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  • Must read books for a programming team leader

    - by takeshin
    As a programming team leader, which books do you recommend? Books about HR, good programming practices etc. I have recently seen PHP Team Development but it is not mind blowing for experienced developers. One of the best I can recommend is Microsoft Manual of Style for Technical Publications, which helped me a lot in improving the language and practices of documenting the code.

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  • Defining Your Online Segmentation and Targeting Strategy

    - by Christie Flanagan
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} A lot of times, companies will put online segmentation and targeting on the back burner because they don’t know where to start. Often, I’ve heard web managers say that their segments aren’t well understood yet, so they can’t really deliver personalized online experiences that are meaningful. This lack of complete understanding means that they don't really bother to try. But, I don’t think you necessarily need to have an elaborate segmentation and targeting strategy already in place to start delivering a more relevant online customer experience. Sometimes it helps to think of how segmentation and targeting might solve some of the challenges your sites visitors are currently experiencing on your web presence, rather than doing nothing and waiting until a fully baked segmentation strategy lands in your inbox.  For example, perhaps you have a broad and varied service offering that makes it difficult for site visitors to easily find the solutions that are most relevant for them.  How can segmentation and targeting help solve this problem?  Or maybe it’s like the airline I described in Monday’s post where the special deals featured on the home page are only relevant to site visitors from a couple of cities.  Couldn’t segmentation and targeting help them to highlight offers on their home page that are relevant to a larger share of their site visitors? Your early segmentation and targeting efforts do not need to be complicated.  There are simple ways to start delivering a more relevant online customer experience, even if you’re dealing with anonymous site visitors.  These include targeting content to site visitors based on: Referral: Deliver targeted content to your site visitors that is based on where they came from or the search term they used to find your site Behavior:  Deliver content to your site visitors that is related or similar to content they’ve clicked on already Location:  Deliver content your site visitors that is most relevant for their geographic location (this would solve that pesky airline home page problem described above) So as you can see, there really are some very simple ways in which you can start improving your online customer experience using very basic segmentation and targeting methods.  One thing to keep in mind as you start to define you segmentation and targeting strategy is that there are many different types of attributes or combinations of attributes upon which you can base your segmentation and targeting strategy.  In addition to referral, behavior and location, other attributes that you should consider are: Profile Information:  What profile information do you know about this customer already?  Perhaps they provided some information on their interests and preferences when they first registered with your site. Time:  What time is it and how does that impact what my site visitors are looking for or trying to do? Demographics: What are my site visitors’ ages, incomes or ethnicities? Which attributes you select to include in your segmentation strategy will depend on your unique business needs and objectives.  Attributes such as behavior or referral may not be the most important targeting criteria depending on your situation. For example, if you’re a newspaper you might know that certain visitors are sports fans based on their profile information.  You can create a segment for sports fans and target sports related content to that segment of your readership online.  Or perhaps, a reader is browsing stories that are related to politics; you can use that visitor’s behavior to assign him or her to a segment for those interested in politics. From there you can recommend more stories to that visitor based on their interest in politics. For an airline, the visitor’s location may be a more important attribute. By detecting the visitor’s location, you can assign them to an appropriate segment and then target special flights and offers to them based on their likely departure airport. As you can see, there are many practical ways that you can start improving the experience your customers receive on your web presence using fairly basic segmentation and targeting techniques. If you want to learn more about segmentation and targeting using Oracle’s web experience management solution, check out this helpful video that demonstrates these powerful capabilities in Oracle WebCenter Sites. ***** On Demand Webcast Featuring Brian Solis of Altimeter Group Trends such as the mobile web, social media, gamification and real-time are changing customer behavior and expectations. In this new environment, many businesses will struggle. Some will fall by the wayside, while others learn to adapt and thrive. Watch this on demand webcast with Altimeter Group digital analyst and author, Brian Solis, and discover what your organization needs to know about how to compete in the new era of Digital Darwinism. View now.

