RE: bug/feature tracking

Leo wrote:
> VS 2005 Team System ... is only in the "technology preview" version right
now. I didn't see any info about the price or if you can use it with VS
2003.

Right. No pricing has been announced. Team System will compete in the same
marketplace with Rational (IBM) and other expensive packages. It could be
pretty pricey, or they could practically give it away and take over the
market, or anything in between. I doubt that any final decisions have been
made yet.

And pricing isn't the only factor in TCO: similar systems so far have
required additional IT staff to operate, and invariably require consultants
to use it effectively. Microsoft seems dedicated to lower the operations and
maintenance burden, and have the product useful "day-one out of the box:
your process, our process, or no process."

The VSTS CTP in the Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 Refresh requires two
physically separate machines for the database and the Team Foundation
server.

Oh, yeah, didn't I mention that Team System is one of the topics on the
upcoming MSDN Event? Say, is that hunky Rory guy the presenter? Where is
that hep cat hiding?

Another interesting point: with the introduction of VSTS, there will be
three different SKUs for Visual Studio. There will be editions for
architect, developer and tester, with appropriate overlap of tools. See the
VSTS overview, figure 18 in the Microsoft Developer Tools Roadmap [1].
Current plans call for MSDN Universal subscribers to be able to choose one
of these SKUs (not so Universal then, eh?) and be able to pay some
unspecified amount if they need all three SKUs. MSDN subscribers might let
Microsoft know what you think of that plan.

Cheers,
Stuart Celarier | Fern Creek | www.ferncrk.com


[1] http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/productinfo/roadmap.aspx