woohoo.. finally the RTM date for Team Foundation Server 2015 and Visual Studio 2015 has been made public…
Edit: Visual Studio will be released, but Brian has decided that quality is more important than timelines.. So we will have to wait a bit longer for TFS 2015 to land, but be assured the quality will be right up there
Need help upgrading ? : give us a shout
Team Foundation Consulting will be launching ALM days in Cape Town on 23rd January 2014!
Learn about updates to Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management offerings which will enable your software development teams to be more productive and to collaborate more effectively. This event provides insight, advice, strategies and techniques to improve quality and ensure the final application meets the needs and expectations of users.
Reserve your seat today!
Find out more at www.alm-days.co.za
The event is free and seats are limited.
Join us for an awesome day of ALM!
I have been an avid consumer of the ALM Rangers artifacts, articles and applications for a long time now.
Who are the Rangers:
“The Visual Studio ALM Rangers accelerate the adoption of Visual Studio with out-of-band solutions for feature gaps and value-add guidance for the ALM community.”
Some of the cool “stuff” that you should have seen before:
And finally I will be on the other side of the fence
Some big news!! The release candidate for VS & TFS 2013 was released last night.
There are a couple of really nice features added since the preview. One of my favourites is the charting ability for work items. I have done quite a few custom TFS reports, and even though this may reduce the number of jobs that I have, it is VERY cool nonetheless…
The list of things that have been added is fairly large, hopefully I will blog about it in the future.
Note that this does have a “go-live” license, so Microsoft will provide support if you decide to be an early adopter and upgrade your production environments.
Feel free to contact us if you need more information around upgrade options...
We have organised a SA Developer meet in Cape Town, Wednesday 31st of October.
I will be covering some of the new features that really get me exited with the new release of Team Foundation Server 2012 and Visual Studio 2012.
I have some goodies and trial versions for some of the lucky people that will be attending.
Book now, seats are filling up!
Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 2012 is here, and during the months of November and December Team Foundation Consulting will be offering your company a FREE 1 hour ALM session.
These sessions will cover some of the new features available in TFS and VS 2012 and aspects of ALM.
All sessions will be presented at your premises, and availability is limited.
To book or enquire about a session please email info(at)teamfoundation(dot)co(dot)za or contact us via our contact page.
Note: Min 5 attendees required for sessions.
JHB - sessions will be made available in January/February 2013 - email us if you are interested and we will advise you when the sessions become available.
As you may have noticed I started and run my own business.
(I’m sure that this must be a parents worst nightmare.)
“Mom, dad… I have quit my job and I’m going into business on my own.”
I can just image them thinking to themselves “aarrggghh – should probably clear out his old room…”
Two years later and I’m struggling to keep up with the work load, every time my parents ask “how are things going?” and I reply “very busy”. Then the inevitable reply comes (with a hint of relief no doubt) “that is good”.
One thing I fear that they are missing is that there are in fact various different types of “busy”. I have tried to explain it before, but I think I’ll just send them to this post in the future..
Lets break down busy. In my opinion, there are a different levels of busy and where some are good others are down right bad.
This is a good busy. This is you doing work and being paid for it at a decent rate. If you are not doing work under this category in any way, form or shape you could effectively be losing money. You should spend most of the time busy with this type of work or with activities that will induce more work under this category.
Yes, this does differ from number 1. As with anybody that is still finding their space and niche, you tend to take on “other work” that you do not charge the “full” rates for. This could include long term jobs, (in my case) maintenance work (something like retainer) or just plain work you cannot justify charging the full rate for.
Don't get me wrong, this type of work is important when things are slow, when you do not have any other income in the month this could be a “life saver”.
However, when this work starts getting to the volumes that the “initial allocation time” starts increasing uncontrollably, problems start occurring.
You spend more time on this than being focused on either performing or hunting down those “decent” income jobs, effectively losing potential revenue!
This is a difficult one. These things you need to do to ensure future revenue. In my case these activities would include for example doing presentations at events or going to see clients to discuss or chat about their problems or even writing blogs. This is a good place to promote myself and my business in terms of who I am and what I can do, basically marketing.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the paragraph this is a difficult one in that it takes a fair amount of time, yet you do not have direct returns.
Without it however, you probably will not have any “returns”.
This is something that you do “need” to do, and in my case probably after hours and over weekends (if you are not busy with something in one of the other categories).
Unfortunately this is a nasty one. Think of those “quick” projects that just kept on going forever, without payment and with scope creep through the roof. Promises that payment will come if you deliver x,y and z, but on delivery it is not good enough and the requirements have changed etc. etc. etc.
You have made commitments and there is no easy way out of this. Every moment that you are spending on this one you are losing out on any of the other categories.
Other than to just walk away I do not really know how else to handle these.
Obviously things like reputational risk come into play, just in general leaving a bad taste in the mouth.
I think these (or a combination of these) cover the main point of being “busy”. So next time someone says they are busy, ask them is it a “good busy” or a “not so good busy”.
