Central Ohio ALM Group

July Meeting Announcement (Note the date change!): Acceptance Testing With Selenium & Cucumber

2009-06-22T08:55:00.003-04:00

***** Date Change *****
To avoid Independence Day conflicts and to pull in a great speaker, we've moved this month's meeting to Friday July 24th. Same time. Same place.
***** Date Change *****

Abstract:
Unit testing is an important part of your development cycle, but acceptance testing ensures your software meets your project’s requirements. This session shows you two great tools to help write automated acceptance tests: Selenium and Cucumber. You’ll learn how to use these tools to start from a requirement and move through a user story to an acceptance test. You’ll see how Selenium IDE cuts your development time by recording tests automatically for you, and you’ll discover how Selenium RC lets you use one set of tests to evaluate multiple browsers. Finally, we’ll walk through using Cucumber to write a plain-text description on how your system should behave – and use that same file to drive an acceptance test! We’ll discuss how these tools fit in your development process, and how they can be included in automated builds. This session will leave you with an understanding of how these tools can help you boost your quality and ensure you’re meeting your system’s functional requirements.

Biography:
Jim Holmes. Father. Husband. Geek. Veteran. Over 20 years IT experience. Co-author of “Windows Developer Power Tools.” Coffee Roaster. MVP for C#. Chief Cat Herder of the CodeMash Conference. Liked 5th grade so much he did it twice. One-time setter, middle blocker, and weakside hitter. Blogger (http://FrazzledDad.com). Program Manager for Telligent Systems, makers of Community Server and other neat products. Big fan of naps.

May Meeting Recap: Essentials of the Rational Unified Process with Nilesh Prabhu

2009-05-08T12:31:00.004-04:00

Thanks to Nilesh Prabhu for delivering Essentials of the Rational Unifed Process (RUP). He made us think and facilitated an intriguing discussion. The slide deck is here.

Also thanks to Cardinal Solutions for sponsoring the meeting.

Links to topics discussed:
Rational Software Architect
Rational Software Modeler
Rational Application Developer
Open Unified Process (OpenUP)
Rational and Eclipse

Thanks for coming. We'll see you at the next meeting July 9th (Note change of date to avoid Independence Day weekend.)

Cardinal Solutions Sponsoring May 7th COALMG Meeting

2009-04-21T10:27:00.001-04:00

Cardinal Solutions, a VSTS Inner Circle Microsoft Gold partner, will provide pizza and drinks for the next COALMG meeting on May 7th. Pizza will arrive at 5:45PM.

May Meeting Announcement: Essentials of the Rational Unified Process

2009-03-05T20:00:00.001-05:00

Join us for an overview of the essentials of Rational Unified Process or “The RUP”. Whether you are an IT manager, project manager or team member, this Lunch and Learn has been designed to provide a better understanding of RUP’s iterative software development lifecycle and terminology.

Topics Discussed Will Include:

The Definition of a Process
Benefits of the RUP
RUP’s Framework
The Phases of the RUP
The Disciplines of the RUP
Processes & Tools
Common Errors

Nilesh Prabhu is a PMP and RUP certified Principal Consultant at Cardinal Solution Group. He has worn many hats in his career, providing guidance as a business analyst, in the roles of process engineer and test lead. He has also worked as a tester, test designer, SME, functional lead and programmer. His experience runs the gamut of the manufacturing, pension, financial and insurance industries.

March Meeting Recap: Kanban with Tim Wingfield

2009-03-05T19:00:00.001-05:00

Thanks Tim Wingfield for delivering Kanban with the Presentation Zen-style deck. An enjoyable and engaging discussion ensued. Tim posted the slides on his blog.

Also thanks to Quick Solutions for sponsoring the food.

Join us next month as we continue our methodology series with the Rational Unified Process (RUP).

March Meeting Announcement: A little bit of Lean with Kanban

2009-02-08T14:34:00.007-05:00

*** We return to our normal meeting date and time: Thursday March 5th at the Microsoft Polaris MPR from 6PM-8PM ***

Pizza and drinks will be provided by QSI.

A little bit of Lean with Kanban
In our industry’s continual effort to find a better way to provide software solutions, Lean software development practices are gaining some momentum. Kanban is one part of Lean, and one I’ve used to provide value to my team and my clients in a very short time. I’ll share some of my experiences with Kanban, and help you generate some ideas on places you can use it.

