Central Ohio ALM Group

Reminder Meeting TONIGHT

2012-03-01T15:01:00.001-05:00

"Agile is great, but how do I sell it upwards?"
By Dr. Charles(Chuck) Suscheck

Agile is a great tool from the team perspective and often from the business perspective, but how do you convince upper management or executive leadership that agile is really worth the investment. Executive level leadership is constantly balancing competitive advantage with risk. In order to sell agile upwards, the process has to be understood to be not only better than the current process, but safer. This presentation will cast agile software development in the light of risk reduction and higher ROI through a variety of compelling arguments. By the end of the presentation, the participant will have a number of tools in his/her quiver to sell agile upwards

Optional RSVP for meeting tomorrow

2012-02-29T09:42:00.002-05:00

You can RSVP for the meeting tomorrow on the Meetup. It is not required but helps us know the amount of food to have on hand.

http://www.meetup.com/techlifecolumbus/events/54239442/

Meeting March 1 - "Agile is great, but how do I sell it upwards?"

2012-02-28T16:38:00.002-05:00

By Dr. Charles(Chuck) Suscheck
Thursday March 1st 6pm at Improving Enterprises
4449 Easton Way Suite 100, Columbus, Ohio 43219

Agile is a great tool from the team perspective and often fro the business perspective, but how do you convince, at the organizational level, executive leadership that agile is really worth the investment. Executive level leadership is constantly balancing competitive advantage with risk. In order to sell agile upwards, the process has to be understood to be not only better than the current process, but safer. This presentation will cast agile software development in the light of risk reduction and higher ROI through a variety of compelling arguments. By the end of the presentation, the participant will have a number of tools in his/her quiver to sell agile upwards.

Chuck specializes in software development methodologies and project management and has over 25 years of professional experience in information technology. Dr. Suscheck has held positions of Process Architect, Director of Research, Principle Consultant, and Professional Trainer at some of the most recognized companies in America. He has spoken at national and international conferences such as Agile 20XX, OOPSLA, ECOOP, and Borcon on topics related to project management. He has also has over 30 articles published in academic and industry journals.

Meeting this week, Jan 19th.

2012-01-17T09:51:00.001-05:00

This month’s meeting is this Thursday Jan 19th. Randy Pagels will be presenting “A Sneak Peek of Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 11”, see previous post for speaker bio and abstract. This meeting and all future meetings will be held at the office of Improving Enterprises at Easton. 4449 Easton Way, Suite 100, Columbus, Ohio 43219. City Barbeque will be catered in for dinner.

Welcome to Daniel Gray, COALMG Leader

2012-01-09T08:32:00.000-05:00

Alexei and I welcome Daniel Gray of Improving Enterprises to the leadership team for COALMG. While Alexei and I will remain involved, Daniel will assume the lead for organizing meetings, booking speakers and proliferating the group. If you have suggestions, want to sponsor or would like to volunteer, feel free to contact Daniel (and all of us) by leaving a comment on the blog.

Thanks, Daniel! Welcome to the team.

Upcoming Meeting January 19th

2012-01-08T21:51:00.002-05:00

A Sneak Peek of Visual Studio & Team Foundation Server 11
Randy Pagels, Microsoft
Microsoft’s application lifecycle management tooling is all about enabling teams to deliver great software. You will learn how to more effectively plan and track work by using the new web-based project management tools; how to bridge the divide between development and operations by utilizing IntelliTrace in your production environments; and how to help keep team members on-task and “in the zone”, no matter how much there’re randomized. See the new “My Work” experience for managing your active tasks and integrated code review features. In addition to making your team more productive, you will see how you can boost your overall code quality with new features such as code clone and an overhauled unit testing story in Visual Studio 11. With Team Foundation Server you will see the full gamut of collaboration improvements, from the newly revamped Team Explorer, to the version control & build improvements. Want to work offline seamlessly? Wish merging happened less frequently & was simpler when it did? How about find work items faster? Join us to see all this and more.