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  • The cost of Programmer Team Clustering

    - by MarkPearl
    I recently was involved in a conversation about the productivity of programmers and the seemingly wide range in abilities that different programmers have in this industry. Some of the comments made were reiterated a few days later when I came across a chapter in Code Complete (v2) where it says "In programming specifically, many studies have shown order-of-magnitude differences in the quality of the programs written, the sizes of the programs written, and the productivity of programmers". In line with this is another comment presented by Code Complete when discussing teams - "Good programmers tend to cluster, as do bad programmers". This is something I can personally relate to. I have come across some really good and bad programmers and 99% of the time it turns out the team they work in is the same - really good or really bad. When I have found a mismatch, it hasn't stayed that way for long - the person has moved on, or the team has ejected the individual. Keeping this in mind I would like to comment on the risks an organization faces when forcing teams to remain together regardless of the mix. When you have the situation where someone is not willing to be part of the team but still wants to get a pay check at the end of each month, it presents some interesting challenges and hard decisions to make. First of all, when this occurs you need to give them an opportunity to change - for someone to change, they need to know what the problem is and what is expected. It is unreasonable to expect someone to change but have not indicated what they need to change and the consequences of not changing. If after a reasonable time of an individual being aware of the problem and not making an effort to improve you need to do two things... Follow through with the consequences of not changing. Consider the impact that this behaviour will have on the rest of the team. What is the cost of not following through with the consequences? If there is no follow through, it is often an indication to the individual that they can continue their behaviour. Why should they change if you don't care enough to keep your end of the agreement? In many ways I think it is very similar to the "Broken Windows" principles – if you allow the windows to break and don’t fix them, more will get broken. What is the cost of keeping them on? When keeping a disruptive influence in a team you risk loosing the good in the team. As Code Complete says, good and bad programmers tend to cluster - they have a tendency to keep this balance - if you are not going to help keep the balance they will. The cost of not removing a disruptive influence is that the good in the team will eventually help you maintain the clustering themselves by leaving.

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  • Installing Team Explorer 2008 on Windows Server 2003

    - by BriteShiny
    I am attempting to install Team Explorer 2008 on a Windows Server 2008 box, without success, which is why I am here. The error log reveals the following: [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): d:.\wcu\ppe\vside.exe exited with return value 1 [07/02/10,10:07:03] InstallReturnValue: GFN_MID VS PPE, 0x1 [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Error code 1 for this component means "Incorrect function. " [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Component Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode) returned an unexpected value. [07/02/10,10:07:03] Setup.exe: AddGlobalCustomProperty [07/02/10,10:07:03] Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Shell (integrated mode): ERRORLOG EVENT : Return from system messaging: Incorrect function. Apparently the Team Explorer 2008 is incompatible with Windows Server 2008. If you right click on the setup.exe in the TFS Explorer ISO and run a compatibility check it fails. There is a separate installer package to install the VS2008 Shell that is compatible with Windows 2008, but it fails too. Has anyone else been able to install Team Explorer 2008 on Windows Server 2008?

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  • Best practice- How to team-split a django project while still allowing code reusal

    - by Infinity
    I know this sounds kind of vague, but please let me explain- I'm starting work on a brand new project, it will have two main components: "ACME PRODUCT" (think Gmail, Meebo, etc), and "THE SITE" (help, information, marketing stuff, promotional landing pages, etc lots of marketing-induced cruft). So basically the url /acme/* will load stuff in the uber cool ajaxy application, and every other URI will load stuff in the other site. Problem: "THE SITE" component is out of my hands, and will be handled by a consultants team that will work closely with marketing, And I and my team will work solely on the ACME PRODUCT. Question: How to set up the django project in such a way that we can have: Seperate releases. (They can push new marketing pages and functionality without having to worry about the state of our code. Maybe even separate Subversion "projects") Minimize impact (on our product) of whatever flying-unicorns-hocus-pocus the other team codes into the site. Still allow some code reusal. My main concern is that the ACME product needs to be rock solid, and therefore needs to be somewhat isolated of whatever mistakes/code bloopers the consultants make in their marketing side of the site. How have you handled this? Any ideas? Thanks!

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  • Join our Marketing Intelligence Team in Dublin!

