Visual Studio 2010 VM and Hands-on-Labs

Brian Keller recently posted the availability of the new Visual Studio 2010 RTM Virtual Machine with Sample Data and Hands-on-Labs.

This virtual machine (VM) includes Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010, and a sample application along with sample data which supports 9 hands-on-labs. This VM includes everything you need to learn and/or deliver demonstrations of many of my favorite application lifecycle management (ALM) capabilities in Visual Studio 2010. This VM is available in the virtualization platform of your choice (Hyper-V, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, and Windows [7] Virtual PC).

This is a great download for anyone wanting to learn more about TFS, experiment with new features, or even for giving presentations.

Check out Brian’s post for the full details.

Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance

The Visual Studio ALM Rangers have just released the Visual Studio 2010 Architecture Tooling Guidance.  Here is the description of the guidance:

Practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, focused on modeling tools. This release includes common usage scenarios, hands on labs and lessons learned from community discussions. The scenarios include understanding and reverse engineering an existing solution or starting a new solution from scratch. These are both common challenges that any dev lead or architect faces. The intent is not to give you an in-depth tour of the product features, but to present you with examples that show how these tools can support you in real world scenarios, and to provide you with practical guidance and checklists. This guidance is focused on practical ways of effectively using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate and other tools to create a new or revised design as part of application lifecycle management (ALM).

The Rangers involved with this project are: Alan Wills (MSFT), Bijan Javidi (MSFT), Christof Sprenger (MSFT), Clemens Reijnen (MVP), Clementino de Mendonca (MVP), Edward Bakker (MVP), Francisco Xavier Fagas Albarracín (MVP), Marcel de Vries (MVP), Michael Lehman (MSFT), Randy Miller (MSFT), Tiago Pascoal (MVP), Willy-Peter Schaub (MSFT), Suhail Dutta (MSFT), David Trowbridge (MSFT), Hassan Fadili (MVP), Mathias Olausson (MVP), Rob Steel (MSFT) and Shawn Cicoria (MSFT).

There are three separate packages available for download, including:

• Common Questions and Scenarios --> Start here
• Common Questions and Scenarios Visual Studio Extension Guidance Package (forthcoming)
• Hands-On-Labs (HOLs), including:
• New Solution Scenario (HOL)
• Reverse Engineering Scenario (HOL)
• Extensibility Extensions (HOL)
• Extensibility Layer Diagrams (HOL)
• Reusable Architecture (HOL)
• Validating an Architecture (HOL)

For more information, visit the Architecture Tooling Guidance site.

Check for Warnings/Errors Check-in Policy

A while back, I wrote about the Check for Warnings/Errors Check-in Policy – a custom check-in policy that I had developed for Team Foundation Server 2008.  Yesterday, I published version 2.1, updated for Team Foundation Server 2010, to the Visual Studio Gallery.  The features are the same as the TFS 2008 version with a couple of exceptions:

1. You now have the ability to restrict the set of warnings to Code Contract warnings only.
2. The settings for the check-in policy are now stored as TFS properties (more on this in an upcoming post).

Here are the details…

Usage:

To add this check-in policy to your Team Project:

1. Download and install the Check for Compilation Warnings and Errors Check-in Policy (see Where to Download below).  NOTE: Anyone checking in code will need to install the check-in policy on their local development workstations.
2. Within the Team Explorer in Visual Studio 2010, right-click on the desired Team Project and select Team Project Settings->Source Control.
   
   
3. Click on the Check-in Policy tab, select Check for Compilation Warnings and Error Policy and click OK.
   
   
   
   
4. Click on the Edit button and select the level of Warnings and/or Errors to check for.  If you select Warnings, you can optionally restrict the set of warnings to Code Contract warnings only by checking the Code Contract Warnings Only checkbox.
   
   
   
   
5. Click OK and OK to close the dialog windows.

Once installed and configured, the check-in policy works like any other.  You can check the Pending Changes window for violations as seen in this screen shot:

Compatibility:

This version of the Check for Compilation Warnings and Errors Check-in Policy supports Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 only - it is not compatible with Team Foundation Server 2008.