Tim Wingfield
Tim has been involved in web design and development for over 10 years. For the last five years Tim has been a developer with the Business Solutions Group at Quick Solutions Inc. in Columbus, OH. Tim has a wide range of knowledge in .Net but focuses on the user interface and the user experience in ASP.Net applications. Recently he has put more time into studying development processes and how to more efficiently create quality software. In what time is left over, Tim enjoys coaching his sons’ hockey teams, playing a little hockey himself, and traveling with his family.

You may find presentation follow up here.

Microsoft presents: Central Ohio: Application Lifecycle Management Briefings: Follow-up

2009-02-05T16:10:00.024-05:00

Thanks to all those attending the SDLC in a Box ALM Briefing event held on 2/05 at the Microsoft Polaris offices. Also, thanks to our sponsors: Microsoft, Quick Solutions and Cardinal Solutions. Finally, a special thanks to the organizers and contributors: Danilo Casino, Brian Cassidy, Brian Prince, Mike Gresley and David Baliles.

The presenters Alexei Govorine (Quick Solutions) and Jeff Hunsaker (Cardinal Solutions) follow-up with the slide deck, ALM/VSTS materials, inquiry responses and topics discussed below:

PRESENTATIONS:

SDLC Day 1

Business Value of TFS

SDLC Day 2

ALM/VSTS MATERIALS:

ALM Catalyst Brochure

ALM Catalyst Guide

DevTools Promotion

QUESTION AND ANSWER:

Q. Is there a user-level check-in authorization feature?
Yes. Within Source Control Explorer, right-mouse on a given node in the hierarchy selecting Properties. Within this dialog, one can Allow or Deny various actions by a TFS group. One of these actions is Check In.

Q. Does Code Metrics work for .Net 1.1 solutions?
A. I wasn't able to find a definitive answer but I'm fairly certain this is only possible for .Net 2.0+ solutions. Code Metrics is only available in Visual Studio 2008 so just loading up a .Net 1.1 solution will invoke an upgrade. NDepend may provide an alternative to analyze code and produce metrics for a .Net 1.1 solution. (Aside: One of the best write-ups on Code Metrics for Visual Studio 2008.)

Q. Does VSTS find dead (never invoked, inaccessible) code?
Not explicitly. Code Analysis (or FxCop) will identify uncalled private methods (but not public) as well as unused parameters within methods. However, a tool such as NDepend or JetBrains Resharper may provide further functionality. Good write-up on removing dead code.

Q. Can I integrate Code Profiler into the build?
Yes! Instructions here. Solid write-up on Code Profiler.

Q. How compare test results (pass/fail) across builds?
The "Regressions" report, which is out of the box for the MSF CMMI process template, will reveal this data. All TFS out of the box reports are detailed here. (From "patterns & practices: Team Development with Visual Studio Team Foundation Server": Regressions. What tests passed at one point but are now failing? This report shows a list of all the tests that passed previously and now are failing. This report is available in MSF CMMI.)

Q. Where can I find explainations of the various reports within the MSF process templates?
Within Process Guidance on the portal, select the Index top tab, then select the left link entitled "Reports".

LINKS:

VSTS / TFS 2008 SP1 Virtual PC
PDC
CodePlex
Branching Guidance
Branching visualizer
Check-in Policy Pack
Channel 9: 10-4 (Visual Studio 2010; .Net 4.0) videos
PEX - Automated white box testing for .Net (VS 2010)

Microsoft presents: Central Ohio: Application Lifecycle Management Briefings

2009-01-07T11:22:00.001-05:00

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!

January Meeting Recap

2009-01-07T11:19:00.001-05:00

Thanks again to Randy Pagels for sharing his "Lap Around Visual Studio Team System 2010" presentation to just under 20 weather-hardened attendees. Also thanks to Cardinal Solutions for sponsoring this meeting providing the food.

Next meeting: March 3rd 6PM
Topic: TBA

Cardinal Solutions Sponsoring 1/6 COALMG Meeting

2009-01-05T05:37:00.000-05:00

Cardinal Solutions, a VSTS Inner Circle Microsoft Gold partner, will provide pizza and drinks for the next COALMG meeting on January 6th. Pizza will arrive at 5:45PM.

