December 31, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Wishing everyone the world over (depending on your calendar, of course) a very safe and very happy new year!  On with the links…

Scrum for Team System 3.0 from Urban Turtle – Urban Turtle just released an updated version 3.7 (beta) of their software and their asking you to give them some feedback on the new built-in support for Scrum for Team System 3.0.  This post also talks a bit about the customization support in Urban Turtle, so check it out.

Rangers … What’s Up? – December Highlights from Willy-Peter Schaub – Willy-Peter updates us on all the goodness that the Visual Studio ALM Rangers team was up to in December.

TFS Guides from Eran Ruso – Eran maintains a terrific CodePlex project that collects guides on a number of important TFS and Visual Studio ALM topics including a Coded UI Test Basic User Guide, TFS 2010 Work Items Basic User Guide, and Team System and MSProject User Guide.  The current guides are all authored by Eran but you are encouraged to submit your own.

Run Unit Tests in Parallel using visual Studio 2010 from Shai Raiten – Shai has published an awesome post showing you how to enable running unit tests in parallel on multi-core machines.  For developers and teams running lots of unit tests, this is must-read stuff.

A Christmas Gift from the Visual Studio ALM Team

Microsoft just sent a little marketing gift that you might be interested in: Visual Studio ALM – Solving Your Team Development Challenges.  It’s a very nicely put together guide to Visual Studio ALM that’s heavy on the sales-y stuff but still worth a look.

To give you an idea of what’s in it, here’s a view of the table of contents:

I’m pretty sure I got it because I attended the ALM Summit, so other attendees should probably look for it hitting their mailbox soon.  Additionally, your MS Sales Rep. will probably have plenty of these to hand out, so start twisting their arms to get your own copy if you weren’t at the ALM Summit.

But really, the cool part of this is that it contains the preface and first chapter of the new book from Sam Guckenheimer and Neno Loje, Software Engineering with Visual Studio.  Amazon shows a release date of May 30, 2011 and also shows a different name of Agile Software Delivery with Visual Studio.  But don’t worry, it appears to be the same book and I’m guessing we’ll get it a bit earlier, so you should pre-order with confidence.  Here’s a bit of what you can expect:

This book is the successor to Sam Guckenheimer’s previous book, Software Engineering with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System.  Don’t bother buying it if you don’t have it – you can typically get it from MS for free if you ask the right people and it’s pretty dated since it was originally released during the TFS 2005 days.

This will be one of several books on Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server to look out for.  Cool stuff!

December 30, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

What are you plans for 2011?  We’ve got big ones! 

Today touches more on process than TFS, and gives some insight into what my thoughts are on the Agile and Test brouhaha from a few weeks ago.  I’ll have a follow-up post soon, so stay tuned.  On with the links…

Manual Testing and Babysitting Your Tests from Raul Perez – “No matter how much test automation you have nothing will ever substitute the value added by manual testing.”  Amen brother. 

Agile Programming has Fallen Short, Conference Told from InfoWorld – This is nearly 5 years old, but the great Steve McConnell’s criticisms are still as valid as ever and I’m hearing similar complaints all the time.  Ultimately, one size doesn’t fit all, and you’ve got to find processes and practices that fit.

5 Questions on Agile Development from Steve McConnell – I don’t want you to think that Agile is “wrong”, because that’s not at all what this is about.  Steve (from 2007) answers five very important questions that really do a good job of stressing the “universal good” of what Agile can provide.  Iterations (and short ones, too) FTW!

I’ll revisit this topic soon and hopefully, with proper care, and I learned a lot from the readers that took their time to post.  But be aware, my approach hasn’t changed.  My goal in providing solutions is to be as simple and pragmatic as possible.  And what many are selling as being “right” is neither simple or pragmatic.  But hey, here’s hoping there’s enough room in the world for all of us.

December 29, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

The Holidays are always a slow period in the community, so let’s uncover a few more items you may have missed.  On with the links…

Coded UI Tests Article Series (part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4) from Mickey Gousset – Mickey writes a series of article for Visual Studio Magazine on Coded UI Tests.  It’s not only a good introduction, but Mickey also dives into data-driving Coded UI Tests and provides a few best practices.

TFS Integration Platform – Planning a Migration … Starting with a Solid Foundation from Willy-Peter Schaub – Great post for those of you planning to leverage the TFS Integration Platform to do a data migration.  There are a number of migration scenarios to consider that impact your migration and this post helps you properly plan your data migration to hopefully make it as easy as possible.

TFS2010: Update Activity Logging Cleanup Interval from Grant Holliday – Grant provides a PowerShell script to let you set the length of time TFS holds on to entries in the activity log.  He also provides a link to a previous post on querying the data in the TfsActivityLogging table, which can be critical if you’re trying to analyze TFS performance.

Streamlined: Extending Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management from Allen Clark – Allen provides a tremendous link dump to extensibility information for TFS and Visual Studio ALM-related features.  If extending TFS is in your future, this should be bookmarked.

December 28, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Rounding the bend on 2010!  On with the links…

“Team for Word” A TFS Word Client and a User Guide for It from Eran Ruso – Eran blogs about a TFS plug-in for Microsoft Word available on CodePlex called “Team for Word” and compares it to TeamSpec. He also provides a short guide to help you get started if you want to give it a try.  I’ll definitely be taking a closer look at this one in the future.

CPU Performance Counters in Visual Studio 2010 Profiler from the Visual Studio Profiler Team Blog – This is an older post but one that provides a great intro into using the Visual Studio Profiler to profile CPU use.  The post also explains the difference between sampling and instrumentation for those trying to figure out which selection is a better option for their needs.

