Skip to main content

Presenting on TFS Wed. Nov. 28th at Columbus XP User Group

Stop by and see me present on Agile using VSTS and TFS 2008 Wed. Nov. 28th at Columbus XP User Group. Go easy if you attend...no hecklers. ;-)


Meeting Topic: Agile with Team Foundation Server (TFS)
Do you expend lots of time and effort inquiring about the status of your projects and setting up infrastructure rather than delivering value? Is it almost impossible to determine progress and velocity using your current process? Do developers constantly tell you, "Hey, no worries...I'm about 80% done"? Well kiss those days goodbye with the introduction of Microsoft's Team Foundation Server (TFS).

TFS coupled with Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) delivers a complete SDLC management, development, testing, and release solution. Targeted to all the roles involved with the SDLC (developers, testers, PMs, BAs, stakeholders, architects, build masters, etc.), TFS assists you in managing requirements, tracking traceability and defects, improving code quality, and most importantly, facilitating communication amongst all members of the team. TFS supplies process templates but by modifying those processes and extending TFS functionality, you can assuage TFS to accommodate the unique aspects of your process.

TFS is a software product but its features bring about the potential for a strong agile-based solution for your custom software development. In this session, we'll
quickly review the agile principles, cover some of TFS and VSTS's features, map those features to agile principles, and finally, investigate a typical agile software development process as executed leveraging TFS.

About the Speaker: Jeff Hunsaker
Developing and architecting solutions and leading teams for over 12 years, Jeff Hunsaker grew tired of failed projects due to flawed processes. Eager to meet with success, he began to investigate more agile methodologies. While still far from expert rankings, agile principles of software development restored Jeff's faith in effectively and efficiently producing custom business software. He considers learning the agile principles an ongoing endeavor.

Jeff works for Cardinal Solutions as a Managing Consultant and lead for Cardinal's Columbus Microsoft practice. His career thus far includes exposure to industries
including: interactive marketing, e-commerce, military, finance, transportation/logistics, and software products. Jeff likes to relive the glory days remembering leading the
team to build art.com in the late 90's. His biggest responsibility though, is raising his two sons aged 3 and 4 months. In his spare time (with two kids...are
you kidding?), Jeff enjoys reading, online marketing, writing, and taking his sons to the zoo.

Meeting Info:

The meeting will be held on Wednesday, Nov. 28th in the Smith Private Dining Room from 11:30am to 1pm. Please mark this date on your calendars. You can bring your lunch or purchase lunch in the OCLC cafeteria. To register for this meeting, send email to lfarrenkopf@earthlink.net . For directions to OCLC, please visit our website at www.cardinalsolutions.com/XP

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Hero Write-up: Now this is Customer Service!

My best friend Scott is president/C-everything of a small northeastern Ohio manufacturing concern, KirkKey Interlock . I hadn't spoken with him for a while and wanted to see how Canton fared with the Blizzard of '08 (that's what they're calling it...not me). I say, "So what's new?" He replies that on Tuesday his primary server (which essentially runs the business) came up with lame with not one, but [a statistically improbable] *two* physical disk failures on a RAID5 hardware array. My friend attempts the fix but gives up pretty quickly after seeing some Linux nasty-grams on the boot screen. His service provider is an old college buddy who lives down in Raleigh, Cerient Technologies led by Jason Tower . Scott couldn't email out because Exchange was on the toasted server. Being creative, Scott started Treo-emailing photos of the screen. Unfortunately, Jason couldn't receive email because a storm had knocked out a lot of local hosting. [Sigh] After...

Certified or Certifiable?

As a senior technology professional, I interview a lot of candidates. I also maintain solid relationships with other folks in the community. Frequently, the topic of certifications arises: A good investment? Valuable? A clear measurement of skill? Consensus appears to draw the line related to one's seniority. If you're (for example) just out of school and looking for an instant creditability boost, by all means pursue a certification. Likely, this credential will assist you in overcoming the "junior" tag and likely land you more interviews and client roles. (Note: I'm going to use the terms senior and junior here...no offense to either. Can't think of a better one word description. I was a junior once too.) In stark contrast, the value of certifications drops off the table around the 2-3 year mark. Some in my circles even perceive certifications as a negative for the senior professional. They think, "If this guy is so solid, why is he wasting valuable...

Lab Management in Visual Studio 2010 Released

In my experience, there's a lot of animosity and poor communication between Development and QA . It's not that they don't appreciate one another so much as they never seem to stay on the same page. QA : "What's the status on defect #4874?" Dev: "Done." QA : "Done?" Dev: "Yeah, I fixed that Tuesday." QA : "Err, ok . Well where is it? I mean where can I verify it?" Dev: "No clue. I committed it Tuesday. It passed unit tests and built successfully." QA : "Alright. I'll track it down." Invariably , QA speaks with the build manager (if there is one) to find the build in which that defect was repaired. After discovering the correct build, now QA needs an environment stood up to house that build. But wait, the UAT environment is currently testing the next release. It can't be disturbed for another week. At this point, the QA person's blood pressure heads for unsafe levels and the Dice.com bro...