Where to Download:

There are two options for downloading:

1. You can download this check-in policy directly from the Visual Studio Gallery – here.
2. From within Visual Studio 2010, you can use the Extension Manager to locate and download the check-in.  To do this:
   1. Click on Tools—>Extension Manager.
   2. Click on the Online Gallery “tab” on the left side of the Extension Manager dialog.
   3. In the Search Online Gallery field, enter “check for warnings” and press Enter.
   4. Locate the “Check for Compilation Warnings and Errors Policy” (at the time of this writing, it is the only item in the search results) and click Download.

If you have any feedback, please utilize the “Reviews” and/or “Discussions” tab on the gallery link above.

Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 Utility Roundup

Well, Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 have been “in the wild” for a little over a week now.  Now that the RTM versions have had a few days to settle in, I decided to do a quick survey of some of my favorite utilities to see if they have been updated to support the final release of Visual Studio 2010 and TFS 2010.  Here is the list:

• GhostDoc (v2.5.09166) – this is a great add-in for Visual Studio to help with the mundane task of providing XML documentation for your code.  After using this utility for even a short amount of time, you’ll not want to document code without it.  The latest version supports Visual Studio 2010.
• Team Foundation Server Power Tools 2010 RC – the Release Candidate for this set of utilities is still the most current version – an RTM version expected soon.
• Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider 2010 RC – as with the Power Tools listed above, the Release Candidate is the most current version with an RTM version expected soon.
• Team Foundation Sidekicks v3.0.1 – released for Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 Release Candidate but works with the RTM release.
• MSBuild Sidekick v3 Beta ($$$) – Updated to support MSBuild 2.0, 3.5, and 4.0
• PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2010 – This is the set of tools that supersedes the PowerCommands for Visual Studio 2008. There was a version that worked with the Release Candidate on the Visual Studio Gallery, however, it has been removed since Visual Studio 2010 RTM’d.  With any luck, the final version will be available soon.
• Team Foundation Server Administration Tool – the latest release, version 2.0 Beta , supports TFS 2010 Release Candidate.
• Visual Studio Team System 2008 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 – what a name!  This release supports Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 RTM.
• Visual Studio Team System 2005 Service Pack 1 Forward Compatibility Update for Team Foundation Server 2010 – This release supports Visual Studio 2010/TFS 2010 RTM.
• ReSharper ($$$) – the latest version, 5.0, supports VS 2005, 2008, and 2010.

If you’re looking for more utilities for Visual Studio 2010, check out the Visual Studio Gallery for Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 Launches/RTMs!

After months (years?) of anticipation, Visual Studio 2010 has finally launched/RTM’d!  If you are a MSDN subscriber, you can download the full version from the MSDN Subscribers site.  The trial editions should be available on the Microsoft Downloads site soon.

There are far too many new features in Visual Studio 2010 to be listed here.  However, here are a few links to get you started…

 

 

• Visual Studio 2010 Home Page
• Compare Visual Studio 2010 Product Features
• Visual Studio 2010 Documentation
• Visual Studio 2010 Application Lifecycle Management
• What’s New in Visual Studio 2010
• Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4 Training Kit - February Release
• Ten Features in Visual Studio 2010 You May Not Know About

More to come…

Team Explorer 2005 Update for TFS 2010 is Available

If you are using Visual Studio 2005 (along with Team Explorer 2005) to access Team Foundation Server, an update patch has been released that will allow Team Explorer 2005 to communicate with Team Foundation Server 2010.

In general, after installing the update patch, you will be able to use Visual Studio 2005 to access legacy (2005) TFS servers as well as TFS 2010 servers.  If you switch to a TFS 2010 server, you will be able to continue using the basic functionality of TFS but will not be able to utilize new TFS 2010 features (e.g. Branch Visualization, creating new Team Projects, etc.) - you must use Visual Studio 2010.

Also, when connecting to a TFS 2010 server, you will need to enter the full URL for the TFS 2010 Team Project Collection – e.g. http://TFS2010Server:8080/tfs/CollectionName.

Click here for more information.

Downloads:

• Team Explorer 2005 forward compatible update for TFS 2010
• Team Explorer 2008 forward compatible update for TFS 2010

Save on Visual Studio 2010 Professional and Pre-Order Now

Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Professional will launch on April 12 but you can beat the rush and secure your copy today by pre-ordering at the affordable estimated retail price of $549, a saving of $250.

