.NET Musings

How to be a program manager by Joel Spolsky

Chris Kinsman — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 14:48:34 GMT

How to be a program manager by Joel Spolsky

Having a good program manager is one of the secret formulas to making really great software. And you probably don't have one on your team, because most teams don't.

Charles Simonyi, the brilliant programmer who co-invented WYSIWYG word processing, dated Martha Stewart, made a billion dollars off of Microsoft stock and went into space, first tried to solve the Mythical Man Month problem of organizing really big software teams by creating one super duper Ã¼berprogrammer writing the top-level functions, while handing off the implementation of the lower-level functions to a team of grunt junior-programmers as needed. They called this position program manager. Simonyi is brilliant, but this idea, not so much. Nobody wanted to be a grunt junior programmer, I guess.

For more on the history, read William Poundstone's How Would You Move Mount Fuji?

Jabe Blumenthal, a programmer on the Mac Excel team in the late 80s, recycled the title for a different job. He had noticed that software development was getting so complicated that none of the programmers had the time to figure out how to make software that was either usable or useful. The marketing team was ranting and raving about customer needs and nobody had time to talk to them or translate their MBA-speak into actual features. There was a lot of product design stuff that took a lot of work: talking to users, running usability tests, reviewing competitive products, and thinking hard about how to make things easier, and most programmers just didn't have the time (nor were they particularly good at it). Blumenthal took the title "Program Manager," but reinvented the job completely.

What does a program manager do?

Henceforth, a program manager would:

Design UIs
Write functional specs
Coordinate teams
Serve as the customer advocate, and
Wear Banana Republic chinos

On small products, you might just have one program manager, but on larger products, you would probably have more than one. Each can be responsible for some subset of the features. A good rule of thumb is that it takes about one program manager for every four programmers. If you're having trouble dividing up the work, one approach I learned from Mike Conte is to divide up the product according to user activities. For example, Twitter could be divided into four user activities:

Registering and getting started
Posting messages and reading replies
Configuring your account
Searching for news

Tyler Griffin Hicks-WrightMy first program management assignment at Microsoft was on Excel, working on the user activity called "customization," i.e., scripting and macros. The first thing I had to do was figure out what customers needed, which I did by talking to as many customers as I could until I started to get kind of bored because I kept hearing the same thing. I spent a lot of time talking to the development team to figure out what would be possible and reasonable to implement in a single 18 month release, and I spent a lot of time talking to the Visual Basic team to see if they could supply a compiler, code editor, and dialog box editor that could be used in Excel for our macro language. I also had to talk to Apple, which was developing their own universal macro language called AppleScript, and the other application teams at Microsoft, mainly Word, Access, Project, and Mail, who generally did whatever Excel did. Most of this process consisted of talking. Meetings, email, phone calls. I am scarred for life from this, and now cower in my office in fear that the phone will ring.

The second step was writing a vision statement: sort of a broad document that said, this is how Visual Basic would work in Excel, this is what some sample macros would look like, these are the major pieces we would need to build, and this is how it would solve customers' problems. When that didn't generate too many objections, I started working on a much more detailed spec, which explained, down to the smallest detail, how everything looked to the user.

This was a functional spec, not a technical spec, which means, all it talked about was what the user saw, not how it was implemented. (Read all about functional specs here.) A program manager doesn't care how the development team implements things internally. As I sent chapters of the spec to Ben Waldman, the development lead, he and his team sat down and figured out what they had to do internally to make it work. They came up with a rather brilliant and very compact table that mapped the object-oriented interface I was defining onto internal Excel functions, but that really wasn't my business. I didn't know too much about Excel internals and didn't really know how things should be implemented.