About the Speaker
Randy Pagels is a Sr. Developer Technology Specialist and a Developer Platform and Evangelism tools team member covering the Heartland District (MI, OH, KY, TN) for Microsoft. His expertise includes Visual Studio, Team Foundation Server, Test Professional, and Lab Management products. He educates the customer to maximize 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 and has designed and developed many .Net web applications using agile methodologies. Randy is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) on Team Foundation Server. For further resource information, please refer to his website teamsystemcafe.net.

Next meeting January 19th instead of January 5th

2012-01-05T08:54:00.002-05:00

Due to the holiday schedule and CodeMash next week, this month's regular scheduled meeting will not be on January 5th but will be on January 19 at the office of Improving Enterprises. I will put the speaker and topic info up next week.

I’m looking forward to great year with this group in 2012.

Regards,
Daniel Gray.

Need Help: COALMG Leader

2011-11-13T18:54:00.000-05:00

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.

November Meeting Announcement: Visual Studio 2011 – Early Introduction

2011-10-31T15:45:00.004-04:00

Special Announcement
This month, we're moving the time and place (same date/day) to Thursday November 3rd 11:30am-1pm at Cardinal Solutions: 401 N. Front St. Suite 210 Columbus, OH 43215. You can park in Nationwide's "Lot C" parking lot and get your ticket validated at the meeting. Parking directions/map. Watch out for 670 ramp closings. :(

Live Meeting Link
Topic: Early Introduction to Visual Studio 2011
Join us as we dive head first into the latest technology preview of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2011. We'll cover the basics but drill down on improvements in the testing experience.

Sponsor: Cardinal Solutions Group
Cardinal will host as well as provide lunch for the meeting.

Bio:
Jeff Hunsaker is the Director of Client Services for Cardinal Solutions Group in their Columbus, Ohio office. He is a ALM/Visual Studio Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), a certified Scrum Master and co-founder of the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group (COALMG http://www.coalmg.org/). Jeff assists clients with architecting and developing custom Microsoft applications, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure/Online Services and Microsoft Business Intelligence (MSBI) solutions. Jeff also enjoys optimizing the development process to produce business value and create an effective environment for the team. A frequent presenter at client and regional events, Jeff gets passionate about efficient, resourceful, and elegant technology solutions, agile development techniques and providing value for clients quickly and regularly. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys his family (two boys, wife Lisa), reading, and writing. You can keep up with Jeff by visiting his blog (http://www.jeffreyhunsaker.com/) or on Twitter at @jeffhunsaker.

May Meeting Announcement: Missing Pieces: The Road from Agile Enthusiast to Agile Team Member

2011-04-16T17:42:00.002-04:00

Missing Pieces: The Road from Agile Enthusiast to Agile Team Member
Agile mechanics can be installed in weeks or even days, but there is a depth to successful Agile teams that is difficult to capture. In Missing Pieces, I discuss many of the subtle and overlooked traits, behaviors, and practices of Agile team members by describing high and low points in my Agile journey. In returning to your budding Agile team you'll see new opportunity to leap beyond sufficient Agile to high performing Agile by recognizing moments for courage, moments for silence, moments for failure and more.

Ryan Cromwell is a Coder, Agile Coach and Microsoft ALM MVP. He has over 10 years of experience as a software engineer, including expertise in next generation interactive applications with Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight. Ryan is committed to the continual improvement of development practices and techniques. His expertise and dedication has brought success to numerous projects, working with Marathon Oil Company, Speedway SuperAmerica LLC, FedEx-Kinkos, Lexis-Nexis, Reynolds & Reynolds, and more. Ryan is co-founder of the Cincy Clean Coders group and has led presentations on effective team development and various topics such as Agile, Scrum, WPF, WCF, Software Patterns, and Team Foundation Server. You can find Ryan at http://blog.cromwellhaus.com and on Twitter as @cromwellryan.

