Effective Thoughts

Thanks for coming to my VSTS 2010 (Beta2) presentation at DogFoodII in Columbus. I've posted the deck here and will publish a follow-up post with Q&A from the session. Special thanks and appreciation to Randy Pagels , Microsoft Developer Solution Specialist for the Heartland District for supplying a lot of the material. Randy maintains an excellent resource on VSTS/TFS at http://www.teamsystemcafe.net/. Also, special thanks for the VSTS MVPs for helping us learn and understand what's coming in 2010.

Last week, I delivered a VSTS 2008 Tester Edition demo to a prospective client. Following up on a few questions to which I didn’t know the answer: Q. Can I use Subversion with TFS? A. I get this question all the time from developers. It’s a perfectly valid question. The answer is no…but yes…sort of. The version control repository (and all data) must remain SQL Server. Yes, it’s proprietary. Further, if you plan to use TFS in your software development environment, but choose not to leverage it for version control, it severely limits the usefulness of the information elicited from TFS (because you’re not feeding in the crucial VC data). If you’re not leveraging VC in TFS, you’re probably not leveraging Team Build either. That said, while a fully-integrated TFS for ALM and SCM is the ideal, there’s a compelling argument to leverage TFS as a repository for requirements, scenarios, test cases, functional and load testing as well as defect tracking. TFS is an excellent repository to s...

A little more than a month ago, I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for Team System. I haven't said much about it because I try to remain a humble guy and frankly, I've been swamped with work/life. And, unlike a lot of awards, it's not really one you "go after"...it comes to you without a formula. What I really want to say about this is thank you. Thank you to the community for creating opportunities to present. Thank you to Microsoft for supporting technology professionals and creating jobs and careers around your products (and staying out of the way when I comes to implementation :). Thank you to the community leaders and professionals who dedicate their time and seemingly endless energy to making all of us stronger by creating environments of intense learning and camaraderie. Thank you to my employer for believing in my endeavors and investing in me the time to develop my TFS/VSTS skill set and share what I learn with the commun...

Recently, I had the pleasure of co-presenting (probably generous...I more just rode shotgun :) on VSTS 2010: Architecture Edition with Randy Pagels , Developer Platform Technical Specialist with Microsoft. We spoke to an impressively-attended internal user group at Cincinnati Financial . Thank you Randy for the invitation to co-present and Cincinnati Financial for having us in. To be honest, I'm not a big fan of the current 2008 Architecture Edition. Too rigid. Doesn't roll with the punches very well. It's more of a lay-down-the-law boundaries at the beginning of the project without the flexibility of absorbing feedback and instituting ongoing, evolutionary change. The new version seems much more flexible and functional. It imposes a model / architecture but can be (and expects to be) adjusted easily over the life of the project. One can also institute a confirmation check of the code against the model during the automated build. It's less overbearing and more of a qua...

Thanks for everyone attending my " Implementing an Agile Software Development Process with Team Foundation Server (TFS) " presentation today. We enjoyed some good discussion. I had a few TFS-related questions pop up which I thought I'd address in a post: Q. Is it possible to fail the build but only if a specific test fails? So, let's say we have 3 tests. If Test01 or Test02 fail, fail the build. If Test03 fails, don't fail the build. A. Not that I'm aware of. If any test fails in a build but compilation succeeded, that build lists a state of Partially Succeeded. With TFS 2008 SP1, we received a property to modify or control this behavior: TreatTestFailureAsBuildFailure. If true (false is the default), any test failure will set the build state to Failed (vs. Partially Succeeded). Nice write-up here . You might take the approach of creating two separate builds: one that contains all your tests and one containing just mission critical tests. Set TreatTestFailureA...

I finally found some time to get rolling on VSTS/TFS 2010 and wanted to share how I kitted out my environment. Somewhat related, fantastic overview on where to start . Started with my Windows 2008 Server VPC Installed and configured IIS 7 Downloaded and installed the SQL Server 2008 180-day Trial Configured SQL Server 2008 and SSRS, SSAS Turned off IE Enhanced Security for Administrators Under Win7 Beta1 (my host OS), I have a jerky mouse on the VPC . Unfortunately, the Change settings button under the Troubleshoot tab of my display driver is disabled under 64-bit :( Otherwise, I would enable the hardware acceleration recommendation. It's slightly better under full-screen. Downloaded and installed Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) v3.0 . Downloaded and installed TFS 2010 Beta 1 following the instructions to the letter. Downloaded and installed VSTS 2010 Beta 1 . Happy exploring and learning!

I haven't installed a development tool (production or beta/CTP) on my core OS for years. I do all my development, presentation preparation and learning / experimentation on Virtual PC (VPC) instances. (Ok, my clients pony up development machines for client work but...and no developing / architect jokes) Also, these are not VPCs I created. Certainly, one needs to license these instances properly when used in a production environment (vs. testing/evaluation) but leveraging a VPC will save you loads of time and effort (and headaches). To be clear, I don't recommend this approach if you need to actually learn how to install and configure a product and/or operating system. If you're studying for your MCSE, it likely behooves you to actually install it a few times rather than leveraging an existing virtual instance. But, if you want to learn how to leverage or use the product rather than how to install and configure it , go out to your favorite search engine or search.microsoft....

Thanks to everyone who attended my firm's ( Cardinal Solutions ) / Microsoft joint-sponsored Developer Tools Roadmap event at the Columbus Microsoft MPR room. Thanks to Randy Pagels , Bill Steele and...(no, I won't thank myself) for speaking on C#/.Net 4.0 Futures, VSTS 2010 and Azure/S+S/Online Services, respecitvely. Please contact me or leave a comment with any questions!

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.

Compelling TFS Features to Upgrade from 2005 to 2008 Security Update for Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Posted Streamline Team Projects With Process Templates

I'll be presenting VSTS/TFS 2008 at this two day event Feb. 4-5th. Speakers: Alexei Govorine , Quick Solutions Jeff Hunsaker , Cardinal Solutions They are the co-founders of the Central Ohio ALM Group The SDLC in a Box session will be led by two Central Ohio community leads. This 2 day briefing will discuss an application lifecycle project, from initial conception through requirements gathering, design, development, testing, build & review processes. We also cover process concepts, integration with non-Microsoft development and best-of-breed partner solutions & offerings for Visual Studio 2008 Team System. This two day sesions is targeted for Developers, Architects, Project Managers, DBAs and Business Analysts looking for ALM and researching Team Foundation Server. Register for this Event! Enter code: 857100 This event will be held at: Microsoft 8800 Lyra Drive Suite 400 Columbus, OH 43240 Map IT!

During a client demo this afternoon, I mind-blanked on creating a data-driven web test. Sure enough, I stepped out of the client offices and figured it out. Super. But, I think it's counterintuitive enough to outline in a blog post (...trying to make myself feel better ;-). Somewhat in my defense, I was thinking about data-driven unit tests. These, IMO, are easy to implement. Data-driven web tests are a bit more effort and challenging. Create a web test: Right-mouse on your test project selecting Add >> Web Test. Use the browser recorder to capture your web test scenario. Let's assume you're submitting an age and credit rating to an insurance rate calculator...similar to the screen capture below: Create a table or CSV file (comma-delimited...just use Excel and save as CSV) with relevant headings for your inputs and expected values: From Solution Explorer, double-click on your web test. In the main window, right-mouse on your web test selecting Add Data Sou...

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 .

If you work for a State or Local Government operation in central Ohio, bug your boss to attend TFS Day December 9th and 10th. Along with Brian Prince and Alexei Govorine , I'll be delivering a full day and a half on VSTS and TFS. Look forward to seeing you there!

"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.