Truth be told, I didn't know anything about anything. Fresh out of college, I didn't have enough experience to develop the code, test the code, write the documentation, market the product, or do the usability tests. Luckily, Microsoft had seriously experienced gurus in each of those positions, who taught me everything I know today, and who did the real work of producing an awesome product. For example, I knew that users would want to copy the value of a spreadsheet cell into a variable:

x = [A1]

had to work. The trouble was that a cell could hold a number or a string, but Basic was early boundâ€¦ you had to DIM x as an Integer, Float or String before you could use it.

Basic had to get some kind of dynamic types, but I wasn't smart enough to figure out how to do that. Didn't matter. Tom Corbett, a programmer on the Visual Basic team, figured out how. And thus Variants and IDispatch were born, and Basic became a dynamic language with what you kids now call "duck typing". The point being, my job wasn't necessarily to solve problems, it was to figure out what customers needed and make sure that programmers figured out how to solve them.

Once the spec was finished and the development team got down to work, I had two responsibilities: resolving any questions that came up about the design, and talking to all the other teams so that the developers didn't have to. I met with the testers explaining how things were supposed to work and helping them plan how to test everything. I met with the documentation team, making sure they understood how to write a good tutorial and reference for Excel Basic. I met with localization experts to figure out a localization strategy. I sat down with marketing to explain the marketing benefits of VBA. I worked with usability experts to set up usability tests.

A program manager does go to a lot of meetings, but doesn't produce much other than that written spec, which is why as a twerp fresh out of school I was still able to do the job. You don't have to be a 14-year veteran programmer to work as a program manager (in fact, with 14 years of programming experience, you might know too much to be a good user advocate.)

Conflict

Tom Chi and Kevin ChengLacking a program manager, your garden-variety super-smart programmer is going to come up with a completely baffling user interface that makes perfect sense IF YOU'RE A VULCAN (cf. git). The best programmers are notoriously brilliant, and have some trouble imagining what it must be like not to be able to memorize 16 one-letter command line arguments. These programmers then have a tendency to get attached to their first ideas, especially when they've already written the code.

One of the best things a program manager can add to the software design process is a second opinion as to how things should be designed, hopefully one that is more empathetic to those RETARDED USERS with their pesky mental feebleness requiring that an application be usable without reading the man page, writing a custom emacs-lisp function, or translating numbers into octal in your head.

A good program manager will come with her own ideas for how the UI should work, which might be better, or worse, than the developer's idea. And then there's a long debate. Typically, the program manager wants something simple and easy to understand for the users, featuring a telepathic user interface and a 30" screen that nonetheless fits in your pocket, while the developer wants something that is trivial to implement in code, with a command-line interface ("what's so unusable about that?") and Python bindings.

One of the most monumental debates I remember from the Excel 5 project was between a developer who wanted pivot tables to float on the drawing layer above the spreadsheet, and the program manager, who insisted that pivot tables live right in the cells on the spreadsheet. This debate went on for a really, really long time, and eventually, the program manager prevailed, but the final design came out much much better than any one individual's design would have been.

To make sure that the debate happens respectfully and on a rational basis of facts, it's absolutely critical that the program managers and developers be peers. If developers report to the program manager, at some point during the debate the program manager is going to get sick of the whole thing and just say, "OK, enough talking, now we do it my way." When they're peers, this can never happen. It's a little bit like courts of law: we don't allow a lawyer for one side to be the judge, and we work on the theory that the truth is most likely to be uncovered through a process of debate between equals. The debate can only be a fair one if neither side has an unfair advantage.

This is an important point, so if you were daydreaming about Sally in 11th grade, wondering where she is now, snap out of it. She's a biotherapist in Scottsdale, and a Republican. Now pay attention. Programmers can't report to program managers which means, among other things, that the development lead, or the CTO, or the CEO, can't be the person who writes the specs.

The number one mistake most companies make is having the manager of the programmers writing the specs and designing the product. This is a mistake because the design does not get a fair trial, and is not born out of conflict and debate, so it's not as good as it could be.