If you use a previous version of Visual Studio or any other development tool then you are eligible for this upgrade. Along with all the great new features in Visual Studio 2010 (see www.microsoft.com/visualstudio) Visual Studio 2010 Professional includes a 12-month MSDN Essentials subscription which gives you access to core Microsoft platforms: Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Datacenter.

So visit http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/pre-order-visual-studio-2010 to check out all the new features and sign up for this great offer.

Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Installation Failure

If you attempt to install the .NET Framework 4 (RC – not sure yet if this will be an issue at RTM) or Visual Studio 2010/Team Foundation Server 2010 RC (which will install the .NET Framework 4 as a dependency) and the Windows Update service is not running, the install will fail.

When installing Team Foundation Server 2010 without the Windows Update service running, then you may see a dialog like this one (assuming you don’t already have the .NET Framework 4 installed):

 

If you’re installing only the .NET Framework 4 without the Windows Update service running, then you may see a dialog like this one:

If you get either of the above errors, make sure you have the Windows Update service enabled and running:

One other issue that may give you a similar installation error is related to non-Windows (e.g. Mac or Linux) partitions on your machine.  If you’re getting the above error when installing the .NET Framework 4 and the Windows Update service is running, check out this issue on Microsoft’s Connect site for details regarding another possible solution (note: this issue has been flagged as fixed for RTM).

Ten Features in Visual Studio 2010 You May Not Know About

There are a LOT of new features coming in Visual Studio 2010.  Some of them are very big features (e.g. IntelliTrace, Microsoft Test Manager, etc.).  However, there are lots of smaller features that, even though small, are great additions to Visual Studio.

It would take a lot of time and space to list each and every new feature in Visual Studio 2010 so I’ve picked ten new features that I personally find interesting and outlined them below:

1. Removing Recent Items – If you make use of the Recently Used List (RUL) in Visual Studio, then you’ve no doubt had items in this list that no longer exist on your file system.  Although there have been several custom Visual Studio add-ins created to allow you to clear the RUL, it has never been an inherent feature of Visual Studio – until now!
   
   With Visual Studio 2010 you can (finally) right-click an item within the RUL to get a context menu of which one of the options is Remove From List:
   
   
   
2. Pinning Solutions – Those with a keen eye may have noticed the “pin” icons in the above screen shot.  You can now pin items within the Recently Used List (RUL) to keep them from rolling off as other projects/solutions are opened.  To pin an item, simply hover over the item name and click the pin icon (the icon shows up when you hover over it).  To unpin an item, simply click the pin icon again.
   
3. Search Installed Templates – Each time you create a new project in Visual Studio, you are presented with a plethora of project templates to choose from.  These range from ASP.NET Web Applications, Crystal Reports projects, Silverlight Applications, WPF Applications, and lots, lots more.  In fact, there are now so many templates to choose from (with even more available on-line) that just finding the template you want can take some time.
   
   With Visual Studio 2010, there is now a “Search Installed Templates” search box in the upper right-hand corner of the “Add New Project” dialog.  As you start typing in this box, the list of available templates will be filtered based on the text you specify.
   
   
   
4. Navigate To – As with the project templates above, it can also be time consuming just locating various classes, methods, etc. within your code base.  You can do a global search (e.g. Ctrl+F or Ctrl+Shift+F) but this search will also include comments, string literals, etc.  In Visual Studio 2010, you now have a feature called “Navigate To”.  You can access this feature by clicking on Edit->Navigate To or by pressing Ctrl+,.
   
   
   
   As you start typing in the Search terms box, a list of classes, methods, etc. that match your query will be listed.  Note in the example above, you can also filter based on Pascal Casing by entering two or more capital letters (in the example above, “CT” returns items starting with an upper-case “C” and an upper-case “T”).  You can also enter multiple words separated by spaces to return items with those search terms anywhere within them.
   
5. Floating Windows – Multiple monitors are more common today than ever before.  Another way to take advantage of multiple monitors with Visual Studio 2010 is “floating” document windows.  Once a window has been “floated”, it can be dragged out of the Visual Studio 2010 IDE and onto another monitor allowing you to take full advantage of all of your screen real estate.
   
   To “float” a document tab: 1) double-click the tab – or 2) right-click the tab and select “Float”.  You can re-dock the tab by right-clicking the floating window’s title bar and selecting “Dock as Tabbed Document”.
   
