What has changed in the home of the ALM Rangers during FY13?

We are nearing the end of the financial year FY13, which means we are starting calibrations, satisfaction surveys and the analysis of the good, the bad and the ugly. The intention is to learn from the past and continue our quest for continuous improvement and evolution, especially for our strategic and long-term projects.

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Some of the highlights

… none of the highlights would be possible without the competent and passionate ALM Rangers community, which ROCKS! I am humbled amongst these champions and proud to be a member of the Rangers family!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoba_meteorite  ... a good example of a real 60 ton “rock”

 

What so much text to read?            No need to panic. This is a summary of the phenomenal achievements by the ALM Rangers and you do not have to read this post word by word. Focus on the first column of each area to get an overview and optionally refer to the reference information included in subsequent columns.

Home Infrastructure

Team Foundation Service became our operational and dog fooding home “of truth” for all new projects.	More info.
Visual Studio UserVoice became our primary source of new project ideas and ranking thereof.	More info.
ALM Rangers Portal was simplified to a common dashboard.	More info.

Solutions

We embraced strategic initiatives	DevOps IntelliTrace, IntelliTrace, IntelliTrace making Larry Guger smile Device Testing Unit Testing idea with 934 votes on UserVoice The next generation of the VM Factory in the cloud	More info.
We shipped a lot of valuable solutions	Guidance for DevOps bug resolution using IntelliTrace Guidance for Microsoft Fakes, TFS Disaster Avoidance and updates ALM Readiness treasure map ALM Rangers ship update #1 for the TFS Word Add-in Quick Response Sample – TFS Branch Tool to complement the guidance New Branching and Merging Guide v2.1 TFS Word Add-in and Update #1 Visual Studio 2012 ALM Rangers Readiness “Wave”
We will be shipping a lot more soon!	Better Unit Testing with Test Code Generation Building a Release Pipeline with TFS - Collaboration series by Rangers & p&p Device dev and testing with Perfecto Mobile DevOps Tooling DevOps Practical Continuous Deployment Guide End to end guidance for DevOps bug resolution using IntelliTrace On-Time VM Factory Practical Team Foundation Service Reporting Guide Quick Response Project –> VM Demo Quick Environment Setup Upgrade -> ALM Readiness Treasure Map (arrrrrr…) v2
We published (shared) a lot of information	MSDN Magazine (printed) A Treasure Hunt Through ALM Readiness Version Control in the TFS Client Object Model Build Automation with Team Foundation Service Preview What's New in Microsoft Test Manager 2012 Using the TFS Client Object Model MSDN Magazine (online) Simplifying the Configuration of Lab Management 2012 Agile Project Management using TFS 2012 Other Publications ALM Rangers dogfooding journal of the Team Foundation Service Channel 9 Branching and Merging Guidance for TFS Quick tour of the TFS Branch Tool VS Extension Insight into the inner world of the Quick Response TFS Branch Tool	More info.

Process

We continuously evolve our Ruck Process	Single Team Project Collection and Team Project model Rangers dogfooding journal of the Team Foundation Service How the ALM Rangers are using Visual Studio ALM Code Review and Build process Proving the new process and lifting the last confusions Dogfooding and the “Angst” Factor Bug management Dealing with bugs on tfs.visualstudio.com Visual, visual + visual transparency The age of the visual board Smaller teams, preferring <10 team sizes World-Wide Virtual Teams from the ALM Rangers perspective Project time boxing from 3-4 months … we can always do better next time! Simplified and fully documented, with training sessions at TechReady	More info.
We aligned with product group quarterly cadence	Quarterly ideas triage Triage #4 - What happened to your idea in UserVoice? Triage #3 - What happened to your idea in UserVoice? Triage #2 - What happened to your idea in UserVoice? Triage #1 - What happened to your idea in UserVoice? Quarterly nominations triage Quarterly opportunity to start a project	More info.
We evolved the Rangers flash	Weekly flash was cancelled as there as no value-add Monthly flash format and content evolves continuously	More info.
We nominated champions annually	Champions are announced just before MVP Summit and TechReady allowing us to personally congratulate winners and hand-out awards.	More info.
We investigated and aligned with Program Management (PM)	Eating the information overload wave bit by bit Are some of the ALM Rangers Symbiotic PM’s?‎ Thinking about PM != PM and Visual Studio ALM Rangers Thinking about PM != PM and the PM role in Microsoft‎

        

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Some of the lowlights, which become opportunities for FY14

• Ruck training and certification not yet formalised and available.
• Ruck Master certification not yet formalises and available.
• Although we have aligned with quarterly cadence, we still have two major activity peak and wave trends, rather than four levelled waves (dotted lines) of projects.
  
• Still dealing with “dark” Rangers … albeit a lot less than in previous years, making bandwidth planning challenging.  
• We still have separate credentials for TFS and Dashboard infrastructure, resulting in password maintenance adventures.
• We still have not been able to produce Bijan’s accurate bandwidth utilisation reports.
  • Watch the “Practical Team Foundation Service Reporting Guide solution” space.

Did I forget anything? Thoughts ?