MeetUp Cross-Post

The Ultimate Guide to Visual Studio 2010: Coding Debugging, Modeling, Testing, Building and Deployment

2011-03-11T12:03:00.000-05:00

Visual Studio 2010 is packed with new and enhanced features to help you create the best code possible and simplify your entire development process from design to deployment.
Microsoft experts will show off the powerful new tools that Visual Studio 2010 brings to your tool box.
Essential Tips for the Professional Developer. Most of us use Visual Studio but do we really know how to USE it? We will show you the top tips and tricks that can jet propel your use of the IDE. Marvel at the simple editor features that you never think about and the advanced power tools you can use to improve your programming experience and productivity.
Power Tools for the Master Craftsman. Has your code base developed a mind of its own? Is it in need a heavy dose of refactoring but you don’t know where to start? We will start with a look at Code Metrics, a set of industry measures that help developers identify potential risks and uncover code that should be reworked or more thoroughly tested. We will also show you how to use Code Analysis to analyze entire assemblies for commonly encountered programming and design errors. And let’s not forget our databases. We will walk through the powerful new change management, data quality management, and deployment tools for databases that help us maintain the ever elusive one version of the truth.
Blueprints for a Long and Happy Lifecycle. Whether you’re creating new solutions or enhancing existing applications, you need to consider their entire life cycle to truly achieve your business goals. We will take a look at the new modeling tools for understanding and communicating your system’s architecture, eliminating those nasty “no repro” bugs using IntelliTrace™, and streamlining your development pipeline to ensure quality results from design to deployment.
Key Experiences:
· Visual Studio Productivity Power Pack
· Visual Studio Feature Pack
· Code Metrics
· Code Analysis
· Database Management & Deployment
· Architecture Discovery
· Architecture Modeling & Design with UML
· Architecture Validation
· IntelliTrace
· Build Customization & Gated Check-in
· Branch Visualization & Merging
· Methodology & Process Selection

Date/Reg URL	Location
3/15/2011	Southfield, MI
3/16/2011	Independence, OH
3/17/2011	Columbus, OH
3/18/2011	Mason, OH

Presenters:

Zain Naboulsi has been working with the latest Microsoft technologies as a consultant and trainer since 1995. He currently works on the Visual Studio Tips and Tricks series, helping developers reach their full coding potential. He also created Online Community Evangelism - an effort to build communities in virtual places like LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere. He is not only a proponent of the community aspect of online environments but also is a supporter of the myriad business applications that these new mediums offer.

Clint Edmonson has been developing software with Microsoft technologies for the last 18 years, working on everything from custom shrink-wrapped software at small startups to enterprise architecture and methodology adoption at fortune 500 companies. He is currently an Architect Evangelist in Microsoft’s North Central District, helping companies understand Microsoft’s latest developer and platform offerings and helping them develop strategic roadmaps for their adoption. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri and is the host of www.notsotrivial.net.

March Meeting: Cancelled

2011-02-11T08:00:00.002-05:00

Because we moved our January meeting to February, we're cancelling the March meeting (well, that and we'll be returning from the MVP Summit that day :). Look for an announcement for our next meeting for the first week in May.

February Meeting Announcement: Visual Studio 2010 Diagnostics and Analysis Tools to Improve Software Quality

2011-01-18T16:49:00.000-05:00

Note the date change: Thursday February 10th. Same time. Same place.

Visual Studio 2010 Diagnostics and Analysis Tools to Improve Software Quality

As applications become more complex and pressures to decrease costs increase, we need tools to facilitate reducing the turn-around time for testers and developers to find and fix bugs. Microsoft Test and Lab Manager enables testers to collect more detailed diagnostic data during a test run leading to higher quality bugs that provide more insight to the developers on what actually went wrong when the bug occurred. With the addition of Test Strips, testers can generate automation as an artifact of their test runs helping to not only increase coverage of the application, but reducing the time it takes to manually test the application. Test Impact Analysis helps developers test the right automated tests from within Visual Studio, while testers know what the right set of tests to prioritize and run are given recent changes introduced by the development organization.