6. Pinning DataTips – DataTips have been a feature of Visual Studio for a while now.  However, with Visual Studio 2010, you can now pin DataTips to a debugging session and add comments for later review.  This is a great feature if you want to keep some simple notes between debugging sessions (the pinned DataTips and comments persist even after you close and reopen Visual Studio).
   
   To pin a DataTip, start a debugging session and stop at a breakpoint.  While in the debug session, hover over a variable to view a DataTip:
   
     
   
   Next, click on the pin icon on the right:
    
   Click on the double arrows on the right to drop-down the comment box.  Enter any text you’d like to persist with the pinned DataTip.
   
   Even though you can only pin DataTips and enter comments during a debugging session, you can still view the pinned DataTips from the last debugging session within your source code by hovering over the pin icon in the gutter of the source code pane.  See the pin icon in the screen shot below and the pinned DataTip information displayed on the right.
    
7. Freeze/Thaw Threads – If you’ve ever been debugging an application with multiple threads running, you’ve no doubt ran into issues where your debugging session bounces around different threads making it difficult, at best, to follow the program flow.
   
   Visual Studio 2010 provides a new Threads pane (Debug->Windows->Threads) that provides, among many other options, the ability to freeze and thaw individual threads.  For example, in the screen shot below, the fourth thread down has been frozen (you can right-click and select Freeze or click on the Freeze icon on the toolbar). 
   
   
   
   So, the next time you’re in a debugging session and other threads start taking control – just freeze them!
   
8. Visual Studio Gallery – The Visual Studio Gallery has been around for a while but now it’s integrated within Visual Studio 2010.  To access the gallery, click on Tools->Extensions Manager.
   
   
   
   You can view installed extensions or view a list of extensions available on-line.  As seen in the screen shot above, you can also search the list by typing into the search box.  You can also contribute your own extensions to the gallery as well.
   
9. Quick Font Sizing – Anyone that’s ever done a presentation with Visual Studio has more than likely had to modify the font size in the code window (i.e. make it large enough to read from the back of the room).  Typically this is done by opening the Tools->Options dialog, selecting Fonts and Colors and modifying the font size.  Although this works, it’s not ideal.
   
   Now, in Visual Studio 2010, you can modify the font size directly from the code pane in one of two ways: 1) hold down Ctrl and scroll the mouse wheel up/down to increase/decrease the font size respectively, or 2) click on the zoom drop-down list in the lower left-hand corner of the code pane and select the zoom level:
   
10. Insert Documents to Right of Existing Tab – This is a simple feature but I’m happy it has been added.  In Visual Studio 2008, each time you open a new window (be it a class file, design form, or whatever) it is always added to the left of the tabs.  If you wanted your windows to be added to the right of the tabs, it was not an option – until now.  If you prefer to have your windows opened to the right of the tabs you can now enable this option by selecting the “Insert Documents to Right of Existing Tab” option within the Options dialog:
    
     

If this looks like a set of Visual Studio features you’d like to take advantage of, keep in mind that the current Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate is available for download and ships with a “Go Live” license allowing you to use it within a production environment.

Team Foundation Server Power Tools for TFS 2010 RC

If you’ve been trying out Team Foundation Server 2010 RC then you’ll be pleased to know that the Team Foundation Server Power Tools have been released for TFS 2010 RC.  This release contains mostly fixes and compatibility improvements for the RC.  The Team Members Power Tool is now functional as well – although if you’re not signed into Windows Communicator, it will display a dialog box alerting you that you’re not logged in (a minor annoyance).

You can download the TFS Power Tools 2010 RC on the Visual Studio Gallery - here.  If you’ve installed the beta version of the Power Tools, be sure to uninstall them before installing the latest version.

Visual Studio 2010 Licensing

We’ve seen the prices for Visual Studio 2010 but what about licensing?  If you’re interested in the finer details of how Visual Studio 2010 is licensed, then check out the Visual Studio 2010 Licensing Whitepaper (available in PDF and XPS formats).

