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Through work I have an Visual Studio Premium with MSDN subscription that I love. However, my biggest disappointment of the last 12 months was discovering that our 2nd from the top level subscription was not enough to get me Sketchflow!
This is, most decidedly, NOT SHINY, and I am borderline distraught! What are my options? Upgrading to an Ultimate subscription for Sketchflow is out of the question. Am I forced, then, to stay with Blend 3 or Purchase Blend 4 seperately?
If this is not a question I should ask here please inform and I'll delete. I just tend to default to SO for all questions that Google can't answer and Google did not answer this one.
We think too that is a very bad move from Microsoft. we hope that Microsoft will listen to customers and change this.
Related to SQLMenace's response -- You can only upgrade for $350 if you previously purchased Blend 3 at retail. If you spent thousands on MSDN Premium and got used to using Sketchflow with Blend 3, you don't have that option.
To the OP... You've been bait-and-switched. Your options are to purchase the full Expression Ultimate 4 ($600 USD at retail) or upgrade your MSDN license to Ultimate (for thousands more). Or stick with Blend 3 and not get the v4 features for working with the latest versions of Silverlight and WPF.
None of those options are great. I'm hoping the people in MSFT DevDiv who'd like to see Sketchflow get adopted have more clout than the marketing genius who thought this tiered approach would drive retail sales and/or MSDN Ultimate upgrades.
So do we wait for Microsoft to bow under the pressure of common sense or fork out the cash? Does anyone here have the power to speak to a product head at MS?
If your Expression Studio 3 is a retail version (i.e. not from MSDN subscription) you can upgrade to version 4 for absolutely nothing - read the How To Upgrade text on this page.
It's not blindingly obvious that you can upgrade for free given the upgrade option available for a fairly large fee. But there you go, it can be free.
By the way, I've done it, so I know it works.
Posted at MS Site:
I too am irritated by this. I'm a single programmer, no big company backing me up. I invested A LOT of money in MSDN Premium and I'm annoyed to no end that you took out this tool.
I have played with this tool in the past, and left it aside - too complex for me. Now I have gained a new passion for prototyping. After a day of research I decided to give Sketchflow a new chance. I've located a book (for the benefit of others: Dynamic Prototyping with SketchFlow in Expression Blend: Sketch Your Ideas...And Bring Them to Life! but be sure to obatin the corrected source from www.dynamic-prototyping.com ), tried to run a sample and presto - no Sketchflow.
So no worry: I've identified other tools in my research today (see http://imar.spaanjaars.com/545/sketch-and-prototype-tools-review-part-6-and-the-winner-is written by an MVP author). I'll start using the much cheaper, simpler, higher-praised (!-) Balsamiq Mockup. When you come to your senses and decide to become friends with your developers once more, please give me a call.
I looked I could get sketchflow with my WebSpark Account, but I only get the Web-Edition of Blend :-/
You can upgrade for about $350...which is way cheaper than MSDN
http://www.microsoft.com/expression/products/Upgrade.aspx
The Expression team, according to Tim Heuer's blog, may offer an upgrade for $250 to the Premium subscribers.
The upgrade is being offered to Visual Studio 2010 with MSDN Premium subscribers for $249.95. There are similar deals being put into place for MSDN partners and for companies who purchased Visual Studio Premium through volume licensing.
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I'm working with my brother on a website idea we have, and we'd like to use a tool to plan sprints and assign estimates to individual tickets.
Atlassian's JIRA+Greenhopper looks fantastic but costs $20/month and at this stage we're just validating our idea and would rather not spend money on a tool if we can avoid it.
Are there any free alternatives to these tools?
Taiga is 100% free and has all the features that comes with something like JIRA.
http://taiga.io/
It even has a burn-down chart! So that's a win!
Here's a site with a nice overview of what Taiga integrates with and real developer opinions on the tool.
http://stackshare.io/taiga
Trello is a good tool for creating task boards and tracking work for small teams.
https://trello.com/
I get this question a lot as a Scrum Trainer.
I strongly recommend Index Cards and a Physical Scrum Board. While it won't calculate time addition for you, that task is trivial and the 'information at a glance' that a Scrum Board offers is hugely beneficial.
If you absolutely HAVE to have an electronic board, try Visual Studio Online (TFS in the cloud) which, at present, is free for up to 5 users.
Another option (We use Jira) would be YouTRACK. http://www.jetbrains.com/youtrack/buy/
It is free for up to 10 users and seems to offer pretty much the same functionality.
DISCLAIMER: I have never used YouTRACK on any level. IntelliJ is a great product though.