    - by jessica.ebbelaar
    Do you want to work with the brightest minds in the industry? Want to be part of a global team that’s changing the way the world does business? Then Oracle is the place for YOU. Join now as a Marketing Intelligence Representative. You will have the opportunity to develop within the role through working alongside the Business Development, Sales and Marketing teams within Oracle. The Marketing Intelligence Group is viewed as a true talent pool for the Business Development and Sales Teams. Oracle offers a structured training programme for Marketing Intelligence Representatives and Business Development Consultants including our approved sales certified training methodology along with regular product training. Miriam started her career as a Marketing Intelligence Representative six years ago, and shares what she has learned and how her career is progressing. My Career Path at Oracle: June 2005 – October 2005: Profiler in the Marketing Intelligence Team November 2005 - October 2006: Team Leader for MIT November 2006 - February 2008: Business Development Consultant Iberia March 2008 - December 2010: Lead Management Specialist Currently: Sales Program Manager for Iberia & Benelux What did you learn from your role in the Market Intelligence Team Being a Profiler helped me to understand how an organisation works, from the beginning to the end. It is like being in University but being paid! The three key things I learnt in this role are: Knowledge of customers: You are on the phone with over 70 customers daily. Not only does this give you an overview of the IT infrastructure of the customers companies but also how to manage their questions and rejections. Essentially you are learning how to convert their pain and complaints into business opportunities. Knowledge of Oracle: As a Profiler you get an excellent overview of how Oracle works internally, from Marketing to Sales, without forgetting the Operations Team. Knowledge about yourself: As a Profiler I learnt how to work outside of my comfort zone, there is a new challenge almost every day but Oracle are there to support you every step of the way. Oracle really invests in developing the MIT Team and as a Profiler you can expect product and sales training on a monthly basis. How did you progress from MIT to Business Development Group (BDG)? I made sure that my manager knew from the very beginning that I was keen to progress at Oracle and I was set very clear objectives to help me reach my goal.  My manager was very supportive and ensured I received all the training I needed. After I became a Team Leader of Profiling, I moved to an Iberia BDG position. How you feel your experience in MI has helped you in your current role? I truly believe that the MI position gives you a great overview of Oracle and this has really helped me in my current position.  I am the Sales Program Manager for IBERIA & Benelux and in my campaigns I need to target the right companies and the right job specs.  My time in the Market Intelligence team really helped me to understand how to focus and target my campaigns so I know I don’t miss any business opportunities! How would you sum up your Oracle experience? Oracle is a big organisation with big opportunities. With the right skills and with the great training programs that Oracle offer, the only limit is you! If you have any questions related to this article feel free to contact [email protected] You can find all our job opportunities via http://campus.oracle.com. Tags van Technorati: Marketing Intelligence,Benelux,Iberia,Profiler,Business Development,Sales Representatives,BDG,Business Development Group,opportunities,Oracle

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  • The Oracle MDM Portfolio & Strategy Session - It All Comes Down to Master Data

    - by Mala Narasimharajan
     By Narayana Machiraju We are less than a week now from the start of Oracle Open World 2012 and I would like to introduce you all to one of the most awaited MDM strategy sessions this year titled “What’s there to Know about Oracle’s Master Data Management Portfolio and Roadmap?”. Manouj Tahiliani, Senior Director of MDM Product Strategy provides you a complete picture of the Oracle MDM Portfolio, the Product releases, the Strategy and the Roadmaps. Manoj will be discussing Oracle Fusion MDM applications, the first enterprise-grade SaaS MDM product suite. You’ll hear strategies for leveraging MDM and data quality in the enterprise and how you can derive business value by deploying an MDM foundation for strategic initiatives such as customer experience management, product innovation, and financial transformation. And as a bonus, he is also going to discuss the confluence of MDM with emerging technologies such as big data, social, and mobile. The session is co-presented by GEHC and Westpac. Tony Craddock from Westpac is going to share the insights of their MDM Implementation in the lines of Business drivers, data governance, ROI and other important implementation considerations. A reprsentative from GEHC is going to talk about their MDM journey and the multi-domain MDM story. I strongly recommend yo not miss this important session The MDM track at Oracle Open World covers variety of topics related to MDM. In addition to the product management team presenting product updates and roadmap, we have several Customer Panels, Conference sessions and Customer round table sessions featuring a lot of marquee Customers. You can see an overview of MDM sessions here. 

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  • Time Tracking on an Agile Team