This is a 33-page document covering the following areas of Visual Studio 2010:

• How to Buy
• Visual Studio 2010 Client Edition and MSDN Subscription Licensing
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 Licensing
• Lab Management
• Load Testing
• IntelliTrace

I wish it didn’t take 33 pages to explain product licensing but at least there’s a document :-)

Visual Studio/TFS 2010/.NET 4 RC Released

When Microsoft announced that Visual Studio 2010 would be pushed back a few weeks, they stated they would be shipping a Release Candidate (RC) in February.  As of February 8th, the RC is available on the MSDN Subscribers site.  The same downloads will be available publicly on the Microsoft Downloads site starting Wednesday, February 10th.

The overall driving reason for pushing back the launch date was to concentrate on performance.  Brian Harry has a post covering some of the improvements made to performance since Beta 2.  While I’ve only had the RC installed for a very short time, the difference in performance (between Beta 2 and the RC) are noticeable.

If you are planning on installing the RC, here are a few links to help you get going:

• TFS 2010 Beta2 to RC Upgrade Guide – by Bryan Krieger – a guide for upgrading from Beta 2 to the RC.
• Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance – the Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.
• Visual Studio 2010 TFS Upgrade Guide – this guide covers in-place upgrades as well as migration upgrades and details the steps that must be completed for more than a dozen specific scenarios.  For example, enabling branch visualization in upgraded projects, splitting team projects into multiple collections, and much more.
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching Guide 2010 – the purpose of this project is to build some insightful and practical guidance around branching and merging with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010.
• Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance - the goal of this guidance is to provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.
• Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 VM Factory - the purpose of this project is to build prescriptive guidance around virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines using the VM Factory.

Also, check out this post for Visual Studio 2010 pricing.

Visual Studio and TFS 2010 Pricing Announced

If you’ve been wondering exactly what the various new Visual Studio 2010 SKUs are going to cost, then wonder no more.  The retail pricing for Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 have been released:

Suggested Retail Pricing (USD) for Visual Studio 2010

			With 1-Year MSDN Subscription*
Product	Buy	Upgrade	Buy	Renew
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate	-	-	$11,899	$3,799
Visual Studio 2010 Premium	-	-	$5,469	$2,299
Visual Studio 2010 Professional	$799	$549	$1,199	$799
Visual Studio Test Professional 2010	-	-	$2,169	$899
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010	$499	$399	-	-
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 CAL	$499	-	-	-
Visual Studio Load Test Virtual User Pack 2010 (1000 Virtual Users)	$4,499	-	-	-

* Subscription contents vary by purchased product.

Note that these are retail prices.  If you typically buy volume licenses, then the prices will no doubt be less than those listed here.  Also, as always, the “Express” SKUs (not listed here) will be free.

Visual Studio 2010 TFS Upgrade Guide

Continuing along with my recent flurry of posts regarding various Visual Studio 2010 guidance being released by the Rangers, here’s one that has perfect timing for me personally – the Visual Studio 2010 Upgrade Guide.

If you are planning on upgrading from Team Foundation Server 2008 (or even TFS 2005) to TFS 2010, then this guide is a gold mine of information.  It covers in-place upgrades as well as migration upgrades and details the steps that must be completed for more than a dozen specific scenarios.  For example, enabling branch visualization in upgraded projects, splitting team projects into multiple collections, and much more.

Although this guide is currently listed as a “beta” release, it contains a lot of great information.  If you’re planning an upgrade to TFS 2010, I highly recommend you check this guide out.

Update: While you’re at it, it’s worth checking out this post on Rules to Better TFS 2010 Migration.

VS 2010 and TFS 2010 VM Factory Guidance

But wait, there’s more!…  Along with various other bits of guidance being published recently by the Rangers, there is also the Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 Virtualization Guidance.

“Visual Studio 2010 VM Factory is the reference implementation of a software solution that automates the creation of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 virtualized environments. The purpose of this project is to build prescriptive guidance around virtualization of the Visual Studio 2010 and guidance for full automation of the creation of virtual machines using the VM Factory. The goal is to help users with the installation and configuration of virtualized environments with least effort and maximum automation.”

If you are planning on virtualizing any portion of your Visual Studio 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2010 installation, then this guidance can be invaluable.  Even if you’re just wandering whether or not you should virtualize, then you should read this guidance.