I learned this the hard way. At Fog Creek Software, I did a lot of the program management myself, and it was a constant battle to remind people that they were supposed to argue with me when I said wrong things. We're not a big company but we are finally big enough to have real program managers now, Dan and Jason, and the programmers love arguing with them.

Of course, when programmers are peers of the program managers, the programmers tend to have the upper hand. Here's something that has happened several times: a programmer asks me to intervene in some debate he is having with a program manager.

"Who is going to write the code?" I asked.

"I amâ€¦"

"OK, who checks things into source control?"

"Me, I guess, â€¦"

"So what's the problem, exactly?" I asked. "You have absolute control over the state of each and every bit in the final product. What else do you need? A tiara?"

You see, it turns out that this system puts the burden on the program manager to persuade the programmer, because at some point, the program manager runs the risk that the programmer will give up and just do whatever the heck the programmer feels like. Thus, being effective as a program manager means you have to (a) be right, and (b) earn the respect of the programmers so that they concede that you're right.

How do you earn this respect?

It helps, as a program manager, to be pretty good at coding yourself. This is unfair. Program managers aren't supposed to write code. But programmers tend to respect programmers a lot more than non-programmers, no matter how smart they are. It is possible to be an effective program manager without being a coder, but the burden of earning the respect of the programming team will be higher.

flip the bozo bit v. Decide that someone is a clown, and stop listening to them.

The other way to earn the programming team's respect is to demonstrate intelligence, open-mindedness, and fairness in any debates that come up. If a program manager says dumb things, the programmer might flip the bozo bit on them. If a program manager becomes personally or emotionally attached to a certain way of doing things, to the point at which they're being unreasonable, they're going to lose a lot of credibilityâ€¦ both sides, but especially the program manager, need to be emotionally detached from the debate and willing to consider new evidence and change their opinions when the facts merit it. Finally, if a program manager is seen as playing politics, having private meetings with the boss or trying to divide-and-conquer to win a debate instead of debating on the merits, they're going to lose a lot of trust of the programmers.

And when a program manager loses the programming team's trust, it's over. They're not going to be effective. The programmers are going to tune them out and do whatever they want anyway. This leads to worse code and wasted time, since not only are you paying an ineffective program manager a salary, but that ineffective program manager is calling meetings and soaking up everybody else's time even though they're not really making the code any better.

Specs? Really? That's so unagile

There are so many development organizations where specs are a monument to mindless bureaucratic paperwork that entire movements sprung up organized around the idea of not writing specs. These people are misguided. Writing a functional specification is at the very heart of agile development, because it lets you iterate rapidly over many possible designs before you write code. Compared to code, a written spec is trivial to change. The very act of writing a specification forces you to think through the design you thought you had in your head, and helps you see the flaws in it quickly so that you can iterate and try more designs. Teams that use functional specifications have better designed products, because they had the opportunity to explore more possible solutions quickly. They also write code faster, because they have a clearer picture when they start of what's going to be needed. Functional specifications are so important one of the few hard and fast rules at Fog Creek is "No Code Without Spec."

The exact form the functional specification takes may vary. All a functional specification has to do is explain how the program will behave. It doesn't say anything about how the code will work internally. You start at the highest level: a vision statement, no more than one page explaining the gist of the new feature. Once that's nailed down, you can develop storyboardsâ€¦ mockups of the screens showing the user's progression through the application, with detailed notes showing how they work. For many types of functionality, especially UI-heavy functionality, once you have these storyboards, you're done. That's your spec. Jason Fried, you can go now.

To learn how to write good functional specifications, read my four part series. If you want to see a typical spec I wrote, you can download the full Fog Creek Copilot spec.

For more complex functionality with hidden behavior that's not expressed in the UI storyboards, you're going to want more details written down. In any case, the very act of writing down a spec helps you discover problems, conflicts, and design issues long before the first line of code is written, so when you do write the code, you have far fewer unexpected issues popping up which might force a rewrite or, worse, a suboptimal design.

How do you learn to be a Program Manager?

