The Team System version of Visual Studio 2005 introduces ALM to Microsoft's development platform. Team System represents a change, said beta user Andrew Brust, chief of new technology at Citigate Hudson, which builds business intelligence applications and does custom development.

"I believe that this is going to really change overall the methodological approach and the thoroughness in which a lot of Microsoft-oriented shops are going to create applications," Brust said. Team System features capabilities previously only available to Microsoft developers via third-party products, he said. For example, policies can be set up for checking code into a repository.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System offers a business process modeling structure, Homnick said.

In the past, developers would start with a model of a system, turn it over to developers and infrastructure professionals and that was really the only time all parts of the process synchronized, Homnick said. Afterward, different parties in the process diverged. Now, a modeling system ties phases together. "If you make a change in the code, it's referenced in the model," Homnick said.

While Team System gets Microsoft into the application lifecycle game, it is a 1.0 release that still needs complete integration end to end, said Huckaby. But he added, "I wouldn't focus on any negative as far as Visual Studio Team System is concerned. I'm completely positive on [Team System]."