There are three downloads available on this site:

• Virtualization Guidance for Visual Studio 2010
• Virtualization Visual Studio ALM Rangers Base Image Guide
• Team Foundation Server Planning Guidance Poster - Capacity Planning

Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance Released

If you’re looking for some quick information regarding the myriad features in Visual Studio 2010, then look no further than the recently published Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance.  This is yet another example of a great guidance project released by the Rangers in the past few weeks.

“The Visual Studio 2010 Quick Reference Guidance consists of compact cheat sheets for Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 and Visual Studio (VS) 2010, addressing the core problem of teams in the field who are unaware of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server capabilities or have little time to invest in detailed education.”

This guidance is provided as three separate downloads (a zipped file of XPS documents) containing the following features:

Overview (Default Download) – an overview of the guidance and focus areas, contained in one index table and overview quick reference poster.

Basic Guidance - a collection of basic guidance sheets, focusing on the “what” are the key features and “why” to consider them.

Supporting Guidance  - a set of documents and quick reference posters, supporting the basic guidance sheets.

This set of guidance contains some great looking reference posters and quick-reference sheets and is a great place to start when learning about the various features in Visual Studio 2010.

Visual Studio 2010 Launch Date Set (Again)

As pointed out last month, Microsoft pushed back the launch for Visual Studio 2010 (originally set for March 22nd, 2010).  At that time, they stated only that it would be pushed back a few weeks (citing performance reasons).

Now, several weeks later, they have reset the Visual Studio 2010 launch date for April 12th, 2010 as pointed out by Rob Caron in a “short but sweet blog post.

Although it’s only being pushed back three weeks, it does give us the benefit of getting another interim release (a release candidate to be available in February) prior to the RTM release.  If you weren’t quite ready to “go live” with Beta 2, maybe the RC will fit better within your timelines.

TFS 2010 Requirements Management Guidance Ships!

As we near RTM for Visual Studio 2010, we are going to start seeing more and more information being release providing guidance on the installation, configuration, and usage of Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010.  One of the latest guidance project to be release by the Rangers is the Visual Studio 2010 Team Foundation Server Requirements Management Guidance.

“This Ranger solution addresses the People, Process, and Technology guidance for Requirements Engineering (RE) using Team Foundation Server. The goal of this guidance is to provide formalized Microsoft field experience in the form of recommended procedures and processes, Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server configurations, and skill development references for the Requirements Engineering discipline of your application lifecycle.”

This release includes the following packages (which can be downloaded separately or together in a single package):

1. Introduction: RM Rangers Guide to the Complete Guide
2. Requirements Management Planning
3. Requirements Traceability
4. Analysis and Breakdown
5. Requirements Elicitation
6. Requirements Specification
7. Requirements Validation
8. Requirements Change Management and Approval
9. Requirements Management checklist sheet

Each of the above sections is packaged as a zipped Microsoft Word (.docx) document.  If you do not have Microsoft Word installed, you can download and install the free viewer from here.

Team Foundation Sidekicks for TFS 2010

Attrice has released version 3.0 of their (most useful) Team Foundation Server Sidekicks for Team Foundation Server 2010 Beta 2.  This set of utilities has been sorely missed since TFS 2010 was first made available for testing.  This release has pretty much the same functionality as version 2.4 (for TFS 2005/2008) with the following exceptions:

• Permissions Sidekick: this sidekick is not available in this release (to be added back in 2010 RTM timeframe)
• Build Type editing (VS integration only): this feature is not available in this release
• Dynamic History support (VS integration only): the History toolwindow is updated only when it is visible alongside with Source Control Explorer and single instance of the window exists (in 2010 History toolwindow may have multiple instances)

Read more about this release here – you can download version 3.0 directly from here.

VS 2008 & 2010 - Virtual Machine Images

If you’re looking for a set of virtual machines for testing Visual Studio 2008 or 2010 and/or Team Foundation Server 2008 or 2010, then you’re in luck!  Brian Randell has just posted about a new set of virtual machine images ready for downloading.

For the 2008 images, the new expiration date is January 31st, 2011.  The 2010 images expire much earlier due to the nature of the beta products – April 9th, 2010.  However, by that time, it’s hoped that the final release of the 2010 products will be out, or if not (because of the delayed launch), then at least a new release candidate should be available by that time.

There are a total of seven images – four 2008 images and three 2010 images.

Read the full post for details.