Mostly, becoming a program manager is about learning: learning about technology, learning about people, and learning how to be effective in a political organization. A good program manager combines an engineer's approach to designing technology with a politician's ability to build consensus and bring people together. While you're working on that, though, there are a few books you should read:

As far as I can tell, Scott Berkun's book Making Things Happen is the only book that's been written that pretty much covers exactly what a program manager has to do, so start with that. Scott was a program manager on the Internet Explorer team for many years.

Another big part of the program manager's job is user interface design. Read Steve Krug's Don't Make Me Think, then my own book User Interface Design for Programmers.

Finally, and I know it sounds cheesy, but Dale Carnegie's 1937 book How to Win Friends & Influence People is actually a fantastic introduction to interpersonal skills. It's the first book I make all the management trainees at Fog Creek read, before anything else, and they always snicker when I tell them to read it, and love it when they're done.

Need to hire a really great programmer? Want a job that doesn't drive you crazy? Visit the Joel on Software Job Board: Great software jobs, great people.

Interesting Take On The LdquoPrivate Cloudrdquo Conceptnbsp Not Sure If I Agree That The Main Thing Differentiating A

Chris Kinsman — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:07:25 GMT

Interesting take on the “Private Cloud” concept. Not sure if I agree that the main thing differentiating a “Cloud” is it’s scale.

Just don't call them private clouds

Computing will take place both within and without enterprise data centers, but it's not all cloud computing. The cloud concept should be applied more carefully.

Very Intersting Spin On VDInbsp Bears Some Watchinghellip A HrefhttpfeedsarstechnicacomrarstechnicaB

Chris Kinsman — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 18:56:15 GMT

Very intersting spin on VDI. Bears some watching…

Citrix, Intel to virtualize the desktop with new hypervisor

Virtualizing servers to ease management and migration is commonplace for server infrastructure. A newly-announced venture between Citrix and Intel could be the first step towards bringing those same benefits to the desktop.

Team Foundation Server Power Toys October 2008

Chris Kinsman — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 17:32:42 GMT

I am really, really liking the shell integration features that can with this release.

So convenient to be able to go to a directory, right click and check files in our out of the system.

Great job guys!

Exchange 2007 / Outlook 2007 / RPC over Http Issues

Chris Kinsman — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:22:41 GMT

I ran into an issue today that I could find very little information on so I figured I would put this out on the blogsphere in case it might help someone else.

I recently upgrade my Exchange server to Exchange 2007. I access it through ISA Server 2006 using Outlook Anywhere most of the time from a machine that is not joined to the domain.

I thought everything was up and working fine until I went to create a outlook contact for the first time since the upgrade. It would not let me save the contact and gave me a message indicating “Outlook must be online to complete this operation”. I was online. In fact I was online and receiving email.

I found out you can start outlook with the /rpcdiag flag to give some information as to what is going on with connectivity.

This dialog would show 3–4 Directory operations spun up and either connecting or disconnected.

At first I thought it was an issue with how I had published it in ISA Server but eventually gave up on that as I was essentially server publishing port 443 direct to the Exchange server.

I found one article that alluded to a similar problem that talked about setting up a remembered password in Vista for all machines with a particular domain name. Didn’t sound like a great idea but got me to thinking that it could possibly be an authentication problem with the Active Directory box. The directory request was traveling from Outlook, to the Exchange Servers RPC over HTTP connector and then having to leave the box to hit the AD box. Could it be an issue with double hop impersonation? Still not sure but as a test I installed the Active Directory role on my Exchange 2007 box and voila the problem went away.

Windows Home Server

Chris Kinsman — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:39:59 GMT

Windows Home Server is the best of hardware I have purchased in a long time. What amazes me is that almost no one knows about it!

I was chatting with Rocky Lhotka and Brian Randell at the VSLive Las Vegas reception and talk turned to backups. We all acknowledged how well Acronis TrueImage has worked in the past. I mentioned that while I was using the Enterprise edition at work to backup the desktops of all my developers the bloom was off the rose and I was disappointed with some significant limitations in their centralized management.