January Meeting Announcement: Lap Around Visual Studio 2010

2008-12-11T21:48:00.004-05:00

****** NOTE: Meeting rescheduled to Tuesday Jan. 6th. ******

Lap Around Visual Studio Team System (VSTS) 2010
In the spirit of an agile sprint, see how to use the next version of Visual Studio Team System to manage user stories and re-factor existing architecture. Learn how to diagnose real production problems, debug in-production virtual labs, capture test data to eliminate the no-repro bugs, and transparently plan, monitor, and adapt software projects. Dive deep into the next version of Team Foundation Server (TFS), and learn how TFS has factored its learnings about usability, industrial scale, geographic distribution, manageability, and development process into the next version of the product. Hear about build automation, policy checks, parallel development, new project planning and tracking features, such as agile planning, end to end traceability, reporting, and dashboards, administration and ops --all designed to improve transparency and velocity for teams from size 5 through 50,000

Randy Pagels, Developer Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Randy is a Developer Technology Specialist and part of the Developer Platform and Evangelism tools team covering the Heartland District. He provides expertise on the Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server products. He helps customers get the most out of their ALM tools by explaining best practices, installation, and configuration through presentations, workshops, or quick starts. Prior to Microsoft he worked for 16 years as a developer in the IT area of DTE Energy. He has designed and developed many .Net web applications using agile methodologies.

November Meeting Recap

2008-11-09T13:29:00.003-05:00

Thanks again to Dan Rigsby who eloquently and prolifically delivered his "Agile Project Management with Scrum" presentation to just under 35 attendees. Also thanks to Cardinal Solutions for sponsoring this meeting providing the food.

Next meeting date: TBA (regularly scheduled date is New Years and following Thursday is CodeMash)
Topic: TBA

Cardinal Solutions Sponsoring 11/6 COALMG Meeting

2008-10-26T21:51:00.003-04:00

Cardinal Solutions, a VSTS Inner Circle Microsoft Gold partner, will provide pizza and drinks for the next COALMG meeting on November 6th. Pizza will arrive at 5:45PM.

Meet the Principal Group Manager of VSTS Test!

2008-10-26T21:40:00.001-04:00

"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.

Mark will be delivering a technical talk the evening of November 14th in conjunction with CONDG and COALMG at the Microsoft Polaris offices.

Agile Project Management with Scrum

2008-10-23T17:01:00.004-04:00

Meeting Date & Time: 11/06/2008 6:00PM

Session Details:
An introduction to Agile Project Management with Scrum. We will go over the Agile Manifesto and dive into the core principles that make up Scrum and how it can be used to help your development processes.

Speakers Bio:
Dan Rigsby is a Lead Software Engineer for Interactive Intelligence in Indianapolis, Indiana where he has been since March of 2000. Dan has been an avid .Net developer since late 2001 starting with ASP.Net, but today concentrates on SOA, Wcf, smart client applications, and a host of other areas. Dan is very active in the community as a developer, speaker, blogger, officer at IndyNDA, and 5 star moderator on the MSDN forums for Wcf. He is always eager to help out others when he can and has been awarded the Microsoft MVP award for his work with Connected Systems in Wcf. As a certified ScrumMaster, Dan has been involved in agile techniques and project management. Read more about Dan and development adventures at http://www.danrigsby.com/ or connect with him on Twitter or Facebook.

Post Meeting: MSBuild 3.5 and Team Build 2008 Continuous Integration

2008-09-04T21:52:00.002-04:00

Our most distant traveler for COALMG so far but our first Team System MVP, Steve delivered an insightful behind the scenes look at MSBuild, TFSBuild, and the Windows Installer XML (WiX). Thanks again to Steve...especially for his contributions to the community and traveling from Philly.

Our next meeting is Thursday November 6th at 6PM.
Speaker: Dan Rigsby
Topic: Agile Project Management with SCRUM

Food is provided for our next meeting by QSI

2008-08-28T13:01:00.003-04:00

We are making progress with our sponsors, based on the user feedback, we have looked for a food sponsor for our meetings.

It is with great please to see that Quick Solutions, Inc. will provide Pizza and drinks for our next meeting on September 4th, 2008. Pizza will be delivered at 5:45pm.

Also based on the feedback we have moved the start of the session from 5:30pm to 6:00pm, hopefully it will give us more time to get to the session on time.

MSBuild 3.5 and Team Build 2008 Continuous Integration

2008-08-28T12:50:00.002-04:00

Meeting Date & Time: 09/04/2008 6:00PM

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, Speaker Liaison for the Philly .NET User Group, and all around .NET fanatic.

Post Meeting: Extreme Programming at the Speed of Rails

2008-07-14T08:27:00.002-04:00

The COALMG group enjoyed tremendous insight and a robust discussion with Joe O'Brien, co-founder of Edge Case, LLC, Thursday night. Joe drilled into the Edge Case process which focuses on achieving strong business value using feedback loops while leveraging People, Process, and Tools. Thanks again to Joe for presenting and all the folks who came out in the heart of the summer.

