Singapore ALM User group – Your Community Hub!!!
1.1 What is SGALMPRO group all about?
Singapore ALM User group (https://www.sgalmpro.com) aims to create a dedicated community of all ALM enthusiasts who are passionate and would like to work/share knowledge on ALM and Visual Studio’s ALM capabilities in general. We are also targeting to provide simplified readiness material for people who are interested in this area and want to learn more.
In this group we will mainly focus on VSTS and intricacies of ALM (processes, methods, tools and practices). We will also be interested in covering major third party products in this space which supplements VSTS or integrates well with VSTS.
1.2 Who should join this group?
I will start with saying that this group is open for all. However – who will get benefited from this group most is dependent on each individual’s capabilities. I personally feel following personas should join the group:
· Developers / Lead Developers
· Development Managers
· Team Leaders
· Project Managers
· Business Analysts / System Analysts
· Tester/ QA Engineers
· Build Engineers
· Release Managers
· Architects
· Designers
· UI Developers
· …. (the list goes on and not just limited to options above)
1.3 What to expect from this community?
Obviously – one should expect more and more sessions, news and material on ALM and VSTS. We also plan to get on board the leading 3rd party product providers like Telerik along with leading publishers like O’really, APress, Wrox to support our group and lend helping hands in terms of training, resources and books etc.
As a starting step, we are planning to launch quick video series on “What is ALM?” in the coming month. I am sure there will be more stuff to announce as we progress and people & brains from all over Singapore join us. I am quite confident that we have a lot of ALM experts here and this group will provide them a platform to launch themselves as ‘ALM ROCK STARS’.
1.4 How SGALMPRO started?
It was a fine morning in Feb 2011, when I mailed Pratibha Kumar and Adrian Dunn (Microsoft) about my interest in ALM/VSTS. Out of my interest in community, I asked them how the community is structured in Singapore. Well – they shared that there is a very active group on Microsoft .NET (https://www.sgdotnet.org) and another dedicated group for SharePoint as well. I also discovered that there is a dedicated group on Windows Azure as well. While all these user groups are very active and doing a lot of good work, I felt we need a platform where we can consolidate the end to end processes and tools related to Application Life Cycle rather than just the developer community. I shared my thoughts with Pratibha and Adrian during one of the VS2010 events and thing finally moved.
They liked the idea of a dedicated user group for ALM and that’s how we started. Once I’d setup the group website etc. I also involved Amandeep Garg in helping me getting the usergroup approved from INETA and I am hoping he will continue to do so throughout the journey as a co-manager of this group.
1.5 What’s next?
Well – If you are reading this, you have spent good time reading the post and I can surely say that you have an interest in ALM + this group. I would request you to go to https://www.sgalmpro.com and register as a user. Start Contributing!!! Start Spreading!!! Thank you for reading this post and I hope you will visit my blog again.
Happy Community Times!!!