It's no April's Fool day joke.

A new all-up image has been posted. It's been updated with Office SP1, the December 2007 TFS Power Tools, and all Windows Updates.

It has 38 hands-on labs and if you look at the IT Governance lab, you'll find sample data to run reports against and use Excel against. The labs are inside under C:\MSLabs.

You can also download just the labs and their support files in a self-contained MSI.

Finally, the good news for many: it won't expire until December 31, 2008.

The TFS only image will be out in the next 12 to 36 hours.

 

Just in time for the holiday weekend, we (that is Microsoft and I) got two new VPCs posted for your VSTS fun.

The first VPC is what we call the “all-up” image: Team Foundation Server 2008, Team Explorer 2008, Team Suite 2008, Team Build 2008, and bits of Office 2007 in a single workgroup security mode server image running on Windows Server 2003. Over 11 GB uncompressed.

The second VPC is a TFS only image with only Team Foundation Server and Team Explorer. It's just under 7 GB uncompressed. We built this image so that you'd run it under Virtual Server with a private network and do all your dev work and builds from your host computer. I'm working on a document that gives you all the details and will post it soon.

Both images expire on April 1, 2008. Updated images will be posted before then (in fact the updated images will have sample data, hands-on labs, and updates like Office 2007 SP1 and the TFS Power Tools that were announced today).

Note that both images were created off the same base OS so you can't run them on the same network at the same time.

If you have questions or comments about the images, please post on Connect (instructions are on the download pages), visit the MSDN forums, or worst case, drop me a note.

Enjoy!

Note: the images should be replicated accross the download servers but if you get an error, just try a bit later. They're up there.

 

I just got this link from a friend. For all of you considering training or one of the latest “methodologies”, I encourage you to read this Dilbert [0] cartoon!

Enjoy!

[0] http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071126.html

Well, last weekend they released Orcas Beta 2.

Today, Rosario. Rosario you ask? Yes, this is the post-Orcas version of Team Foundation Server and related bits. Rosario is “built” on Orcas so this isn't a new CLR, .NET Framework, etc.

So, skip the BBQ or getting the kids ready for school. Download this first CTP and let Microsoft know what you think. After all, they're releasing early so you can give them feedback.

Oh, here's the download URL. Also, here's a link to a paper about Rosario.

FYI, they're only posting a VPC for this first release. So what are you waiting for? Download away.

One more thing: Jeff Beehler, VSTS Chief of Staff, has info on his blog blog.

Edit: messed up the URLs. Too excited. :-p

Edit 2: added link to Jeff's blog.

In Team Foundation Server (TFS), you use iterations as one way to classify work. Specifically, iterations represent named time boxes in your team project. However, there’s no facility in version 1.0 of TFS to associate explicit dates with an iteration. This can be good and bad. The good is you can reuse an iteration in a cyclical fashion, rotating work items from one iteration to another. A downside is that certain reports can have their data skewed by incorrect iteration dates. The report that first comes to mind is the Unplanned Work report.

 

Here’s the description for this report from the process guidance documentation:

 

How much unplanned work is there? This graph distinguishes the total work from the remaining work and charts it into planned and unplanned. Very few projects identify all of the work to be done ahead of time, even within the iteration. This may be perfectly acceptable, if you schedule a sufficient buffer for handling the load of unplanned work (for example, bugs). On the other hand, it may be a real problem if you have not scheduled the capacity and are forced to cut back on the planned work.

 

When you go to run this report, there are three date fields you need to enter: Start Date, Plan Completion Date, and End Date. In addition, you can filter by Area and Iteration. The key to getting an accurate report is to make sure that the dates are well known and agreed upon. Let’s say as the project manager, you run the report with the following dates:

 

Start Date: 12/1/2006

End Date: 12/31/2006

Plan Completion Date: 12/15/2006

 

This is how the report comes out.

 

 

 

 

Then let’s say someone from upper management runs the report with the same Start and End dates but a different Plan Completion Date of 12/24/2006.

 

 

Look what happened.

 

The total number of unplanned work items goes way down. When managing your project it’s important that from day one, everyone is on the same page when it comes to dates.

 

Speaking of dates, today is 7/7/7 which seemed like as good a day as any to kick this blog off. Hopefully, I'll have a bit more to say about VSTS going foward.