Developer Solutions Sprint 6: BPA Tool, 1.1 Releases, & The Developer Power Pack

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Today the Developer Solutions team has begun its 6th five week sprint.  Sprint 5 saw the release of the VSCmdShell tool & an Alpha of our Best Practices Analyzer for ASP.Net 2.0. There was buy-off to begin working with CSS on a detailed plan for a CSS involvement in released product communities. 

We also prototyped a project that I’m excited about called the “Pack Installer” that has the potential to create a vehicle/channel for any team looking to ship aftermarket developer solutions to their customers.

In the next 5 weeks we plan to:

  • Ship a 1.0 release of the Best Practices Analyzer Engine w/ ASP.Net 2.0 Plug-In
  • Publish 1.1 Releases: VSCmdShell & TFS Admin Tool
  • Prototype a Power Toy Starter Kit, Online snippet publishing, Nunit Test Generator, & a developer forum Moderator Toolbar Services
  • Draft of Detailed CSS Online Community Presentation for September
  • Host a brownbag on developer division involvement in Shared Source & Power Toys aimed at making it easier for every team to get involved.
  • Create a public alpha of the “Developer Power Pack”

For other teams at Microsoft

By the end of this sprint we’ll be able to give you great guidance around Shared Source Projects, a solid delivery vehicle that does one step better for customers than just throwing random stuff on MS Download, and guidance on building aftermarket solutions/Power Toys that are consistent for our customers.

Thanks,
Josh

Detailed Sprint 5 Recap

Releases

Shared Source Leadership

Share and Collaborate Scenario

  • Snippet Editor that integrates with the VS IDE written and polished
  • Content Explorer for snippets, add-ins, templates, etc. prototyped

Power Toy Pack Installer

  • Pack installer prototyped that will allow customers to download groups of our tools and automatically install them
  • Pack installer specification drafted:

Best Practices Analyzer Tool

  • Test Plan Completed
  • Over 3,700 downloads of the alpha
  • Added updating mechanism

Answerme Search Page Completed: https://answerme/search.aspx

(This is our internal forum question assignment & search tool)

Other Prototypes

Support Channels

  • CSS Online Community Engagement Proposal to Execs w/ buyoff to continue project
  • MSDN Forums Over 4,000 questions a week/DevDiv over 70% overall answer rate