For Agile project management, I have used extensive Thoughtworks - Mingle
It's free for 5 users.
Another good alternative could be agilefant. Agilefant offers a free and open source product that can be downloaded and deployed into your own private cloud.
If you are looking open source project management, which you can host on your own, the following list could be useful:
ProjectLibre is a java based ms-project rich client alternative
LibrePlan is a rich client and based on these videos it seems like ms-project and includes hours spend by user on task, collaboration was not visible in the videos
OpenProject is a web based software with features such as issues, time lines (gantt chart), calendars, meeting notes and more
Redmine is a web based software using the Ruby on Rails framework that includes issues, work log, a wiki and a gantt chart and more.
You can also check TargetProcess (http://www.targetprocess.com/pricing/) it's free for 5 users
i use it for three months and it's very good
I used Trello (http://trello.com) and Mingle (http://getmingle.io) on two different projects. Trello is great for tracking tasks and collaborating for small team. My trello project team had 3 members, we were distributed. We also use Google drives to track unstructured information. My mingle project team have more than 10 people, and used it for years. Team love using it for standup on big touch TV and different roles (BA/QA/PM) like it because you have have your own workspace track different tasks and sometime build their own report).
IceScrum.
It's open source and you can run on your own server.
The best open source project planning in my opinion!
https://www.teamwork.com/pricing
"If you don't pay after the 30 day free trial you can still use Teamwork Projects free forever"
"We also have a Free Forever Plan with 2 projects and 100mb space"
Kind of a weird question to ask on SO, but it is programming related, so hear me out!
I've been looking for a few months (with no results) for a video shown at a local Visual Studio 2010 launch event. The video was a high-production-value piece covering the history of Visual Studio from the early days up to the present. It was maybe 10 minutes long and featured blurbs from ScottGu and other product team members at Microsoft. Does anybody know if Microsoft posted this to Channel 9 or somewhere else? I don't even remember the actual title of the video, so I've had some trouble tracking it down.
Channel 9 is where such things would normally be found, together with much other Microsoft footage.
Here is part one, and here is part two.
this should be the page where all parts are visible
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/VisualStudioDocumentary/
http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/VisualStudioDocumentary/The-Visual-Studio-Documentary-Part-One/
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What is your company solution for PPM (managing projects, demands, timesheets, etc)? And what is your experience with it?
I'm trying to know about the tool prespective and not your company's particular business process.
Regards for you all!
Roadmap http://www.ppmroadmap.com/ takes the same, lightweight approach as Basecamp and applies it to PPM. In fact, Roadmap supports real-time integration with Basecamp. It's reasonably priced and easy to use.
In our company ms project standard is used for managing projects, demands, timesheets, etc.
I've used microsoft project gantt chart for project scheduling and tracking, it serves the purpose very well. You can download ms project trial version from microsoft website. You can get more details on ms project at this link.
We use Microsoft Great Plains, and hate it! We also use Siebel Service for defect tracking... and hate it!
A while back we implemented Mantis, an open source bug tracking tool for a small project that needed customers to access it (all our corporate apps are internal-access only). Mantis has been so successful we have 3 teams using it and resisting moving to using Siebel.
We also use dotProject for project management - its good, but I'm not sure its quite as good as more expensive Project tools.
So, my experience has been that the open source, web based tools are very good (eg OrangeHRM, WebERP, vTiger), very useable, (and free), and they do a perfectly good-enough job. The commerical apps can sometimes be complete pants.
For Visual Studio teams, Microsoft's Team Foundation Server is getting much better...2010 provides much more syncing and task hierarchical mgmt then 2008 and 2005 before, but still not a fully healthy PPM solution out of the box...if you have the skills, create an entire process template for your org and really get the power out of TFS. Kudos to msft for the 2010 version and the much improved MS Project 2010 product...I'm in the middle of evaluating this myself.
#task is awesome even in its standard edition suite - expensive, but allows total tracking, mgmt, dashboard, timesheet, doc mgmt, etc, etc, etc right out of the box on a SAAS model.
Basecamp has become the trendy adaptation to the PPM problem. I've used it some with clients, but would love to trial it for myself soon.
In our organization we use Microsoft Project 2010 for project portfolio management. It is used to gain visibility & control across all projects & teams, helps enhance decision-making, improves alignment with business strategy, helps maximize resource utilization and managing projects by enhancing project execution. Definitely recommend it.
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I manage a small group and I'd keep my work breakdown in project. However, it's difficult to provide my team with an adequate view into the project and ability to report on their progress. I looked at MS Project Server (the sharepoint webpart) but it's an expensive proposition.
