Effective Thoughts

Brian Keller just updated the soon-to-expire (12/15) all-up Visual Studio/TFS 2010 VM . Make sure to download the latest refresh! From Brian: What’s new in the December 2010 Refresh? The version of this virtual machine which was refreshed on December 9, 2010, includes the following additions: · Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 · Team Foundation Server 2010 Power Tools (September 2010 Release) · Visual Studio 2010 Productivity Power Tools (these are disabled in VS so that the screenshots of the hands-on-labs still match; you can quickly enable the Productivity Power Tools via Tools -> Extension Manager from within Visual Studio) · Test Scribe for Microsoft Test Manager · Visual Studio Scrum 1.0 Process Template · All Windows Updates through December 8, 2010 · Lab Management GDR (KB983578) · Visual Studio 2010 Feature Pack 2 pre-requisite hotfix (KB2403277) · Microsoft Test Manager hotfix (KB2387011) · Minor fit-and-finish fixes based on customer feedback · A new expiration date of ...

I'm honored to be presenting at the DogFood Conference again this year. I'll be delivering a session entitled "Engaging nondevelopers in Visual Studio 2010/TFS/ALM" on Friday. Hope to see you there! Update (11/03/2010): I posted my deck on SkyDrive...but you still need to attend in person! (Lots of demos...)

I couldn't find specific reference to installing the Scrum template onto SharePoint 2010 so I thought I would confirm that it does indeed work. A few tips: The MSI installer does not apply the process template nor install the SharePoint feature. You need to upload the template manually and run STSADM.exe commands to deploy the TFS WSP. Follow the ReadMe.txt files in the installation directories for the template and the feature, respectively. The path in the SharePoint installation ReadMe.txt file refers to the STSADM.exe path in the "12 hive" but this switches to the "14 hive" for SharePoint 2010. Just replace the paths to ../12/.. with ../14/..

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...

Recently, my laptop hard drive started emitting the dreaded, " kerklunk , rriiipppphphhhh " noise. Oh yes, you've awoken in a sweat with this nightmare, haven't you? It's a sure sign of a failed drive coming down the pike. Incoming ! Rather than suffering the life-shattering disruption of an unrecoverable drive, I called a Code Blue...and here's what I did: Background: I have Win7 64-bit running on a Dell Latitude D830 with a bay-mounted SATA external 500GB drive and an external USB 500GB drive. Download Paragon Backup & Recovery Free Edition ; install Use Paragon B&R to create a full backup of my existing hard drive (including MBR /Master Boot Record) onto my external USB drive (about 1/2 the size of my total hard drive) Use Paradon B&R to restore from the external USB drive to the external bay drive Shut down Windows7 Swap primary hard drive with external bay drive Start up Windows7 Order new hard drive to replace old, busted, Kerklunk drive...

In case you missed it, Brian Harry announced Microsoft's Scrum process template this week at TechEd in New Orleans. Very exciting. Great work, Aaron and team!

Thanks to all who attended Alexei's and my Scrum for TFS 2010 Thursday at the Path to Agility conference. Please contact us if you have follow-up questions. We posted the deck here .