Our next meeting is Thursday September 4th at 5:30PM. Speaker TBA.

Extreme Programming at the Speed of Rails

2008-06-29T20:08:00.000-04:00

Meeting Date & Time: 7/10/2008 5:30PM

Session Details:
Project Managment is not easy. Even when following Agile and XP it is still a necessary evil (afterall it does not mean no planning, it means just-in-time planning). What happens when you combine a proven methodology with a language that allows you to move faster then ever? Well, in the case of EdgeCase it causes chaos. After two years, we have finally figured out how to balance speed, quality, and customer delivery. This talk is a case study in how we have managed to keep several projects running concurrently, while delivering high-quality products tailored to the clients needs.

Speaker Bio:
Joe is a father, speaker, author and developer. Before helping found EdgeCase, LLC, Joe was a developer with ThoughtWorks and spent much of his time working with large J2EE and .NET systems for Fortune 500 companies. He has spent his career as a developer, project manager, and everything in between. Joe is a passionate member of the open source community. He co-founded the Columbus Ruby Brigade and helped organize the Chicago Area Ruby Users Group. His passions are Agile Development in the Enterprise, Ruby, and demonstrating to the Fortune 500 the elegance and power of this incredible language.

Electronic SCRUM Board

2008-06-27T13:00:00.003-04:00

Cool electronic SCRUM board coming from Conchango. I always get nervous someone/thing will wreck the physical board. Distributed teams can benefit as well.

Next Meeting: Thursday July 10th

2008-05-12T12:49:00.002-04:00

Due to the Independence Day holiday, we're pushing our meeting back a week to Thursday July 10th at the Microsoft Polaris Office from 5:30pm - 7:30pm. Topic and speaker: TBA.

ALM Expo 2008

2008-05-10T08:27:00.004-04:00

I've not attended so I can't vouch for the content but I thought you may be interested in attending the free, online ALM Expo 2008 on May 20th.

Post Meeting: Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Visual Studio Team System

2008-04-30T10:37:00.003-04:00

Thanks for everyone who came out to our first meeting last night. We had 25 folks and some excellent questions and dialog. Thanks to Randy Pagels for sharing VSTS/TFS with us.

I tried to capture the questions and answers below. Please post additional inquiries, topics you would like to see covered at future meetings or any thoughts as a comment to this post.

We'll announce our next meeting speaker and date on this site in the coming month. Thanks for coming!

Q&A
Q. Can TFS integrate TFS with Clarify?
A. Yes via API/web services (true with just about any 3rd party tool)

Q. Does the TFS Setup account still need admin rights to create databases on SQL 2005 for TFS 2008? (setupwarehouse.exe)
A. For TFS 2008, only need to be a member of the SQL Server sysadmin role…not admin on the box as in TFS 2005. Information here.

Q. What's a label?
A. Good explanations here and here.

Q. Can I perform conditional deployment within OOtB features of TFS Build?
A. TFS performs limited deployment (post to a file share) with OOtB features. If needs are extensive, use PowerShell or customize the TFS process workflows.

Q. Can I run load test upon check-in?
A. Would require customization.

Q. Can I version database schemas and database artifacts?
A. Yes.

Q. How does Database Pro persist refactor instructions?
A. The refactor log file.

Q. I'm not able to download VSTS and/or TFS off my MSDN subscriber downloads.
A. Check your MSDN subscription (requires Premium) and/or check with your MSDN administrator

Q. Are there Team System best practices available? Real-world experience?
A. Yes but you have to hunt for it. Resources:

Writing Maintainable and Robust Applications with Visual Studio Team System

2008-04-23T16:44:00.001-04:00

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 Metrics, Code Profiling, and Unit Testing are tools that are part of Team System and can be used through the software development lifecycle to improve quality. The impact of software defects is one of the reasons it is difficult to control the costs of the development and deployment activities on software projects. It is commonly accepted that defects that get resolved later in the development cycle cost more to fix. Learn how you can reduce defects by using the tools provided in Visual Studio Team System Developer Edition 2008.

Speaker Bio:
Randy Pagels - ALM Technology Specialist, Microsoft Corporation
Randy is an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Technology specialist for the Heartland District providing expertise on the Visual Studio Team System and Team Foundation Server products. He helps customers get the most out of their ALM tools by explaining best practices, installation, and configuration through presentations, workshops, or quick starts. Prior to Microsoft Randy worked as a developer for 16 years in the IT area of DTE Energy. He has architectured and development many .Net web applications using agile methodologies.