Clarification on my bashing of Whitehorse
In my previous blog about manual testing, I didn't mean to imply that the new designers in Visual Studio Team Architect aren't cool and sexy - they are. My problem is that I think Microsoft is falling into the trap of selling what's easy to sell. The process piece of Team System has the opportunity to fundamentally change how development teams work (for the better). The SOA designers are a design tool. We've had design tools for years. While Whitehorse is a huge step in designing better systems, if software teams don't get better at all the other things that take place (or oftentimes don't) during a development project, all the designers in the world won't save their project.
So, my problem is that Microsoft seems as though they might fall into the trap of marketing to developers, since that is the audience they know (for dev tools). Recently, MS did some national MSDN events where they had an hour on VSTS. It was 80% Whitehorse, as far as demos, etc. I had the pleasure of working with the Developer Community Champion for my area (Michael Benkovich) and we at least built a good "story" around the demos and slides. I wonder how many people saw this presentation in other parts of the country and left thinking VSTS = Whitehorse.
I also don't want to imply that I think that developers and testers shouldn't talk. I don't think they should talk about silly things, such as: What's in a build? What were you doing when this broke? Oh, you were running test case X, where is that? Those conversations don't need to be had, I'd rather they be talking about clarifying tests and requirements. They should be talking about real problems, not trivial stuff. The same goes for devs and PMs. Project managers shouldn't have to waste time getting status updates from developers. It's not productive, I'd rather they spend that time removing roadblocks, mitigating risks, etc.
I think I'm getting way to evangelical with regards to Team System... I'm just very jazzed by it, and very badly want to see it, and those that use it, be successful.