    - by Stephen.Walther
    What’s the best way to handle time-tracking on an Agile team? Your gut reaction to this question might be to resist any type of time-tracking at all. After all, one of the principles of the Agile Manifesto is “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”.  Forcing the developers on your team to track the amount of time that they devote to completing stories or tasks might seem like useless bureaucratic red tape: an impediment to getting real work done. I completely understand this reaction. I’ve been required to use time-tracking software in the past to account for each hour of my workday. It made me feel like Fred Flintstone punching in at the quarry mine and not like a professional. Why You Really Do Need Time-Tracking There are, however, legitimate reasons to track time spent on stories even when you are a member of an Agile team.  First, if you are working with an outside client, you might need to track the number of hours spent on different stories for the purposes of billing. There might be no way to avoid time-tracking if you want to get paid. Second, the Product Owner needs to know when the work on a story has gone over the original time estimated for the story. The Product Owner is concerned with Return On Investment. If the team has gone massively overtime on a story, then the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on the story and reconsider the story’s business value. Finally, you might want to track how much time your team spends on different types of stories or tasks. For example, if your team is spending 75% of their time doing testing then you might need to bring in more testers. Or, if 10% of your team’s time is expended performing a software build at the end of each iteration then it is time to consider better ways of automating the build process. Time-Tracking in SonicAgile For these reasons, we added time-tracking as a feature to SonicAgile which is our free Agile Project Management tool. We were heavily influenced by Jeff Sutherland (one of the founders of Scrum) in the way that we implemented time-tracking (see his article http://scrum.jeffsutherland.com/2007/03/time-tracking-is-anti-scrum-what-do-you.html). In SonicAgile, time-tracking is disabled by default. If you want to use this feature then the project owner must enable time-tracking in Project Settings. You can choose to estimate using either days or hours. If you are estimating at the level of stories then it makes more sense to choose days. Otherwise, if you are estimating at the level of tasks then it makes more sense to use hours. After you enable time-tracking then you can assign three estimates to a story: Original Estimate – This is the estimate that you enter when you first create a story. You don’t change this estimate. Time Spent – This is the amount of time that you have already devoted to the story. You update the time spent on each story during your daily standup meeting. Time Left – This is the amount of time remaining to complete the story. Again, you update the time left during your daily standup meeting. So when you first create a story, you enter an original estimate that becomes the time left. During each daily standup meeting, you update the time spent and time left for each story on the Kanban. If you had perfect predicative power, then the original estimate would always be the same as the sum of the time spent and the time left. For example, if you predict that a story will take 5 days to complete then on day 3, the story should have 3 days spent and 2 days left. Unfortunately, never in the history of mankind has anyone accurately predicted the exact amount of time that it takes to complete a story. For this reason, SonicAgile does not update the time spent and time left automatically. Each day, during the daily standup, your team should update the time spent and time left for each story. For example, the following table shows the history of the time estimates for a story that was originally estimated to take 3 days but, eventually, takes 5 days to complete: Day Original Estimate Time Spent Time Left Day 1 3 days 0 days 3 days Day 2 3 days 1 day 2 days Day 3 3 days 2 days 2 days Day 4 3 days 3 days 2 days Day 5 3 days 4 days 0 days In the table above, everything goes as predicted until you reach day 3. On day 3, the team realizes that the work will require an additional two days. The situation does not improve on day 4. All of the sudden, on day 5, all of the remaining work gets done. Real work often follows this pattern. There are long periods when nothing gets done punctuated by occasional and unpredictable bursts of progress. We designed SonicAgile to make it as easy as possible to track the time spent and time left on a story. Detecting when a Story Goes Over the Original Estimate Sometimes, stories take much longer than originally estimated. There’s a surprise. For example, you discover that a new software component is incompatible with existing software components. Or, you discover that you have to go through a month-long certification process to finish a story. In those cases, the Product Owner has a legitimate reason to halt work on a story and re-evaluate the business value of the story. For example, the Product Owner discovers that a story will require weeks to implement instead of days, then the story might not be worth the expense. SonicAgile displays a warning on both the Backlog and the Kanban when the time spent on a story goes over the original estimate. An icon of a clock is displayed. Time-Tracking and Tasks Another optional feature of SonicAgile is tasks. If you enable Tasks in Project Settings then you can break stories into one or more tasks. You can perform time-tracking at the level of a story or at the level of a task. If you don’t break a story into tasks then you can enter the time left and time spent for the story. As soon as you break a story into tasks, then you can no longer enter the time left and time spent at the level of the story. Instead, the time left and time spent for a story is rolled up from its tasks. On the Kanban, you can see how the time left and time spent for each task gets rolled up into each story. The progress bar for the story is rolled up from the progress bars for each task. The original estimate is never rolled up – even when you break a story into tasks. A story’s original estimate is entered separately from the original estimates of each of the story’s tasks. Summary Not every Agile team can avoid time-tracking. You might be forced to track time to get paid, to detect when you are spending too much time on a particular story, or to track the amount of time that you are devoting to different types of tasks. We designed time-tracking in SonicAgile to require the least amount of work to track the information that you need. Time-tracking is an optional feature. If you enable time-tracking then you can track the original estimate, time left, and time spent for each story and task. You can use time-tracking with SonicAgile for free. Register at http://SonicAgile.com.