Randy Pagels
Randy is a Sr. Developer Technology Specialist and part of the Developer Platform and Evangelism tools team covering the Heartland District (MI, OH, KY, TN). He provides expertise on the Visual Studio 2010, Team Foundation Server, and Lab Management 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 Announcement: Windows Azure | Robert Duffner is Microsoft's Director of Product Management for Windows Azure

2010-10-31T19:48:00.004-04:00

Date/Time:
Thursday November 4th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

Agenda:
Deep dive on Windows Azure architecture and its construction.

Biography:
Robert Duffner is Microsoft's Director of Product Management for Windows Azure. Whether engaging with senior IT executives or developers, Robert is focused on amplifying the voice of the customer with the customer advocacy programs he directs to help shape the future product direction of the Windows Azure Platform. These include the Windows Azure Platform Customer Advisory Board as well as driving the Windows Azure Technology Adoption Program (TAP) to help our early adopter customers and partners validate the platform and shape the final product by providing early and deep feedback. Robert also stays engaged with the top Windows Azure experts in the world as the Community Lead for the Windows Azure Most Valued Professionals (MVP) program.

Robert is one of Microsoft's top experts in Open Source software (OSS) were he joined the company in 2007 as the Director of Open Source Strategy. Robert is a 16 year veteran of the software industry and an enterprise Java expert having worked for companies such as IBM, BEA Systems (acquired by Oracle), and Vignette.

September Meeting Follow-ups: Demystifying Visual Studio 2010 Database Tools

2010-09-09T19:11:00.011-04:00

It was great to see such a large and enthusiastic group tonight at COALMG. Thank you to Alexei for delivering a great presentation on Visual Studio 2010 Database Tools. Following up on a few items of discussion:

Visual Studio / TFS 2010 RTM "All-Up" VHD/VM from Microsoft and Brian Keller
Deploying schema/DDL/DML changes to an existing database (e.g. production database in which we do not want to drop entities and we cannot access from our network to perform a comparison to our development or QA environments)
- Ben Day article on deploying with VSDBCMD.EXE DBPro. 2008...still a great article
- "Build and Deploy Databases to a Staging or Production Environment"
The original powerpoint presentation was borrowed from Randy Pagels, modified version can be downloaded from here.

September Meeting Announcement: Demystifying Visual Studio 2010 Database Tools

2010-08-25T20:57:00.003-04:00

Date/Time:
Thursday September 9th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

Agenda:
Regardless of what kind of development we do, most applications require data storage: database, file system, memory, cloud, etc. Since the relational database is still the most common platform for data storage, the question becomes "how do we manage our database development effort and keep it synchronized with code?"

In this presentation we will explore how Visual Studio 2010 addresses many of our database development pains.

With Schema/Data Comparisons we can start new database development or pull in an existing schema and data.
Improved Refactoring Tools help us to avoid costly typos and allow for reliable schema updates.
Robust sample Data Generation Plans provides us with a freedom to develop against populated databases without compromising production sensitive data.
With ability to create tests for stored procedures and plugging the database project into the automated build, we can verify expected output and performance as part of the Continuous Integration build.
With robust deployment choices we can target local development or test environments independently of each other.

While Visual Studio won't do everything for us, it is highly extensible; providing support of not only SQL Server but other platforms (Oracle, DB2, etc) as well.

Biography:
Alexei graduated from Capital University with Bachelor of Arts in Chemistry ACS and Physics. He also attended graduate program at The Ohio State University for Analytical Chemistry. Alexei has been with Quick Solutions since 2004, currrently he is driving ALM and .NET practices at QSI. Alexei’s development background involves primarily working with Microsoft based platforms with special interests in Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio. Outside of work he is passionate about science, science fiction, hockey, and his wife Tammy.
Alexei is the co-founder of Central Ohio Application Life-cycle Management Group and an active member of Ohio IT community. Twitter: @Leshka.

You can read more about Alexei Govorine at govorin.blogspot.com.

July Meeting Recap: Modernizing Legacy Applications with Mark Juras

2010-07-06T13:27:00.002-04:00

Thank you to Mark and Great Migrations for leading the discussion on how to deal with legacy applications as well as sponsoring pizza for the group.