VS2010 SP1: Silverlight 4 profiling from Visual Studio UI from the Visual Studio Profiler Team Blog – Here’s another post from the Profiler team showing off the new Visual Studio SP1 feature that enables profiling for Silverlight applications.

Installing and Configuring Test Controller and Installing and Configuring Test Agent from Syed Aslam Basha – Collecting data in some test environments requires the installation and configuration of Test Controller and Test Agent bits.  These posts provide steps on getting them installed and configured so that you can collect all of that rich defect data no matter what environment your tests happen to exercise.

December 27, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Did you get any cool toys for Christmas?  On with links…

TFS 2010 Security–How to determine if a User is a member of a TFS Group (or a Windows Group) from Chris Adams – TFS Security can be administered through Active Directory groups, Windows groups, and TFS Groups.  In cases where all three have been used, it can be difficult to figure out why users have some capabilities and are denied in other cases.  This post talks through how you can make sense of some of the confusion you’ve created by showing you how to utilize some tools to determine if a user is valid and if a user is a member of a certain group.

Supporting Multiple Feature Teams, Multiple Development Cycles and Multiple Releases in an Agile Way from Bill Heys – Bill has a great post discussing how Agile release management practices and rigorous branch management strategies co-exist.

NRB reduces development costs by 10% with Team Foundation Server 2010 from PTA Team Blog for Belgium & Luxembourg – Via Martin Woodward comes this link to a great post discussing a case study on Network Research Belgium (NRB) where TFS was used to reduce development costs despite the fact they are in a heterogonous (they use .NET, Java, Cobol, and PL/1).

Microsoft How-To: Scrum for Everyone from Aaron Bjork – Aaron has a nice article in Visual Studio Magazine that provides an overview of the Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum process template.  It provides a nice overview of how this template is suited to meet the needs of a Scrum team and should help get you up to speed on using burndown and velocity to manage your team.

December 25, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!

Even if you don’t celebrate these holidays for whatever reason, I wish you and your family joy and peace and thank you so very much for reading.

December 24, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and we scoured the net, and saved a few links so today, you’d get our best yet. Well maybe not, but these’ll have to do. Once again, this post mines a few gems you might have missed. On with the links…

Team Foundation SDK Update includes the Server Object Model from Allen Clark – Allen blogs on the Team Foundation SDK Update that now covers the server object model.  He also links to a few samples to get you going if you’re ready to dive into the SDK.

TFS 2010 SCOM Management Pack is Available from Brian Harry – A few months back, Brian announced the release of the TFS2010 SCOM Management Pack which provides SCOM monitoring for TFS Servers. Definitely worth a look if you’re in IT or want a peek at the health of your TFS server(s).

TFS 2010: Adding Scheduling/Planning Hours to MSF Agile Bug Work Item Template from Chris Adams – This post covers another scenario where the out-of-the-box Agile template is modified to add scheduling/planning hours to the Bug work item template. If you’re looking to add a few fields to your project, Chris provides lots of screens and details that should get you going.

Branching for a Release in Team Foundation Server from Jeremy Jameson – Jeremy discusses branching and branching best practices in this post. This is a *hard* topic that, for many teams with complicated scenarios, can be tough to get your head around. Jeremy deals with a scenario and even loops in build and versioning to complete the release management picture. As linked in the post, if you have any questions around branch and release management, you should definitely check out the Visual Studio TFS Branching Guide 2010 on Codeplex.

Wishing you and your family, no matter where you might be, a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

December 23, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Today we’re headed to the vault to pick out a few things you might have missed. On with the links…

Customizable Process Guidance from Allen Clark – Allen provides download links for the process guidance of the three Microsoft process templates and runs down his preferred way of making process guidance modifications.

TFS2010: Reconcile Workspace after Gated Checkin is Weird if Visual Studio 2010 is Elevated from Ben Day – Running Visual Studio with elevated privileges? You may have encountered the gated check-in headache Ben describes in this post.

Query Check-In Policy Overrides from John Burns – John provides a query that will show you every instance where someone has overridden a check-in policy. For some times, being able to report this is crucial to being able to manage it effectively. You can also set up an email alert if you want to manage it in real time.

Web Config Transforms, TFS Build, and xcopy Deployment from Kevin Daly – Great post showing teams stuck with xcopy deployment how to make the most out of Visual Studio 2010 with web.config transforms and TFS Build 2010. Everything is really MSBuild, but pitching that over to TFS Build is then trivial.

December 22, 2010 – TFS Links and Quick Hits

Lots of good stuff today.  On with the links…

Installing TFS 2010 with SharePoint Foundation 2010 from Anthony Borton – This post provides a walkthrough of installing SharePoint Foundation 2010 with a fresh TFS 2010 install.  The whole process is pretty straightforward and painless.

Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Interim Fix List from Jason Zander – Jason lists a large number of Visual Studio related bug fixes (as opposed to the TFS list from Brian Harry and the Test tools list from Amit Chatterjee) that are fixed as part of the Visual Studio SP1 Beta.  I’ve also updated my original Visual Studio 2010 SP1 and TFS 2010 SP1 Roundup post to include this link.

A Quick Overview of the TFS Administration Tool 2.1 from Mickey Gousset – We linked to the release of the TFS Administration Tool 2.1 yesterday, so today brings a nice overview of the installing and using the tool from Mickey.  Check it out if you’re wondering how this thing works.

Why I Caution Against Cherry Picking (Changeset-Based Merging) from Bill Heys – Bill presents a great post on some advice on the best practices of moving items between branches in TFS. Bill recommends against “cherry picking”, which is doing changeset-based merging instead of merging based on the latest code. This advice is valuable no matter what version control system you use, and teams that run into lots of scenarios where they insist on cherry-picking changes are typically not using branches like they should or have suboptimal work management strategies.