Rangers Flash – July 2012

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PROJECT NEWS

Visual Studio Readiness “GIG”

• The latest release notes can be found here. The ALM Ranger teams are silently pushing the final bits to their CodePlex sites in preparation of the big sim-ship event with Visual Studio 2012 RTM.
• See ALM Ranger Readiness Solution – CodePlex Updates #2 for latest updates on “silent releases” and for more information, watch the Release Candidate (RC) awareness video and presentation

Visual Studio Word Add-in for TFS

• The team has been getting to grips with the Quality Essentials process, signing of binaries and testing of the final bits. Good news is expected soon

Downloads Update (as @ July 31^st 201223:59 PDT)

• Average daily downloads since 2007: 182
• Total downloads since Jan/1/2007 of tracked and Dev10/11 focused ALM Ranger projects: 371052 (May Flash: 355511)

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COMMUNITY NEWS

Pro Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012” Book

• Mathias Olausson completes his “pet project”. Pre-order your copy of the book today!
  

Microsoft Technical Event TR15

Guess who … 

• For more pictures see: Seattle – Day 1: Presenting the blueprint,  Seattle – Day 2: The Battle continues and Seattle – Day 3 … the Ranger awareness drive continues
• A huge thank you for everyone who helped and was involved with the TR15 technical event, where the ALM Rangers achieved a 4.57/5 average to beat the Dev track average (again) by 0.02 points

Title	Avg
Exploring the TFS Dogfooding Environment and Experience	4.98
Exploring the TFS planning and upgrade adventures	4.88
Scrum/RUCK 101	4.87
Embracing the Team Foundation Server [Client] Object Model	4.80
Lifting the lid with the ALM Rangers Quick Ref Guide - Panel Discussion	4.79
Kanban and Team Foundation Server	4.79
The magical mystery tour of the perfect and repeatable demos to dazzle your audience	4.69
Coded UI Add-in for Word out-of-band example solution	4.67
Bringing it all together from Build to Test Automation with Visual Studio 11	4.67
Virtual Machine (VM) Factory Guidance: Real world project scenarios	4.55
ALM Assessment	4.54
Team Foundation Server Version Control & Branching Strategies	4.51
Build Orchestration and SharePoint Build Automation using Team Foundation Build Customization	4.51
Mastering Build Customization	4.40
Professional Word Documents from TFS Work Items	4.25
Team Foundation Server Process Template Customization	3.93
Architecture Tooling Guidance	3.83

South-America … praise for the ALM Rangers!

• At TechReady, Ricardo Jimenez praised the ALM Rangers who supported him and the community at the “Evento Virtual” (virtual event) in the Latin American region (Caribbean, Central America, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador). It is a real pleasure receiving this type of feedback and demonstrates that the ALM Rangers strive for teamwork and collaboration in all regions of the world ALM Rangers, “You Rock”!

Esteban Garcia … is very active in the community!

• Presented at the Orlando .NET User Group on July 19^th: “TFS 2012 and your Agile Team” (https://www.meetup.com/ONETUG/events/71696732/).
• Was interviewed on Jesse Liberty’s “Yet Another Podcast”. They spoke about TFS 2012, ALM, and about the work that the ALM Rangers do: https://jesseliberty.com/2012/07/30/yet-another-podcast-71esteban-garcia/
  
• He will be speaking about TFS 2012 at the Space Coast .NET User Group (Melbourne, Florida) on August 14^th.  And again at the Southwest Florida Code Camp on September 12^th: https://codecamp.swfldev.net/Home/Speakers.
• GO, GO, GO!

MSDN Flash

Find the latest MSDN Flash here and the archives here.

• The ALM Rangers have made an appearance in the following MSDN Flashes:
  • Volume 16, Number 8 - April 16, 2012, featuring Rui Melo.
  • Volume 16, Number 10 - April 20, 2012, featuring Brian Blackman
  • Version 16, Number 13 – May 29, 2012, featuring Jim Szubryt
  • Volume 16, Number 14 - June 11, 2012, featuring Willy Schaub
  • Volume 16, Number 16 – July 16, 2012, featuring Mike Fourie
  • Volume 16, Number 17 – July 30, 2012, featuring Mathias Olausson

Publications

• Visit and bookmark Ranger Publications for an up to date list of ALM Ranger publications and planned articles.

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ECOSYSTEM NEWS

Scrub | Recognition Process

• The scrub and recognition process is complete. We thank everyone for their candid feedback and for raising all the new process gremlins and anomalies. The ALM Rangers family can be perused here and is currently stabilizing at 180 active ALM Rangers.

A wrinkled and a results in  … courtesy of Martin Hinshelwood

ALM Rangers “Ruck” Training

• Our Ruck Master Brian Blackman delivered a phenomenal ChalkTalk and Instructor Led Lab (ILL) session at TR15. The ILL had an average score of 4.88/5 and was #1 in the Dev Track. WELL DONE Brian!
• Watch the space from Brian Blackman in terms of the ALM Rangers Ruck training, which will be mandatory for all ALM Ranger project leads and highly recommended for all ALM Rangers.

UserVoice

• Please start using these UserVoice channels, else your “voice” will not be heard:
  

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ACTIONS

ASK #1 – Quotes anyone?

• As always we would appreciate quotes from you or your communities in terms of the ALM Ranger solutions. Good news and positive quotes are invaluable!

ASK #2 – Pictures anyone?

• For the upgrade and planning project session I would appreciate if you can send me pictures we can use that show installations / environments that could probably have used a bit more planning … again a picture speaks a thousand words.

ASK #3 – Tell us about your successes!

• One thing we love is celebrating your successes. Unfortunately not being omniscient we simply don’t know about many of them. So if you have done or know of some outstanding contributions/actions please send them to Chuck and Willy to post in our internal newsletters that go to our upper management and the MVP leads.

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For more information refer to: Rangers Website | Rangers Solutions | Rangers Blog | Understanding the Visual Studio ALM Rangers
To include content in future Ranger Flashes: Send your one-two liners to us latest a week before the last day of the month