When speaking to potential clients, I more often than not end up needing to explain to them that all the issues and problems they are highlighting often derive from TFS 2008, or more so, TFS 2005. In my business I find that I still deal with a lot of misconceptions around TFS as a product and what it provides. The result is that I end up needing to “re-sell” clients on TFS.
Dealing with such a legacy is a hotly contested market space and obviously a big hindrance to any business. So in an attempt to correct some perceptions I’ll endeavour to address some misconceptions around TFS 2010, specifically comparing TFS 2010 against TFS 2005 & TFS 2008.
To start off with, a real common one….
In years gone by the licensing structure of Visual Studio 2005 & 2008 merely included a TFS CAL ($499) in the MSDN subscription. You still had to purchase a TFS server license for about $2800.
In 2010 you still have the CAL included in the MSDN subscription, BUT you now also get a TFS 2010 server license included!
You can however still buy a retail copy of TFS 2010, it will only set you back $499 allowing 5 named users without the need for additional CAL’s (going over this number you will have to purchase CAL’s for each user though).
So… if you purchased Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN for each developer, you are ALREADY licensed for TFS 2010.
Due to the fact that TFS 2010 comes with a restricted usage SQL 2008 license (or in fact can run on SQL 2008 Express) and WSS3 or SharePoint Foundation is free, you can have a fully functioning TFS 2010 environment up and running without coming close to the capital expenditure of its predecessors!
The next thing that people always go on about is “but svn/git/mercurial is free”. Yes they are free, BUT they are merely version control products (and yes some of them are pretty good ones at that).
TFS has a version control component to it, BUT it also incorporates and integrates a large number of other features, to mention a few:
“But…” you say, “there are a bunch of other tools that can perform these tasks”. “Yes“ I say “there are”, but are they seamlessly integrated to give a single view across all the functions in the development sphere? Do they give you the ability to interrogate the progress, activity, quality or performance of your team in detail? Are they integrated into your “day-to-day” environments making them a natural part of your environment?
If you have not yet considered TFS 2010 due to cost, please take some time and get the facts (or speak to me 
You may be surprised!
Dev4Devs was held on Saturday, what an awesome event!
Well done to my fellow presenters for giving us very interesting (yet brief) insight into some topics that lie close to their hearts, and a big thanks to Dave Russell from Microsoft for setting it up and hosting the event here in Cape Town.
I believe Dev4Devs is a platform for people who have a passion for what they do, and would like to share it with “the world”. You’ll experience what it means to present to like-minded people allowing just enough time to give you a “taste” for what presenting is all about. I would really encourage people to give it a go. Dave has promised that this would definitely not be the last time that this event is held in Cape Town.
We each had a 20 minute slot to talk about, or “present” on a topic of our choice which is challenging, but part of the fun! And of coarse, if by some highly unlikely event you get bored with the current topic, the next one is literally around the corner
Thanks to all that attended, hope to see you at the next one…
For now though, the next event to look forward to is DevDays, see you there!!
If you do not already know Visual SourceSafe’s mainstream support is coming to an end July 2012. This means that if you are still using SourceSafe after this date and you have a serious problem, too bad! (unless you are willing to pay for the extended support.)
So if you have not already though about upgrading, it is probably advisable to start looking at options.
Over the last couple of week I’ve noticed a bigger push from Microsoft to upgrade with pricing specials and more information around migrating to Team Foundation Server 2010 (being the de-facto Microsoft upgrade path).
If you have not yet looked at your options, do take a look at the following resources:
That said, if you happen to be in South Africa and would like more information or advice feel free to give us a shout
Somehow, somewhere we have entered into a new year and 2010 has drawn to a close!
After all the hype and expectation of 2010 I think a lot of people are a bit disappointed and/or let down, especially with the “global financial crisis” and the SA 2010 soccer world cup not delivering all that was promised and expected for the local economy.
For Team Foundation Consulting I must admit, it is has been going a bit better than I expected. It is about 6 months down the line and I was surprised at the interest that we were getting during the end of the year – a period I though would be pretty dead for a young business like this, and then in January things are also starting to look good.
None-the-less it is now time to bed down how to grow this business in 2011 into a viable operation. And first on my list of things is still to “spread the word” and create awareness. At the moment we are looking at some online advertising options (more on that in another post).
There is also still a lot that needs to be done with regards to standardising past and existing engagements with a bunch of ideas that I have, into formal outlines and marketable “products”. I do find that in some cases it is easier to give people a standard, yet relevant “product” as apposed to asking them to “compose” one that will suit them. This should also enable me to start advertising approximate costs on the site, which should make people more inclined to contact us if they have an idea of what the charges could be.
I’m sure that this will be an interesting year for us, especially with the end of mainstream support for Visual Source Safe in sight and Team Foundation Server being the logical upgrade.
So to everybody that may be reading this, I wish you all the best in the new year!!!
See you around!
