Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step 2.0

Vjeko

Like(0)

Report

Update 2008-09-11: This post is receiving tremendous traffic, but is not the most relevant I have on Sure Step, therefore I’ll add the relevant links to other posts about Sure Step righ at the bottom, or you can go directly to Sure Step category by clicking here.

A new version of Microsoft Dynamics Sure Step methodology was released yesterday and is available for download to all Microsoft Dynamics partners enrolled in a service plan. If you were a partner, and thought you had no reason to enroll in one before, now there is a compelling reason to do so. This version brings so many improvements over the previous one that it is really worth it. Okay, I admit it, I might be a little bit biased, but only a little bit.

I’ve just downloaded and installed this version, then played with it for a few minutes, and here is just a handful of news (I’ll just unload them as they cross my mind - no order, no prioritization, no categorization, just a plain list of news):

All new user interface: a stand-alone application, not relying on Internet Explorer, with better navigation, and many many useful features
Projects: this is simply great, you can now create projects, and Sure Step simply creates a project repository, copies all of the templates into it, so you can create project documentation and manage it completely through Sure Step interface. You can have as many projects as you heart desires (I hope so, I haven’t tried yet to create that many of them), and have all the documents and customer deliverables neatly organized into project phases. You can even zip them and save them. Way cool!
Diagnostic phase now makes much more sense, and approaches the project in a totally different way than before, it comes with new offerings. I hope I get a chance (and time - oh how much I could use a little bit of time) to blog about these.
There are new project types, such as Rapid Upgrade, or Enterprise.
Customization is gone, but I believe that’s something that can now be addressed by Project Templates - a much better feature if you ask me.
New optimization offerings, such as Code Review.
Auto-update feature which allegedly auto-updates the whole thing. Couldn’t test it yet, duh!

And so on, and so forth. Unfortunately I don’t have time at this moment neither to play around with it any more than I have, nor to blog any further.

In any case, you can download it here:

https://mbs.microsoft.com/partnersource/partneressentials/serviceplans/surestep/

(PartnerSource access required)

Links to my other posts about Sure Step: