Brian Harry's Blog

Everything you want to know about Azure DevOps and Farming

Update to the DBPro GDR

A few months ago we released an update to the Team System for Database Edition product that enabled it to work seamlessly with SQLServer 2008.  Since then we've gotten some reports from customers about compatibility issues and things that didn't work quite right.  We are preparing to release the next update that will address all...

Second annual Team System Conference in Germany

Last year's German Team System conference was a big hit so the new tradition is continuing.  This year's conference will be May 5-7th.  The conference will include keynotes for prominent people in the industry, case studies from other companies (so you can learn from both their successes and their failures) and sessions on how to put...

ALM Catalyst workshops

During the months of April, May and June, we are running a series of workshops on Application Lifecyle Management with Team system.  These workshops are not just about how to use the tools but ideas for improving your software development process.  There are four 2 hour workshops and each are offered about 4 times per month...

Another use for TFS Work Item Tracking

Our user education (documentation) team recently changed the tooling and process for tracking documentation reviews.  They have a fairly daunting requirement to track reviews of hundreds of topics by dozens of people against a rigorous schedule.  We used to have a purpose build documentation review tool but no one ever liked it. ...

TFS & Outlook add-ins

Integration of Team Foundation Server work items into the Outlook user experience continues to be a popular area for innovation.  Just recently an author sent me mail about a new one called Wit-It! that enables work item forms to be easily opened from TFS work item change notifications.  It's not entirely unlike configuring links to ...

Scrum Sprint Monitor on CodePlex

I just learned about a new CodePlex project for a tool to display the status of a Scrum sprint.  I haven’t played with it myself but if it’s something you are interested in, check it out.  I checked and the project includes the source code.  Here’s a description and a screen shot. Scrum Sprint Monitor is a ...

Scrum Sprint Monitor on CodePlex

I just learned about a new CodePlex project for a tool to display the status of a Scrum sprint.  I haven’t played with it myself but if it’s something you are interested in, check it out.  I checked and the project includes the source code.  Here’s a description and a screen shot. Scrum Sprint Monitor is a ...

QFE for debugger crash available

I don't usually blog about QFE availability but this is one that has annoyed me personally over the past 6 months or so and I wanted to share it.  I'm told there have been over 50,000 reports of it through Dr. Watson.  I'm glad we were able to get a fix out. A fix for a widely reported crash in the Visual Studio 2008 IDE is now ...

Sharepoint development with VSTS guidance is available now

A while ago I said we were working on some guidance for doing Sharepoint development with VSTS.  It's been a long time and the work was delayed for numerous reasons.  It is finally available now.  Here are links (and summaries) to two whitepapers that have been published.   As Sharepoint has become an increasingly popular ...

Lots of News

I don’t know what it is.  I’ve been complaining for a while now about being busy and I just can’t seem to shake it.  In fact it only seems to get worse every week.  I’m on my second straight week in Redmond this week – family’s not happy about that :)  I’ve been trying to figure out...