - Improving Developer and Tester Collaboration using Visual Studio 2010
  • 5/20 - The Full Testing Experience – Professional Quality Assurance with Visual Studio 2010
  • 5/18 -  Practicing Effective Test Management with Microsoft Test Manager and Team Foundation Server 2010
  • 5/25 - Managing Requirements and Tracking Defects with Team Foundation Server 2010
• Tech Ed is this month in Atlanta!  Are you going?

 

Final Thoughts

Microsofties in my role predominantly cover specific geographies in order to load balance resources across a region. For example, my geography covers Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and southern Nevada. Beginning in a few weeks, I’ll be expanding my reach into certain parts on Southern California – my old stomping grounds where I worked from 2005 to 2007 – I look forward to re-connecting with my old customers and colleagues!