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  • Team Foundation Server Setup/Access

    - by Angel Brighteyes
    What I need: A TFS 2010 Setup that allows 2 application developers to access the TFS from remote locations. How it is setup: Server 2008 Standard 2g Ram 300g HD space SharePoint Server 2007, using SQL Server 2005 SQL Server 2008 Standard Team Foundation Server 2010 IIS 7 Sharepoint Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:80; TFS:80 TFS Bindings: TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080; TFS:8080 Using DynDNS service to account for the dynamic ip address being used, this is a requirement for the moment until I can get a better isp package. Access using Local Accounts Server is not setup on a domain, or as a domain. Consequently I did not setup AD services. Problem: When logged into TFS using my credentials TFS\AdminUser through the DynDNS account TFS.DynAccount.Me I recieve the 'Red X of Death' on the Documents and Reports folder. When logged into the TFS through the local peer to peer network using the same credentials TFS\AdminUser I do not receive the 'Red X of Death' problem. Further Troubleshooting: When users 'Right Click' the 'TeamProject1' Click 'Show Project Portal' it tries to take them to http://TFS:8080 instead of http://TFS.DynAccount.Me:8080, which doing further research I am assuming that it is because team foundation server was setup with a local name of TFS instead of 'TFS.DynAccount.Me' as specified here in Visual Studio Magazines: The Red X of Death. Users can Access the Team Portal for SharePoint via http://TFS.DynAccount.Me/TeamCollection/TeamProject so it is not like we are dead in the water or anything. However, as most employees/staff are prone to do, they have expressed a great distaste for having to do it this way and just be patient until the current project is finished since we are under a very strict deadline. Is there a way to set this up differently, or change some settings someplace, reinstall it, point a CName record for our domain website to the DynAccount (e.g. TFS.OurDomain.com points to TFS.DynAccount.Me, which consequently does allow access to the http site without issues), or something. I really don't feel like after all the time and effort I have spent into, first the cost, second the bloody install, third learning SharePoint well enough, fourth the hours into days spent on this, fifth more troubleshooting, sixth employee headaches to just let it lay where it is at. I figure in my spare/off time I would keep trying to get this to work. So I really appreciate any help any one can give me. I know this is probably something really stupid simple that I will 'Face Palm' over, but at the moment the stress and frustration just has me beat. Thank you again, this community has always been a great help.

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  • Configuring Team System Code Analysis via a FxCop rules file

    - by Ian G
    Is there anyway to configure the code analysis rules in Visual Studio Team System to match those in an FxCop configuration file and keep them in sync automatically? Not all the developers on the team have TS so keeping the rules we are currently running in an FxCop file is required so everyone can run the same set, but it would nice for those with to be able to run them in the IDE. We're introducing static analysis to an existing project so turning on everything now isn't a useful option. (We are not using Foundation Server for source control, if that makes any difference.)

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  • Automated builds of BizTalk 2009 projects using Team System 2008 Build

    - by Doug
    I'm trying to configure automated build of BizTalk 2009 projects using Team Foundation Server 2008. We have a staging server which has BizTalk 2009 installed. I ran the Team Foundation Server Build Setup on this server, and it can build non-BizTalk projects OK. However, BizTalk projects fail to build. I suspected something was amiss when "Deployment" was not a valid build type! I tried copying various things over from a developer PC which has BizTalk and Visual Studio 2008 installed, but still couldn't get it to work. I don't really want to install Visual Studio on the staging server, but without it the "Developer Tools and SDK" option in the BizTalk install is greyed out. I guess I need this in order for BizTalk projects to compile. So, my question is can a BizTalk 2009 server be used as a TFS build agent to build BizTalk projects without having Visual Studio installed. If the answer is no, what's the smallest part of VS that can be installed to get this to work? Thanks in advance.

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  • Problem building with MSBuild on Team Build

    - by mrwayne
    Hi, I have recently upgraded from TFS2005 to TFS2010 (and sub-sequently the team build server). I used to be able to get a team build on one of my solutions to work pretty easily, (see structure below) Solution |_Web Site | |_Bin | |_Other Files |_Project 1 |_Project 2 |_Project (n) Now, i can no longer get a build working correctly as it doesnt appear to build all my projects any longer (i've had to create a new build definition). Either that, or its not building the projects in such an order that when it hits project X, that a project it depends on (Project A), has not yet been built, and as such fails. I'm just basically trying to build a web site (not web application project), with some Dependant / linked projects. Why must it be so hard! Everything builds fine in the IDE. If i even open the solution copied to the build server under the 'Sources' directory, i am able to build it fine in the IDE on that server. No such luck with MSBuild though. Thoughts?