I then went on to fill them in on how my personal backup strategy has evolved. Depending on the machine I have up to three backup strategies.

1. Everything in my house is backed up to Windows Home Server. This thing is brilliant. The backup is better than what is offering with Microsoft Data Protection Manager for corporations! It will automatically back up every connected PC in your house to your home server. The backups are de-duplicated so you can backup a large number of machines in a fairly small space. The machines in my house have around 2TB of storage in total but as the image below shows I currently use about 501MB to back them all up!

When it comes time to restore the data you have two choices. You can mount the backup image as a drive letter and restore individual files OR if the machine has cratered you can boot from a CD and restore the machine with a bare metal restore! Two tips here

If you have any special network or disk drivers Windows Home will put a folder at the root your backup that contains any non-standard drivers. At restore time just mount the backup on another machine in the house. Copy that folder to a USB key and then connect the USB key while booting from the Windows Home Server restore CD. It will automatically load the extra drivers and go on it’s way restoring your machine!
Sometimes this isn’t enough to get it to restore. In my case I was using a Lenovo x200 with an external DVD to restore. Come to find out there is a newer Windows Home Server Restore CD. SP1 does not install it but you can go out and download it from Connect. Read more about it here. I have only had to use this improved CD once I suspect due to lack of an internal CD/DVD drive on my x200.

2. Now that my home server is going such a great job backing up all the machines in my house how do I backup the home server? SP1 offers an option to back it up to an external drive however in the case of a break-in or fire I would prefer that a redundant copy of my data reside somewhere outside the home. Most of the online backup options like Mozy and Carbonite don’t have options for Windows Home Server. Internally it is Windows Server and Carbonite doesn’t support this platform and Mozy wants you to purchase their Business product. I looked at KeepVault which is an online backup service for Windows Home Server but it was so bloody slow I finally gave up. My solution, JungleDisk. They have a beta of a Windows Home Server specific backup utility that integrates into the console and allows you to select what folders to backup, how much bandwidth to use, etc. Uses Amazon S3 on the backend which isn’t cheap, my 157GB or so runs about $30/month, but is the best solution I have found to date.

3. I travel quite a lot and for my laptop need something that is constantly backing up my data and allows me to restore a lost piece of data wherever I am. I started out using the aforementioned Carbonite but got frustrated with it lack of options and at the time lack of Vista support. I moved to Mozy and have been happy ever since. Mozy is setup to automatically backup whatever folders you choose whenever the machine is idle. When you need to restore you just go to My Computer, double click on the Mozy Home Remote Backup icon to mount the backup, navigate the folder structure and grabs the files you need.

Windows Home Server

Chris Kinsman — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:32:24 GMT

Windows Home Server is the best of hardware I have purchased in a long time. What amazes me is that almost no one knows about it!

I then went on to fill them in on how my personal backup strategy has evolved. Depending on the machine I have up to three backup strategies.

If you have any special network or disk drivers Windows Home will put a folder at the root your backup that contains any non-standard drivers. At restore time just mount the backup on another machine in the house. Copy that folder to a USB key and then connect the USB key while booting from the Windows Home Server restore CD. It will automatically load the extra drivers and go on it’s way restoring your machine!
Sometimes this isn’t enough to get it to restore. In my case I was using a Lenovo x200 with an external DVD to restore. Come to find out there is a newer Windows Home Server Restore CD. SP1 does not install it but you can go out and download it from Connect. Read more about it here. I have only had to use this improved CD once I suspect due to lack of an internal CD/DVD drive on my x200.

Azure Table Services vs SQL Services

Chris Kinsman — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 22:42:36 GMT

A lot of folks are confused about the differences here.

Azure Storage

Essential storage services in the cloud. Provides a core set of non-relational storage and processing abstractions at massive scale. Azure is built from the ground up for the cloud.

