-          Integrated Team Development with Visual Studio Team System   - Visual Studio Team System Overview·         Great overview of the new tools that Microsoft offers that extend Visual Studio 2005 IDE to help with architecting, testing, debugging for all the people on the development team.April 3^rd, April 17^th, May 1^st, May 15^th, June 5^th, June 19^th – all sessions start at 1 pm EST (duration 1 hr) 

-          Visual Studio Team Foundation Server – The What, Why and How        ·         Team foundation Server helps development teams improve communication and collaboration – a must have for anyone using Visual Studio or wanting improved development insight!April 3^rd, April 17^th, May 1^st, May 15^th, June 5^th, June 19^th – all sessions start at 2:30 pm EST (duration 1 hr) 

-          Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals – the What and Why!·         This offering is new and a great synergy with SQL Server and companies developing custom applications that target SQL Server database.April 10^th, April 24^th, May 8^th, May 22^nd, June 12^th, June 26^th – all sessions start at 1 pm EST (duration 1 hr) 

-          Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers – the What and Why!·         This offering is new!  Testing applications is key to ensuring better performance, higher security and more reliable solutions! Microsoft’s new integrated testing offerings are a great addition to your development environment.April 10^th, April 24^th, May 8^th, May 22^nd, June 12^th, June 26^th – all sessions start at 2:30 pm EST (duration 1 hr)

-          Visual Studio Team System and MSDN Licensing Demystified – Licensing Overview ·         Understanding what you need and how to license it can be confusing – this session will help you get the answers you needApril 3^rd, April 17^th, May 1^st, May 15^th, June 5^th, June 19^th  – all sessions start at 11 am EST (duration 1 hr)

The first way of looking at the results gap is from a purely financial perspective, i.e. can an investment in a given system provide a positive return on investment (ROI)? That return on investment might represent reduced FTE requirements, business services that are no longer required or the replacement of a more costly system. Some of the difficulties with these financial metrics are that they may not capture the full organizational picture around a given system investment or they rely on future staff reassignments or downsizing that may never actually occur. In addition, ROI calculations that are based on cost to purchase versus cost to implement might be overstating the final return by a factor of two or more due to the cost of customizations and data migration.

The second aspect of the results gap is people oriented and is based on the fact that people and processes work and think differently than systems do, particularly monolithic line of business systems. Symptoms of this disconnect are data reentry from paper or other systems, relying on offline analysis or calculations and “workarounds” to move an item through a system driven process. These factors may not seem significant when taken alone, but across hundreds of users in an organization, they multiply into a huge drag on operational efficiency and customer satisfaction.

Bridging the results gap is only going to occur by applying solutions that improve the “business usability” of line of business systems by being collaborative, easy to use, role based and easily customizable.

I’ll discuss some of the forms that these solutions can take in my next few postings!

 Over the coming weeks I’ll be covering a number of ways that organizations can leverage these new aspects of the Microsoft platform in bringing their organizational systems closer to their users, so please come back to read more!

Each time we've worked with a development team through some sort of readiness exercise, there is a tendency to focus on the tools, or the .NET Framework, or the C# language itself. What I find interesting is that each team approaches readiness in their own way and from their own perspective. How does an organization measure success of this kind of effort? If you look at the definition of readiness – "the state of having been made ready or prepared for use or action" – it's not so much about results, but it would certainly help to create buy-in if some kind of measurable benefit could be attributed to this investment of time and money. I'm still searching, and will post more details when I find something useful.

Both the book and audio CD are available online on FranklinCovey website here: http://www.franklincovey.com/letsgetreal/media.html

The question that remains for me is what or who makes a good identity provider? My public identity is an aggregration of my passport, driver's license, credit card and social insurance number, which are issued by the Canadian government, the province of BC, and a credit card company. Should they continue to be the issuers of the online elements of my identity, or should I be able to elect to use a third party identity provider? I've read some discussion about the potential role credit bureaus could play, but do I want my identity tied to an organization that I don't have a direct relationship with and is primarily focused on how well I pay my bills?

In my mind, there are some important criteria that any identity provider must meet:

• Their primary focus should be on the security of my identity;
• They need to operate in a transparent fashion with full disclosure of activities involving my identity;
• They must allow me to be an active participant in managing my identity; and
• They need to guarantee my indentity will be future-proof.

I'm not as concerned about whether there are charges involved or if they are a public or private organization, they just need to focus on building and maintaining my trust with them. Identity management is the ultimate trust game.