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  • How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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  • Combination of Operating Mode and Commit Strategy

    - by Kevin Yang
    If you want to populate a source into multiple targets, you may also want to ensure that every row from the source affects all targets uniformly (or separately). Let’s consider the Example Mapping below. If a row from SOURCE causes different changes in multiple targets (TARGET_1, TARGET_2 and TARGET_3), for example, it can be successfully inserted into TARGET_1 and TARGET_3, but failed to be inserted into TARGET_2, and the current Mapping Property TLO (target load order) is “TARGET_1 -> TARGET_2 -> TARGET_3”. What should Oracle Warehouse Builder do, in order to commit the appropriate data to all affected targets at the same time? If it doesn’t behave as you intended, the data could become inaccurate and possibly unusable.                                               Example Mapping In OWB, we can use Mapping Configuration Commit Strategies and Operating Modes together to achieve this kind of requirements. Below we will explore the combination of these two features and how they affect the results in the target tables Before going to the example, let’s review some of the terms we will be using (Details can be found in white paper Oracle® Warehouse Builder Data Modeling, ETL, and Data Quality Guide11g Release 2): Operating Modes: Set-Based Mode: Warehouse Builder generates a single SQL statement that processes all data and performs all operations. Row-Based Mode: Warehouse Builder generates statements that process data row by row. The select statement is in a SQL cursor. All subsequent statements are PL/SQL. Row-Based (Target Only) Mode: Warehouse Builder generates a cursor select statement and attempts to include as many operations as possible in the cursor. For each target, Warehouse Builder inserts each row into the target separately. Commit Strategies: Automatic: Warehouse Builder loads and then automatically commits data based on the mapping design. If the mapping has multiple targets, Warehouse Builder commits and rolls back each target separately and independently of other targets. Use the automatic commit when the consequences of multiple targets being loaded unequally are not great or are irrelevant. Automatic correlated: It is a specialized type of automatic commit that applies to PL/SQL mappings with multiple targets only. Warehouse Builder considers all targets collectively and commits or rolls back data uniformly across all targets. Use the correlated commit when it is important to ensure that every row in the source affects all affected targets uniformly. Manual: select manual commit control for PL/SQL mappings when you want to interject complex business logic, perform validations, or run other mappings before committing data. Combination of the commit strategy and operating mode To understand the effects of each combination of operating mode and commit strategy, I’ll illustrate using the following example Mapping. Firstly we insert 100 rows into the SOURCE table and make sure that the 99th row and 100th row have the same ID value. And then we create a unique key constraint on ID column for TARGET_2 table. So while running the example mapping, OWB tries to load all 100 rows to each of the targets. But the mapping should fail to load the 100th row to TARGET_2, because it will violate the unique key constraint of table TARGET_2. With different combinations of Commit Strategy and Operating Mode, here are the results ¦ Set-based/ Correlated Commit: Configuration of Example mapping:                                                     Result:                                                      What’s happening: A single error anywhere in the mapping triggers the rollback of all data. OWB encounters the error inserting into Target_2, it reports an error for the table and does not load the row. OWB rolls back all the rows inserted into Target_1 and does not attempt to load rows to Target_3. No rows are added to any of the target tables. ¦ Row-based/ Correlated Commit: Configuration of Example mapping:                                                   Result:                                                  What’s happening: OWB evaluates each row separately and loads it to all three targets. Loading continues in this way until OWB encounters an error loading row 100th to Target_2. OWB reports the error and does not load the row. It rolls back the row 100th previously inserted into Target_1 and does not attempt to load row 100 to Target_3. Then, if there are remaining rows, OWB will continue loading them, resuming with loading rows to Target_1. The mapping completes with 99 rows inserted into each target. ¦ Set-based/ Automatic Commit: Configuration of Example mapping: Result: What’s happening: When OWB encounters the error inserting into Target_2, it does not load any rows and reports an error for the table. It does, however, continue to insert rows into Target_3 and does not roll back the rows previously inserted into Target_1. The mapping completes with one error message for Target_2, no rows inserted into Target_2, and 100 rows inserted into Target_1 and Target_3 separately. ¦ Row-based/Automatic Commit: Configuration of Example mapping: Result: What’s happening: OWB evaluates each row separately for loading into the targets. Loading continues in this way until OWB encounters an error loading row 100 to Target_2 and reports the error. OWB does not roll back row 100th from Target_1, does insert it into Target_3. If there are remaining rows, it will continue to load them. The mapping completes with 99 rows inserted into Target_2 and 100 rows inserted into each of the other targets. Note: Automatic Correlated commit is not applicable for row-based (target only). If you design a mapping with the row-based (target only) and correlated commit combination, OWB runs the mapping but does not perform the correlated commit. In set-based mode, correlated commit may impact the size of your rollback segments. Space for rollback segments may be a concern when you merge data (insert/update or update/insert). Correlated commit operates transparently with PL/SQL bulk processing code. The correlated commit strategy is not available for mappings run in any mode that are configured for Partition Exchange Loading or that include a Queue, Match Merge, or Table Function operator. If you want to practice in your own environment, you can follow the steps: 1. Import the MDL file: commit_operating_mode.mdl 2. Fix the location for oracle module ORCL and deploy all tables under it. 3. Insert sample records into SOURCE table, using below plsql code: begin     for i in 1..99     loop         insert into source values(i, 'col_'||i);     end loop;     insert into source values(99, 'col_99'); end; 4. Configure MAPPING_1 to any combinations of operating mode and commit strategy you want to test. And make sure feature TLO of mapping is open. 5. Deploy Mapping “MAPPING_1”. 6. Run the mapping and check the result.

