My team kicks ass. Last Friday they got to ZBB (Zero Bug Bounce) two weeks ahead of schedule. Amazing work. And it's a good thing too - the weather flipped the "summer switch" here in Seattle over the weekend. It's about 80 out there right now!
So from now until RTM, the dev team will be focusing on a few things:
1) Staying on top of bugs to keep us as close to ship-quality as possible
2) Doing some App Writing. It's fun to use the product you've worked to long on, and it's a good way to uncover bugs that don't always get hit with normal testing. Fortunately the MSDN Feedback Center has already helped us root many of these out.
3) Writing some whitepapers and samples. I want everyone on the team to write some technical material on their areas of ownership. That way the community can get some inside scoop, straight from the source.
You may be asking yourself "well geez, if you have zero bugs, why can't you ship right now?" and that's a fair question. ZBB is a moment in time. There are other bugs in the product that need to be found and fixed, and we're just one team. In order to ship something as massive as VS 2005/.NET 2.0 you have to get everyone at the same level of quality at the same time, and that takes some doing. We're doing our part just like teams across the division. But it's good to know we're "on the glideslope" so to speak. Man I can't wait to get this stuff shipped!