Sql Services

Rich database services in the cloud.

Extends the power of sql server in a scalable way to the cloud. SQL Services is based on a SQL Server foundation. It adds to the standard platform a lot of innovation in scale, HA, lights out operation, etc.

ASP.NET 4.0

Chris Kinsman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:42:01 GMT

Sitting in the ASP.NET 4.0 session. What a confusing road map with arrows going every different direction.

From what I can tell. They are putting their formal releases going forward on www.asp.net and interim drops on codeplex at www.codeplex.com/aspnet. The latter location is intended to be more cutting edge and sneak peek oriented. Full source code will be provided along with road maps around thoughts and priorities. They are currently getting around 1100 downloads a day. They released new bits to codeplex today including a new ASP.NET Ajax Preview 3, Dynamic Data and MVC.

ASP.Net investments in dev10 include rollups of existing previews.

FX4.0 maintains a high compatibility bar with FX 3.5. VS10 support multi-targeting to FX4.0 or FX 3.5.

ClientIds can now be managed by the control developers for the rendered clientid. Mangling is gone!!!

Removes the need to use CSS adapters. Defers to CSS stytles and bypasses existing style properties. Supports non-table based HTML rendering for all controls.

URL Routing for web forms. Friendly url handling for standard web-forms.

Viewstate can now be disabled on page and enabled on only specific controls.

ASP.NET Ajax innovation for RIA. Appealling to JavaScript developers is a goal. Want to also provide support for the page developer. IntelliSense for jQuery will be included.

Databinding will include client-side binding using REST or Web Services.

ASP.NET Ajax toolkit will be moved into ASP.NET proper and include new controls. The script libraries will be centralized and broken up for performance.

ASP.NET Dynamic Data has enhanced filtering with auto complete, search filters and cascading filters. Enhanced meta-data will also include control over column ordering.

Netflix uses SilverLight 2 for the new player

Chris Kinsman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:59:00 GMT

Check this out: http://blog.seanalexander.com/2008/10/27/NetFlixBringingInstantStreamingToPCAndIntelMacsViaSilverlight2.aspx

NetFlix announced usage of SilverLight2 for high quality DVD experience streaming. Very cool. The SilverLight streaming of the DNC that Vertigo did was spectacular and will look great for movies.

Amazon EC2 and Windows Azure

Chris Kinsman — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:36:58 GMT

I don’t get it. I admit I can’t understand where Microsoft is going with Windows Azure.

There are two issues as I see it.

1. Small to medium sized business who will be attracted to the pay as you go model will have to learn and re-architect their applications to sit on the Microsoft SQL Services model. It won’t be an easy road. Everything they have learned about databases by and large goes out the window and they must do a significant retraining on how to work with a database with no transactions, etc. At least they announced Join support! While they are doing that they will also have to be learning the ins and outs of using the new Windows Azure as their deployment mechanism. It is going to be a tough road for many of them.

2. Large business is interested because they:

Want to try and minimize their rocketing data center costs. Interested in leveraging the IP Microsoft is building around energy and cost efficient hosting.
Are interested in lower cost mechanisms for doing geo-scaleout without having to build the physical presence around the world.
Love the ability to dynamically increase scale without large up front capital expense with the associated long lead times.

However large business is not going to be willing to place their revenue stream into the hands of a single source vendor. Once I write my software to the proprietary Microosft SQL Services I have no where else I can run the software. Yeah, yeah if I architect and factor my design I can limit the impact of the lockin but the issue still stands. Am I willing to bet the revenue stream of my company on a single source solution that I can’t have another vendor host for me and I cannot run inside my firewall? This isn’t just a Microsoft issue. I see the same issue with Amazon Web Services and their SimpleDB service. It is fairly proprietary and I can’t run it inside my firewall.