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  • Should we hire a new developer now, or wait until the code is refactored to make it suitable for a team environment?

    - by w0051977
    I support and develop a large system that uses various technologies e.g. c++,.net,vb6 etc. I am a sole developer. I am debating whether now is the right time to approach my manager (who is not a developer) to ask if another developer can be recruited. I don't have any experience working in software teams. I have always been a sole developer. The concerns I have are: There is still a lot to do. Training another developer would take time and distract me from my duties. The company does not invest heavily in tools e.g. source control The code in this system needs to be refactored to introduce concepts such as interfaces, polymorphism etc, which are supported by methodologies such as Agile (I inherited the system about 12 months ago). I am gradually trying to refactor the code. I believe I have two options: Approach my manager now Wait until I have had time to refactor the code so it is more suitable for a team environment. Which option is best? I am hoping to hear from other developers who have been in my situation.

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  • Enforce link in Team foundation server bug work item for duplicates

    - by Tewr
    We have just started out with Team Foundation Server 2008 / Visual Studio Team System and we are pleased to find how we can export and modify work items to our needs. However, this last thing that would make the setup perfect for us has proved somewhat difficult: We have exported the Bug work item type and have made modifications to it to appear differently to different groups of users. We do, however, see a potential problem in non-developers reporting bugs which turn out to be duplicates. We would like to enforce that users who close a ticket with resolved reason:duplicate also creates a link to the bug which is perceived as the first bug report. I have looked at System.RelatedLinkCount, and put the rule <FIELD type="Integer" name="RelatedLinkCount" refname="System.RelatedLinkCount"> <WHEN field="Microsoft.VSTS.Common.ResolvedReason" value="duplicate"> <PROHIBITEDVALUES> <LISTITEM value="0" /> </PROHIBITEDVALUES> </WHEN> </FIELD> However, when I try to put anything in that scope, the importer tells me that System.RelatedLinkCount does not accept the rule, no matter what I put, but the rule above shows what I am trying to do (even though the most preferable rule would also check that the bug that I link to is not a duplicate as well, though this is overkill :P) Has anyone else tried to enforce rules like this in work items? Is there another approach to solving the same issue? I am thankful for any thoughts on the matter.

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  • Copy TFS Build Definitions between Projects and Collections

