Effective Thoughts

(Cross-posted at http://www.coalmg.org/ ) Both Alexei and I enjoy working on the COALMG group. However, within the last few months, both of us took on new roles in our careers and struggle to find the time to line up speakers and keep things running smoothly. To that end, we would like to open up COALMG to new leadership. Alexei and I would still remain involved (as well as Brian Prince) from a "board"/guidance perspective but we want someone to really drive: schedule strong presenters, question the current setup, drive membership, sponsors, etc. We have a great following and there's tons of potential. COALMG is a fantastic opportunity for someone with energy, a passion for great software and a desire to get involved in the community. We look forward to hearing from you! If you're interested, shoot me an email at jeff dot hunsaker at gmail.

Very excited to announce we've (well, Alexei deserves all the credit) landed Doug Neumann for COALMG 's November meeting! Date/Time: Thursday November 5th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor) Abstract: Visual Studio 2010 is almost here, and with it comes a host of new capabilities for application lifecycle management in Team Foundation Server. In this talk, we'll survey the new features in TFS 2010, starting with enhancements to the core features of version control, work item tracking, and build automation and then venturing into new capabilities for executing agile projects, managing quality assurance activities, and simplifying the provisioning of virtualized testing environments. There's a lot to learn with Team Foundation Server 2010, but this talk will cover the foundations and get you on your way to becoming an expert. Biography: Doug Neumann has been working on Team Foundation Server since its inception in early 2003 when he was responsible for designing...

Thanks to everyone who attended our ALM Briefing / SDLC in a Box event on 2/05 at the Polaris Microsoft offices. We had a great audience with lots of intriguing questions. Our follow-up post is here . Shameless plug: Cardinal Solutions , my employer and one of the sponsors of this event, is a Microsoft Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) Inner Circle partner. We specialize in: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Assessments / Catalyst Team Foundation Server (TFS) capacity planning, installation and configuration Migration of source code Process Template customization and advising End-user training for all roles Automated and Continuous Integration (CI) builds with Team Build Best practice advising and ongoing consulting for process change, methodology implementation and customization of process and tools surrounding TFS and VSTS Please contact me for all your Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) needs.

Update : Cardinal Solutions will be sponsoring this event with food and drinks. Due to New Years Day and CodeMash , we rescheduled the next COALMG meeting to Tuesday Jan. 6th from 6PM to 8PM. Randy Pagels will be presenting on Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010 .

"Mark Mydland is the Principal Group Manager of the Visual Studio Team System Test Edition team (that means that all program managers, developers, and testers on VSTS Test in Redmond report up to him)." See Jennifer's post . We'll be hosting Mark on November 14th during the day at a client but I'm also excited to announce he'll also be delivering a technical talk that evening in conjunction with CONDG and COALMG at the Microsoft Polaris offices.

It's a rough time (9PM EST) but some of the TFS heavyweights created a Virtual TFS User Group . Your local ALM group ( COALMG ) clearly is superior in community and value, however. ;-)

Session Details: Did you know that .csproj and .vbproj files are really MSBuild files? More than build processes though, MSBuild is a full-featured automation language. It includes structured control flow, variables, refactorability, error handling, logging, and powerful extensibility. You can easily integrate MSBuild into your own enterprise processes and start adding value right away. We'll also look at how Team Foundation Build extends on MSBuild and adds robust integration with Team Foundation Server. Speakers Bio: Steve Andrews is a Team System MVP, and has been working as a developer for more than 9 years. During this time, he has designed and developed applications in such widely varying areas as trust accounting, medical information management, supply chain management, and retail systems. He is currently employed at RDA Corporation in Philadelphia, PA, as a Software Engineer and a team member in their Architectural Guidance evangelism team. Steve is also an MCP, ICSOO, Spe...

Announcing the first meeting of the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Managment Group (COALMG) . First, check this post to discover more about Application Lifecycle Managment (ALM). To accommodate the schedule of our speaker, we've moved our meeting this month to Tuesday April 29th from 5:30-7:30pm at the Polaris Microsoft office. (Normally, we meet every other month on the 1st Thursday, opposite the MOCSDUG.org user group.) Our web site is www.COALMG.org . Look forward to seeing you there! Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Visual Studio Team System Meeting Date & Time: 4/29/2008 5:30PM Session Description: Microsoft Visual Studio Team System is an extensible, life-cycle tools platform that helps software teams collaborate to deliver modern, service-oriented solutions. Visual Studio Team System is designed so every role in the development team has an integrated, seamless experience with the tools they are most comfortable with. Code Analysis, Code ...

I'm asked this frequently. What is ALM? First off, the acronym stands for Application Lifecycle Management. Here's the WikiPedia write-up on ALM but essentially, it's the process and tools your team uses to construct software. Kind of like SDLC but a whole lot more. The best explanation of ALM (I think) comes from Eric Sink who asks and answers " What is ALM? Traceability. " Yes, it's long but worth the read. We hope to answer this and lots of other questions about software development with the new group we formed called the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group (COALMG) . Check it out. We hope to see you there!