July Meeting Announcement: Modernizing Legacy Applications

2010-06-27T21:04:00.003-04:00

Date/Time:
Thursday July 1st, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

Agenda:
Adapting to technology is an ongoing challenge for all businesses, and arguably the most challenging type of technology change is switching to a different development platform. The platform sets the rules and makes your systems possible; it is major component of developer capability and it binds IT communities together. However, during the course of a system's lifespan, its original platform will be displaced by next generation tools and technologies. Usually, the platform changes happen gradually and with an appropriate measure of backward compatibility. IT organizations can adapt through standard maintenance activities. Sometimes, however, the changes are more radical and disruptive and the effects threaten to crumble the foundations of your IT organization.

Today, the entire Microsoft Windows development ecosystem is in the midst of a huge platform migration – from Visual Basic (VB) to .NET. Through the 1990s, VB grew in popularity because it offered a quantum leap in the ease of graphical client-server and distributed application development. In 2000, there were an estimated 3 million IT professionals developing systems with VB and approximately 30 billion lines of VB code running in production systems. Through the 1990s, Visual Basic upgrades had been fairly painless and inexpensive because Microsoft made new versions of VB backward compatible. But things changed with the introduction of Microsoft's new flagship development platform – the .NET platform. An upgrade from VB to .NET brings with it a radical shift in terms of architecture, design, deployment, features, and tools.

Confronted with declining vendor and community support and major migration challenges, many organizations are looking for a strategy to move massive business systems and development teams to .NET. They want to minimize disruption and costs and leverage the momentum of the platform change to move their capabilities forward. As system architecture manager for a financial services firm, I faced this challenge. We wanted to move a huge (1.2M LOC) application portfolio from VB to re-engineered .NET and we had to do it without impacting our ongoing commitments to serve the business. After extensive research and analysis of options we discovered a smarter way of modernizing large systems and completed our migration ahead on schedule and under budget. Subsequently, I started a company to refine this solution and offer it to the VB community.

This discussion will present the VB to .NET migration problem and our unique solution. We will finish with a discussion of the challenges of making a business case for migration and the role of legacy code and system analysis and reengineering translation tools.

Biography:
Mark Juras is founder of Great Migrations LLC, a technology solutions provider that develops industrial-strength software re-engineering tools and provides software migration services. Mark has been an IT professional since 1985. Before forming Great Migrations, Mark was an independent software products vendor/developer, a technical consultant and trainer, and a system architecture manager for a financial services firm. Mark's full bio is here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/markjuras

Sponsors:
Great Migrations (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.

Scrum for TFS 2010 at Path to Agility

2010-05-29T13:26:00.004-04:00

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.

Public Sector User Group

2010-04-13T13:02:00.003-04:00

Excuse the late notice but if you're in the public sector, leverage TFS and work in the central Ohio region, check out the PS TFS User Group Tuesday April 13th (yes, that's today) at 3PM at the William Green Building downtown. Contact Shawn Wilkoff (shawn dot wilkoff at bwc.state.oh.us) for more information.

We hope to do a few joint meetings between PS and COALMG later this year.

ATTN: Meeting Date Change | Cameron Skinner Unveils VS 2010 Architecture Tools: Wednesday April 28th

2010-03-22T19:55:00.003-04:00

Date/Time (ATTENTION--DATE CHANGE):
Wednesday April 28th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

PLEASE REGISTER FOR THE EVENT, SO WE CAN HAVE AN ACCURATE COUNT OF PEEPS FOR FOOD: http://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=9416

Agenda:
Have you ever had to work with a legacy codebase? Designing new functionality on existing applications can be daunting. There are always differences between the original design and the current implementation. The new Architecture tools within Visual Studio 2010 help you to understand the application you have, design new functionality you need, and validate that your design and your implementation do not deviate. Join us for a look at the new code visualization, UML, and architectural validation tools which allow you to model domain-specific problem domains and maintain proper control and visibility of your software systems.