Has anyone had any experience with any other tool (commercial is fine) that helps team view and report on their work as managed by MS Project? FWIW, I have looked at OpenProj and it appears to be a decent solution for viewing project files on the desktop. Anything web-based, keeping in mind that I'd like people to report on their work not just view their work.
**A good web based hosted Project Management software that suits my EPM needs is called valleyspeak project server, which I found at www.valleyspeak.com. One of the main reasons why I like the software is the fact that I could continue to work in Microsoft Project 2007 while sharing my Microsoft Project plans with my teams.
Because it is a hosted service, I did not have to buy expensive software or deal with installation and maintenance headaches. The functionality that I have with valleyspeak to manage my geographically dispersed teams works well for me.**
Not exactly the tool rather technology, but i lately start reading about scrum and find it interesting and useful.
As "llya" suggested before maybe you should have a look at scrum as a methodology.
But on your question here you have some really good web-based alternatives:
acunote works pretty well also, and is web based and free for small teams.
The one I personally use trac
scrumworks
Here are a few open source apps to look at:
Joynet Connector
http://joyent.com/connector/
Clocking IT
http://www.clockingit.com/
RedMine
http://www.redmine.org/
You can host them your self, but the first two do offer hosted versions
Jason
You could try Work Bench.
Take a look at www.ibnportal.com
Take a look at Projec.to online Microsoft Project viewer. It allows to upload MS Project files (.mpp), view them online, and share with others via browser, apart from Microsoft Project.
Disclosure: I'm one of the developers of this service.
Daptiv might be worth a look. http://www.daptiv.com/
Try InTask Professional (www.intaskrnd.com) - fast, cheap, tons of features, multi-user multi project, frequent updates. really good piece of software. alternatively you can try basecamp but it's much more expensive...
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I've recently begun evaluating a few project management projects for the company I work for. It's the classic case - growing company looking for the right solution (meaning, free or really cheap). It's a combination shop - Windows, Macs, and Linux on the desktop. The tech savviness, of course, ranges from newbie to unix guru.
I have yet to find anything really close to a total solution. I don't expect to find one, but I am looking for suggestions/guidance/any sort of feedback based on people's experience.
What I'm looking for:
web based
methodology independent (not looking for an agile solution, etc.)
free or really cheap
document management
timelines and milestones
task tracking and assigning
reporting
source control
development wiki
I've looked at Trac, Projectivity, Basecamp, JIRA, RT, XPlanner, and SharedPlan. I've stayed away from Bugzilla due to previous unhappy experiences with it. None of these things really does everything - some are extendable, but I'd check here before going down that path.
Thanks,
Read through Edward Tufte's long-running Ask E.T. topic Project Management Graphics (or Gantt Charts). There is no consensus answer, but a lot of things have been evaluated.
link text
Trac - integration of tickets / wiki / commit-comments is great.
Caveat: installation can be PITA...
Check out Jira Studio. All of Atlassian's apps, hosted for you.
http://www.jira.com/
You get wiki/tracker/svn browser and more.
Have a look at Redmine, it's a Rails app. Haven't used it yet myself, but thinking about moving to it from activecollab. This applications seems to be evolved quite fast last year.
My experience of Jira (with Confluence for the wiki) has been rather good, although it is quite pricey the support people were very responsive and helpful. The place where I used that had svn for version control, and the two played together OK. On the other hand I found Xplanner to be a very odd app - really inflexible if you don't want to be doing XP, and surprisingly documentation-centric for an XP shop.
If you don't mind doing a bit of configuration yourself and have a windows server somewhere in your shop then you could set up your very own customized project management system in SharePoint.
* web based
* methodology independent
* free or really cheap
* document management
* timelines and milestones
* task tracking and assigning
* reporting
* source control
* development wiki
The source control system is not a part of SharePoint so it is really a question whether that requirement is paramount or not. But besides that you will have all of the above for free if you install WSS (comes free with a 2003/2008 server)
There is even a book from O'Reilly about how to set up a PMIS in SharePoint
One solution for the more visual of us would be to use Drupal 6x. with the Project and Subversion (now Version Control) modules. I prefer Joomla with ProjectFork, but until its modded with a repo browser, this will have to do.
Hope this helps.
http://drupal.org/project/project
I looked hard at Alfresco and Joomla.
None met my needs because I wanted the ultimate in simplicity. But, you seem to prefer having the kitchen sink included (while keeping it easy to use, I guess), so either one of these might be right for you.
Currently, I'm throwing together my own using Django, keeping only the project-deadline, forum and file-versioning concepts.