TFS Build Monitor - yet another sweet device for Team Foundation Server.

The application monitors TFS build status and qualities and switches light colours whenever something goes wrong with the status/ quality and whenever any changes occur.

At this stage alerts can sent to either:
* Twitter, or
* a USB Build Light

When the build is good, the lamp is green - when it breaks the lamp goes red. The light will flash yellow when a build is in progress and partial success is shown by both red & green LEDs lighting up.

Information from the tool’s Codeplex page.

“Team”…presupposes a sort of unity around the same cause or idea among its members. Microsoft tries to reinforce that idea in their Team Foundation Server as much as possible. Nothing wrong with that. =)

Next month Larry Guger will be holding a free seminar on the collaboration features and capabilities provided by TFS.

During the seminar, Larry will discuss the collaborative side of Team Foundation Server and how it fits into the developer side of TFS. He will also share the vision that Microsoft has for TFS as a tool for every stakeholder in a project.

Among other, the topics to be covered include requirements tracking and integration, relating code and check-ins to requirements, making the most of work items and Project Templates, using TFS from Linux and Eclipse with Teamprise etc.

Register here.

Join Larry on December 10 at 9:00 am at:
Microsoft Corporation
10260 SW Greenburg Rd
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223
USA

In a recent PDC2008 contest developers showed off their projects supposed to make Visual Studio better and more convenient to work with.

A few links to PDC2008 ShowOff Entries:

Multi-channel Virtual Earth - a multi-channel version of the Virtual Earth control.

Clipboard History for Visual Studio - Also demonstrates a 12-part blog series with complete step-by-step instructions showing how to build this feature for Visual Studio 2008.

Of course, Brian the Build Bunny won. I wouldn’t expect any less.

Going for agility? Then you must know what how branching and merging source code in VSTS work. Follow the link below to listen to an interview with Doug Neumann, Group Program Manager for TFS, where he shares some Branching and Merging knowledge.

Over here.

Conference on Adopting an Application Lifecycle Management strategy with Visual Studio Team System

Ahh, wish I could attend. =(

Well, for those of you who will be in the area on 18th November 2008 (Microsoft’s office Tower II, KLCC), you may sign up over here.

Quite a few companies are thinking of implementing a single development lifecycle management system that would facilitate planning, development, and project management all together. Looks like MSIT is already on their way of getting there. Recent TechNet Radio episode describes the company’s three-year vision to adopt Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation across the organization.

Quite a few companies are thinking of implementing a signle development lifecycle management system that would facilitate planning, development and project managememnt all together. Looks like MSIT is already on their way of getting there. Recent TechNet Radio episode descibes the company’s three-year vision to adopt Microsoft Visual Studio Team Foundation across the organization.

Another VSLive conference took place last week in Las Vegas. One of the new speakers, Jeff Bramwell, led an interesting session on “Using Team Foundation Build in the “Real” World”. You can download the presentation from this session over here. I thought it was quite comprehensie, embracing a large scope of topics from TFS debugging, performance, and test automation to deployment and 3-rd party tools.

The new episode at Dimecasts covers the process of TFS project environment creation and setup. By watching it, you will learn how to to create, maintain and use a Team Project.

Sorry for linking to a post in which the author links to someone else, but this one is definitely worth it. It left me smiling, and I just couldn’t let it go unnoticed.

iDisposable blog post titled ALM Summarized links to Septermber SD Times article on Application Lifecycle Management suites, which, true, has a good thorough discussion of the essence of ALM.

One thing before I go further though is that ALM in my understanding is not exactly “any set of software packages that purports to encompass the entire Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC),” rather a concept much bigger than that. I mentioned this in one of my earlier posts, “The difference between SDLC and ALM?”

With the difference between the two being so significant, there’s no wonder SD Times found that “Not one of the software companies we’ve talked to claims to offer a totally complete ALM solution and they say that no one currently does.” The concept of ALM is too broad to be embraced by just one solution.

But there’s a catch, here’s a list of what ALM includes, according to the print version of the SDTimes article (that is missing in the electronic version):

* Requirements planning
* Visualization management
* Modeling
* Design
* Feature management
* Build management
* Configuration management
* Change management
* Project management
* Release management
* Testing/QA
* Deployment
* Monitoring and reporting
* Workflow
* Collaboration
* Team communication

Well, that’s quite extensive as it is. And I couldn’t keep from smiling at this: “Now that helps right? A little dose of clarity. Clarity: maybe one day we can get it in a pill and the world will be a better place.” Absolutely, clarity helps! =)