Visual Studio ALM Rangers Report
Visual Studio ALM Rangers always produce some incredible content and this latest round is no exception. 70 volunteer Rangers worked together with product group members to create 20 Ranger solutions. This number broke all their past records and is a great example of the “Ranger muscle” at work. Additionally, this entire effort was time constrained between //build/ and VS11 Beta.
Who are Rangers?
Visual Studio ALM Rangers mission is to provide out of band solutions for missing features or guidance. Rangers are from the Microsoft Product Group, members of Microsoft Services, Microsoft Most Valued professionals (MVPs) and technical specialists from technology communities around the globe, giving you a real-world view from field practitioners. Rangers are distributed across the globe and have typically higher customer priorities. Usually, they work on Ranger projects in their free time.
Content production engine
Rangers create content just like any other engineering project. They use TFS and work item tracking for every Ranger project regardless of the content type. Their production process is RUCK which is loose Scrum. Their requirements engineering uses Epics, User Stories and Standard Personas to exactly specify what business value and production improvement must be delivered. These detailed user stories are then converted to HOLs (Hands On Lab) which in turn are leveraged as tests. To summarize, they construct guidance as an end2end engineering process.
Rangers and TFS Preview
Rangers were the 1st TAP customer who adopted the TFS Preview across the board. They joined the TAP program but quickly moved to production after moving all current 20+ Ranger projects to TFS Preview. Just as a side note, they dog-fooded their own TFS Integration Platform to migrate their projects to the new environment.
Shipped projects
This is the list of projects which sim-shipped (Simultaneously Shipped) with VS11 Beta. The links take you directly to the Codeplex project site.
- Visual Studio Quick Reference Guide
- Practical Kanban Guide
- Practical Ruck Guide
- Team Foundation Build Customization Guide
- Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization Guide
- Team Foundation Server Planning Guide
- Team Foundation Server Upgrade Guide
- Test Release Management Guide
- Visual Studio ALM Rangers Personas and Scenarios
- Visual Studio Architecture Tooling Guide
- Visual Studio Lab Management Guide
- VM Factory Guide
- Visual Studio Coded UI Microsoft Word Plug-in
Coming soon
The following projects are almost ready and will ship in the next few weeks. The Rangers strategy is to keep the excitement up by delivering a new project every week.
- Branching and Merging Guide
- Team Foundation Build Customization Guide
- Team Foundation Service Practical Guide
- Visual Studio Coded UI Test Automation Guide
Additional information on the Visual Studio ALM Rangers can be found here.