Last November, I attended the Visual Studio 2005 launch event in Atlanta. At the event, I spent some quality time discussing issues I was having with Team Foundation Server with Bindia Hallauer, a Senior Product Manager for Visual Studio Team System. When I expressed my frustration with the limited requirements management in TFS, she counseled patience. Bindia said that Microsoft would be releasing a starter kit very soon, that would allow me to manage requirements linked to workitems.
Yesterday, 167 days after my conversation with Ms. Hallauer, Microsoft announced the release of the Visual Studio Tools for Office 2005 Starter Kit: Requirements Authoring Starter Kit. This looks like an interesting solution. I like the architecture of the solution, and I'm sure Softagon did an excellent job developing this tool.
My problems began with step 2 of the download instructions:
Double-click the RASK.msi program file on your hard disk to start the setup program.
There is no rask.msi, but there is a VSTO2005RASK.exe file. Double click it, accept the license and you get the following very confusing dialog:
Don't even try to decipher it. I've tried both options. I can't figure out what the first option does, or if it does anything. The second option at least creates some files for me to play with. It also completely dispenses with the folder hierarchy of the original projects and solutions, so nothing compiles.
I had hoped to demo this solution tomorrow at a requirements workflow meeting, but I have given up. Didn't anybody at Microsoft even try to install this mess before posting it to the web? After waiting 167 days for this junk, I'm more than a little disappointed.
There is a video showing how it is supposed to work here.
++Alan