I was hoping that Amazon with the release of EC2 for Windows would put some pressure on Microsoft to release a full version of SQL Server instead of the crippled entity based model that is more a copy of Amazon’s SimpleDB. However if you take a close look at the pricing it falls apart. While .125/hour for a windows instance is quite price competitive once you add SQL Server standard it jumps to anywhere from $1.10 to $2.40/hour! If you need authentication services also then it caps out at $3.20/hour! While $0.125/hour only translates to ~$91/month the SQL Instance bumps up to more than ~$800/month! No longer price competitive whatsoever.

What is a developer to do?

Seattle CodeCamp v4.0

Chris Kinsman — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 16:57:25 GMT

We are doing it again! Seattle CodeCamp is coming back to the DigiPen campus on November 15–16, 2008. Check out https://seattle.codecamp.us for more information.

VSLive Las Vegas October 13-17, 2008

Chris Kinsman — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 15:29:23 GMT

As Conference Chair for VSLive Las Vegas, to be held October 13–17, this time at the Mirage Hotel right on the strip, it is my pleasure to lead the second "re-tooled" VSLive event, and to invite you all to participate as speakers.

What does re-tooled mean?: for the remaining VSLive 2008 shows, we are making a concerted effort to break with long-standing formulas around tracks, content and, in some cases, format. Rather than forcing all content to fit within 3 or 4 tracks/topic areas, we are instead pushing for a variety of content covering a variety of subjects relevant to Microsoft developers of all stripes. We are also creating an additional full day of sessions. And with a "pay one price" registration model, all attendees will be able to attend any session.

The end-result of these changes is new freedom and subject matter flexibility and 50% more breakout session content than in past years at our "regional" shows (including New York, Las Vegas and Austin).

A general call for papers (CFP) has already been announced and closed, but I am taking this opportunity to solicit additional content from speakers who perhaps have not spoken at VSLive before. If you have already submitted proposals through the CFP channel, rest assured I will review those proposals and give them every consideration. However, I would like to make a special appeal to those of you who haven't submitted, and even those who have, to submit additional sessions now.

The most important thing is to pick topics that you're excited about and will enjoy presenting on. Meanwhile, if you're looking for guidance, a set of major topics and sub-topics/tags that we hope to include is listed now on the conference's Web site at http://vslive.com/2008/lasvegas/. Check out the full list on the Web site, but please know that if you have something really interesting that doesn't quite mesh with the topics listed there, that I have the discretion and the desire to accommodate you, provided the topic is likely to be well-received by attendees.

One thing that hasn't changed (yet) is the short timeframes we're working on. I have been asked to finalize the session matrix this week. But here's the thing: assuming you can craft descriptive session titles, that's all I really need from you right now (once selected, you'll be asked to produce full abstracts). So take just a few minutes now and send me titles for a couple of sessions you'd love to present.

Please email content to vslive@vergentsoftware.com

Thanks!

Application Tier DNS Name

Chris Kinsman — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 06:01:05 GMT

Recently setup a new TFS2008 installation out in my colocation and had issues with the report and document nodes in my TFS projects not coming alive. I had put the correct routes into my ISA Server but those other links weren’t working.

I had forgotten to update the wss and report servers names in the registration data on the application tier.

To get the registration data do a:

TFSReg /EXPORT reg.xml APPTIERSERVERNAME

Change the following values to the FQDN of your application tier:

ATMachineName

ReportsService

BaseReportsUrl

WssAdminService

BaseSiteUrl

There are a few settings in the registry also:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\ReportServer\80\Sites

Has BaseReportsService and BaseSiteUrl that also needs to be changed.

Finally clear your cache at (for vista):

c:\users\@username@\appdata\local\microsoft\team foundation\2.0

and delete the cache folder in that location.

Found a great article here somewhat after the fact: http://bloggingabout.net/blogs/mglaser/archive/2007/01/31/hosting-team-foundation-server-on-a-fully-qualified-domain-name-fqdn.aspx