Visual Studio Team System Virtual Track

Visual Studio Team System is Microsoft's newest addition to the Visual Studio family., providing tools that not only allow each member of a software development team to be more productive, accurate, and predictable in their work, but also to share information and collaborate more readily within the established development lifecycle. This grouping of sessions is called a “virtual track”, because, instead of having sessions one after another in one room, you’ll find VSTS sessions distributed through all our conferences.

Check out the sessions below. With your Gold Passport registration you can attend them all:

VSTS for Everyone: Best Practices for the Whole Team
Martin L. Shoemaker and Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Sunday, January 29, 9 a.m.— Pre-Conference Workshop
With the release of Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio isn’t just for developers any more. It’s now a power tool that integrates with MS Office and other tools to support the work of all participants in the development process. In this tutorial, we’ll look at each major role in the development process, and we’ll see what tools are used in each role, how those tools integrate with VSTS, and how the role is carried out. And then we’ll see how the workflow capabilities in VSTS tie all of these roles together into a larger process. And finally, we’ll see how to customize the process and the tools to fit your project and your team.

In this tutorial, we will work through a sample project over the course of the day. Attendees will receive the sample project materials so
that they can work alongside the instructor, if they have machines with VSTS; but feel free to show up and participate even if you don’t have VSTS.

You’ll learn about:
·    Putting the Team in Team Systems
·    Requirements Management with VSTS
·    Task Management with VSTS
·    Modeling Your Architecture and Design

Enterprise-Class Version Control with Visual Studio Team System
Microsoft
Monday, January 30, 3:15 p.m. — .NET Focus Day
Evolve from Source Safe and improve the predictability and reliability of delivering mission-critical solutions. This session covers using Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System features focused on improving your source control including advanced SCC, integration with work items, branching, merging, promotion, access control and policies

Building Mission Critical Software
Microsoft
Monday, January 30, 4:30 p.m. — .NET Focus Day
Over the past decade, we have been witness to several spectacular software failures. In 1998, a division by zero error brought a Navy warship to a standstill. In 1999, the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost because the decision to use the Metric system versus the Imperial system was not communicated to the team.

These two examples illustrate the wide spectrum of ways an organization’s attempt to build to robust and reliable software can be undermined.  A miscalculation by a single developer can bring an entire ship to a stand still. The lifework of an accomplished team can be ruined because a simple decision was not communicated.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System was designed from the ground up to provide a collaborative environment to help teams communicate and work productively. This session will illustrate how each discipline, everyone from Project Managers, to Architects, to Developers and Testers benefits from technology designed to make them more productive, as well as technology that helps them work together.

Best Practices for Testing and Debugging Managed Code with VS2005 Team System
Richard Hale Shaw, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 10:30 a.m. — ASP Live!
Testing and debugging aren’t programming: they’re separate, but complimentary skills that every programmer should grow, but often don’t. Where programming entails actively asserting your will on the software, testing simply specifies what the result of an operation should be, and that without that result, the test fails. Debugging is neither: it focuses us on what is—not on what should be. Knowing how to effectively develop and apply these skills is critical to every software developer’s future. Fortunately, Visual Studio 2005 has a plethora of new debugging features—such as Debug Visualizers—that make Debugging simpler, more straight-forward, and even elegant. And the Team System Edition now offers a built-in Testing system (based on NUnit) that lets you define Unit tests before you start programming, and re-run your tests whenever you wish. In this session, Richard will show you how to leverage the maximum results when testing and debugging Managed Code.

Five Management Essentials: Estimating, Scheduling, Planning, Tracking, and Correcting with VSTS
Martin L. Shoemaker, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 3:15 p.m. — ASP Live!
Does your project use VB.NET or C#? Chances are, your customers don’t know and don’t care. Will your project be on time or late? Now that they care about! How much will it cost? When will it be done? These questions can be more trouble than the technology or languages you use; and they can also be the most important questions for your executives and your customers. This session will show team leads and team members how VSTS helps them in the three key resource management activities: estimating time and costs; planning and scheduling the effort; and tracking, reporting, and correcting as the project runs. Along the way, we’ll discuss some basic estimating, scheduling, and planning techniques.

Requirements Patterns with VSTS
Martin L. Shoemaker, Richard Hale Shaw Group
Tuesday, January 31, 5:45 p.m. — Smart Client Live!
Some projects use VB .NET, while others use C#, Managed C++, or may be a mix. Some projects are Web-based, while others ran on a desktop or in a console. But no matter how they may differ, all projects are the same in one regard: they all have requirements. And so requirements definition and management should be at the core of any good process. In this session, we’ll learn how VSTS helps you to define, store, track, and report requirements. And we’ll also learn some simple yet powerful requirements patterns that you can apply to most projects and processes.