In the last month, I found out that more and more customers want to hear about the benefits we are about to reveal in Visual Studio Team System 2010, also known as "Rosario".
Team System 2010 is what we call a MAJOR release with many important features. However, if I want to summarize the benefits in two words, I would definitely say Architecture & Testing. Microsoft has put a lot of effort and innovation in the Architecture and Test Editions which makes them market leader products on their own.
The Architecture Edition adds UML 2.x diagrams in addition to the previous designers introduced in previous versions. Not only that we support UML as a first class citizen in VSTS, but we also allow the developer to generate the diagrams from the code. We are also about to support an Architecture Explorer feature which generates an architecture map of the entire system allowing developers and architects to see how changes in code affect the architecture. The last feature I want to emphasize is the Architecture Validation which is the ultimate nirvana for architects. The architecture validation validates that the code doesn't break architectural rules and connections as the architect defined in the architecture.
The Test Edition adds the notion of no more excuses for developers when trying to reproduce defects. It gives power to the end of the sentence "It works on my computer". It does that by giving more details to the developer when opening a bug including the exact step where the program broke, a historical debugger (great stuff), build number and even a video, yes a video of screen of the tester when the bug was found. There is also a new Test Lab product, called "Camano" as part of the suite which allows creating virtual instances of test labs for testers and developers while maintaining the same configuration of a computer that a bug was found on. We also introduce recording of UI testing even with WPF and the ability to produce code from the recorded test using a coded UI test.
In addition to the above there are many more interesting features in the entire suite such as:
1. Support for DB2 in the Data Edition
2. Ability to realize a real test driven development by creating code from a unit test and not the opposite
3. Gated check-in that runs a personal build before check-in is committed
4. Build improvements including buddy builds, pool of build agents with queuing and WF based builds
The story doesn't end here and more features will be revealed as we get closer to the release dates.
If you wish to see a presentation covering Team System End To End including 2005, 2008 and 2010, follow this link.