Biography:
Cameron Skinner joined Microsoft in 2005 and is currently a product unit manager on the Visual Studio team. He is responsible for overseeing the Visualization and Architecture capabilities found in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Skinner was the CTO and chief architect of application development tools for Embarcadero Technologies. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO for Advanced Software Technologies. In his limited spare time, Mr. Skinner enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, Crossfit, and playing his acoustic bass. Find out what Cameron is doing by following him on Twitter and his blog.

Sponsors:
COALMG
CONDG
Microsoft

March Meeting Recap: Agile with TFS 2010 with Jeff Hunsaker

2010-03-05T12:57:00.002-05:00

Thank you for coming and participating in probably one of the most engaging and interactive sessions we've had at COALMG. You made it great! Thanks to Aaron Bjork who created the original slide deck and to our sponsors last night: Cardinal Solutions and Microsoft.

Keep an eye on the blog for announcements on our next meeting. Likely, we'll switch to a date the week of April 26th for a special visitor from Redmond.

I've posted the slide deck here and you can review Aaron's Scrum presentation page here.

March Meeting Announcement: Agile with TFS 2010

2010-02-16T19:25:00.003-05:00

Date/Time:
Thursday March 4th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

Agenda:
Interested in agile software techniques? Of course you are. TFS 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 add a whole lot of agile goodness. We'll attempt a start-to-finish project leveraging some of the latest agile features such as: Excel Planning sheets, branching, collaboration, continuous integration and testing. Get ready for the upcoming 2010 release as COALMG continues our TFS 2010 launch series.

Biography:
Jeff Hunsaker is the Microsoft Solutions Practice Manager for Cardinal Solutions Group in their Columbus, Ohio office. He is a VS.Net ALM Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), a certified Scrum Master and co-founder of the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group (COALMG www.coalmg.org). Jeff assists clients architecting and developing custom .Net applications, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure/Online Services and Microsoft Business Intelligence (MSBI) solutions. Jeff also enjoys optimizing the development process to produce an enjoyable and effective result for developers and the rest of the team. A frequent presenter at client and regional events, Jeff gets passionate about efficient, resourceful, and elegant technology solutions, agile development techniques and providing value for clients quickly and regularly. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys his family (two boys, wife Lisa), reading, and writing. You can keep up with Jeff by visiting his blog (www.JeffreyHunsaker.com) or on Twitter at @jeffhunsaker.

Sponsors:
Cardinal Solutions (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.

Recording of the VS2010 Test Elements

2010-01-17T19:26:00.001-05:00

Promise that next time I will get right. I have messed up the size of the capture, so as a result it is very hard to see it. I am working on re-creating it, meanwhile try to enjoy this one.

January Meeting Announcement: Start Your Year with Randy and a Sprint Around Visual Studio 2010 Test Elements

2009-12-17T09:00:00.002-05:00

Date/Time:
Thursday January 7th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)

Agenda:

Are you tired of spending hours trying to reproduce and diagnose bugs?
Do you have a hard time getting testers and developers to talk to each other?
Is it difficult to determine which tests are most important to run after you produce a new build?

Software testing is perhaps the #1 area of investment for Visual Studio 2010. During this introductory session we explore the new software testing architecture offered by Visual Studio 2010. We examine the various testing roles played by members of the development and testing teams and show how they will interact with Visual Studio 2010 to more effectively test software and eliminate bugs. We will take a deep look at manual testing, lab management, data diagnostics adapters, the "actionable bug", functional UI testing, test impact analysis, test automation, and much more which will help you more easily find and eliminate defects from your software.

Biography:
Randy Pagels – Sr. Developer Technical Specialist, Microsoft Corporation. Randy is a Developer Technology Specialist and part of the Developer Platform and Evangelism tools team covering the Heartland District for almost 4 years now. He provides expertise on the Visual Studio 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.

Randy maintains Team System Cafe website, where you can find a lot of useful information on Visual Studio. You even may find him once in awhile on Twitter :).

General Information:

As usual COALMG will provide food and drinks!
~~We are working on broadcasting the meeting with LiveMeeting, no promises.~~
One attendee will get a pass to CODEMASH 2.0.1.0
One lucky attendee will walk away with Windows7 Upgrade