    - by Jakob Ehn
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2014/06/05/copy-tfs-build-definitions-between-projects-and-collections.aspxThe last couple of years it has become apparent that using multiple team projects in TFS is generally a bad idea. There are of course exceptions to this, but there are a lot ot things that becomes much easier to do when you put all of your projects and team in the same team project. Fellow ALM MVP Martin Hinshelwood has blogged about this several times, as well as other people in the community. In particular, using the backlog and portfolio management tools makes much more sense when everything is located in the same team project. Consolidating multiple team projects into one is not that easy unfortunately, it involves migrating source code, work items, reports etc.  Another thing that also need to be migrated is build definitions. It is possible to clone build definitions within the same team project using the TFS power tools. The Community TFS Build Manager also lets you clone build definitions to other team projects. But there is no tool that allows you to clone/copy a build definition to another collection. So, I whipped up a simple console application that let you do this. The tool can be downloaded from https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=EE034C9F620CD58D!8162&authkey=!ACTr56v1QVowzuE&ithint=file%2c.zip   Using CopyTFSBuildDefinitions You use the tool like this: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  SourceCollectionUrl  SourceTeamProject  BuildDefinitionName  DestinationCollectionUrl  DestinationTeamProject [NewDefinitionName] Arguments SourceCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project with the build definition that you want to copy SourceTeamProject The name of the team project that contains the build definition BuildDefinitionName Name of the build definition DestinationCollectionUrl The URL to the TFS collection that contains the team project that you want to copy your build definition to DestinationTeamProject The name of the team project in the destination collection NewDefinitionName (Optional) Use this to override the name of the new build definition. If you don’t specify this, the name will the same as the original one Example: CopyTFSBuildDefinitions  https://jakob.visualstudio.com DemoProject  WebApplication.CI https://anotheraccount.visualstudio.com     Notes Since we are (potentially) create a build definition in a new collection, there is no guarantee that the various paths that are defined in the build definition exist in the new collection. For example, a build definition refers to server paths in TFVC or repos + branches in TFGit. It also refers to build controllers that definitely don’t exist in the new collection. So there will be some cleanup to do after you copy your build definitions. You can fix some of these using the Community TFS Build Manager, for example it is very easy to apply the correct build controller to a set of build definitions The problem stated above also applies to build process templates. However, the tool tries to find a build process template in the new team project with the same file name as the one that existed in the old team project. If it finds one, it will be used for the new build definition. Otherwise is will use the default build template If you want to run the tool for many build definitions, you can use this SQL scripts, compliments of Mr. Scrum/ALM MVP Richard Hundhausen to generate the necessary commands: USE Tfs_Collection GO SELECT 'CopyTFSBuildDefinitions.exe http://SERVER:8080/tfs/collection "' + P.ProjectName + '" "' + REPLACE(BD.DefinitionName,'\','') + '" http://NEWSERVER:8080/tfs/COLLECTION TEAMPROJECT'   FROM tbl_Project P        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildGroup BG on BG.TeamProject = P.ProjectUri        INNER JOIN tbl_BuildDefinition BD on BD.GroupId = BG.GroupId   ORDER BY P.ProjectName, BD.DefinitionName   Hope that helps, let me know if you have any problems with the tool or if you find it useful

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  • Being a Team Lead is like playing Tetris

    - by thycotic
    Tucker has posted about his experiences as Team Lead on our product development team.  Team Leads are hands-on coders on our teams but they are also responsible for working with the ScrumMaster/ProductOwner to co-ordinate on the status and priority of tasks which is where the juggling begins. :) It takes good technical skills combined with people smarts and solid task management to move the entire team towards the end goal.   Jonathan Cogley is the CEO of Thycotic Software, an agile software services and product development company based in Washington DC.  Secret Server is our flagship enterprise password vault.

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  • Google I/O 2011: Fireside Chat with the App Engine Team

    Google I/O 2011: Fireside Chat with the App Engine Team Max Ross, Max is a Software Engineer on the App Engine team where he leads the development of the datastore & occasionally tinkers with the Java runtime. He is also the founder of the Hibernate Shards project. Alon Levi, Sean Lynch, Greg Dalesandre, Guido van Rossum, Brett Slatkin, Peter Magnusson, Mickey Kataria, Peter McKenzie Fireside chat with the App Engine team From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 2045 5 ratings Time: 01:01:25 More in Entertainment

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  • Google I/O 2010 - Fireside chat with the Google Wave team

    Google I/O 2010 - Fireside chat with the Google Wave team Google I/O 2010 - Fireside chat with the Google Wave team Fireside Chats, Wave Lars Rasmussen, Douwe Osinga, Jochen Bekmann, Alan Green, Pamela Fox, Dan Peterson, Stephanie Hannon Join the Google Wave team around the campfire to chat about all things Wave: the product, the API platform, and the wave federation protocol. Come to learn about the new Wave API features, get tips on how to build the best extensions, discuss how to take advantage of the open source code available and hear more about what users are doing with the product. This is an excellent opportunity to ask the engineering team questions directly, and learn more about where Wave is heading. For all I/O 2010 sessions, please go to code.google.com From: GoogleDevelopers Views: 5 0 ratings Time: 56:17 More in Science & Technology

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