Rangers Sabbatical, part 1 - Prologue
For more in this series, please visit the series index.
Welcome to the first part of a series of posts I wrote during and after my Rangers sabbatical. In future posts, I will talk about the trip in detail, but this post will cover the history of the trip and explain what all these odd terms I may use mean.
The Rangers
The Rangers are not related to any of the following:
| A football team | A TV show | A military group | An ice hockey team |
|---|
The Rangers are a group of individuals made up of internal Microsoft staff—mostly from MCS (Microsoft Consulting Services)—MVPs (external people awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award), and key community leads.
The Rangers are linked to a specific Microsoft product; in my case, it was VSTS (Visual Studio Team System). Not all products have a Rangers team.
The goal of the Rangers is to fill gaps in products with custom solutions and guidance. This may include:
- Information on how to run TFS (Team Foundation Server) on a virtual machine
- Quick-reference posters for the product
- Additional tools
This is different from the MVP program, where you are awarded MVP status for work you have done, whereas Rangers focus on work you will do—with specific goals, projects, and guidelines.
A deeper look at the Rangers team and its structure can be found in the post VSTS Rangers Positioning: Rangers and Projects.
Normal Process
The normal process for all Rangers work—even for those employed by Microsoft—is that this is an extra effort team. Meaning, it’s done in evenings, weekends, or on bus rides alongside your day job. It’s truly a labour of love for the product.
Me working on a bus during the sabbatical. Picture from Willy-Peter Schaub
Sabbatical
The sabbatical is a new concept for the Rangers, where an external person (MVP or community member) takes leave from their daily routine and works directly with the product teams. For VSTS, this means being in one or more locations, as the VSTS/VS/Rangers team spans Vancouver, Canada; Seattle, Washington, USA; Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Hyderabad, India; and China.
Map from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm with pins added by me (not accurate).
This idea is so new to the Rangers that I was the first to participate. For me, it meant two weeks in Vancouver and one week in Seattle.
NDA
Though this trip was not a business trip for me, it was for Microsoft, and I gained access to information, people, places, and experiences I cannot disclose due to the NDA with Microsoft. If this seems limited for the time spent, there are two reasons:
- The NDA restricts what I can share.
- The technical aspects of the work will be covered in a separate series.