Mike Vincent's Blog : TDD

Scrum and User Experience Presentation, LA Scrum Club

mikev — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 18:03:00 GMT

Last night, Patrick Neeman and I did a tag-team presentation on Scrum and User Experience at the LA Scrum Club. The turnout was good and most importantly helped make the presentation an engaging conversation. The presentation ended shortly after 9 but I stayed after almost to 11 with follow-up discussion. A big thanks to Amanda for making the event happen.

Here's a link to the presentation slides.

GeekSpeak Followup

mikev — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 14:54:00 GMT

Thanks to all those attended our GeekSpeak discussion yesterday on Visual Studio Team System 2008. Here are the links based on the questions recorded by Lynn and Mithun.

Hierarchical work items

We are looking at VSTS 2010 for rich support of hierarchical work items. Here are a couple of good links from Cameron Skinner and Grant Holiday:

http://blogs.msdn.com/camerons/archive/2008/11/25/model-and-work-item-integration.aspx

http://ozgrant.com/2007/08/05/tfs-rosario-feedback-hierarchical-work-items/

Pex link

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/Pex/

SQL Server compact supported

Yes,

http://blogs.msdn.com/charles_sterling/archive/2008/10/01/visual-studio-team-system-2008-database-edition-gdr-september-ctp-is-now-available-for-download.aspx

Links for versions / editions of VSTS

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/products/teamsystem/default.mspx

http://www.microsoft.com/visualstudio/en-us/default.mspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/subscriptionschart.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/dd408380.aspx (check out 2-for-1 offer)

Link for ROI calculator

http://www.msftroi.com

URL for web client

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb980951.aspx

URL for power tools for VSTS

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/teamsystem/bb980963.aspx

StyleCop == FxCop? Integration

StyleCop analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules. It can be run from inside of Visual Studio or integrated into an MSBuild project http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/sourceanalysis

http://blogs.msdn.com/sourceanalysis/

For links to everything Team System go to

http://www.teamsystemwidgets.com/

GeekSpeak Feb 4 - What You May Not Know About Visual Studio Team System 2008

mikev — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:54:00 GMT

My next GeekSpeak discussion What You May Not Know About Visual Studio Team System 2008 will be February 4. I hope you can join us.

In this episode I'll be sharing some perspectives about how Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008 is a good investment in these tough economic times. I'll illustrate some of the ways the Visual Studio Team System 2008 can deliver value by getting your whole organization team involved to deliver successful projects. I'll touch on people, process, and technology, discuss process templates, test-driven development (TDD), leveraging continuous integration, understanding reports, and the value of good application life-cycle management. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Lynn Langit and Mithun Dhar.

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology and are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

MSDN Webcast: geekSpeak on Wednesday September 10

mikev — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 01:14:00 GMT

On Sepember 10, I'll be doing a geekSpeak webcast on Dynamic Languages and the DLR. The web cast starts at 12:00 noon Pacific time. The link above will take you to online registration. Hope you can join us.

Event Overview

The geekSpeak webcast series brings you industry experts in a "talk-radio" format hosted by developer evangelists from Microsoft. These experts share their knowledge and experience about a particular developer technology, and they are ready to answer your questions in real time during the webcast. In this geekSpeak, Mike Vincent explains how dynamic languages like Iron Python and Iron Ruby running on the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) give you new options when choosing the best tool for the job. Mike addresses the advantages you can gain from using dynamic languages, when and where you should consider dynamic languages, and what is important from the architect's view, the developer's view, and the business case view. Your hosts for this geekSpeak are Glen Gordon and Peter Laudati.

To ask a question in advance of the live webcast, or for post-show resources, be sure to visit the geekSpeak blog.

Guest Presenter: Mike Vincent, President, MVA Software

Mike Vincent is a solutions architect based in Orange County, California providing clients with software architecture, application lifecycle management and development services, primarily focusing on Microsoft .NET technology. He has been in the software business for over 20 years in addition to engineering and marketing management positions. He founded both the IASA SoCal Chapter and the Orange County C# Developers group and is Treasurer of INETA NorAm.

View other sessions from: geekSpeak: Join a Discussion Like No Other.

LA Code Camp

mikev — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:23:00 GMT

Coming up October 25 and 26 is the first LA Code Camp. It’ll be held at the USC campus. This is the weekend just before PDC so we may see some of the Microsoft product teams attending. I’m again doing my continuous evolving dynamic languages presentation. Currently there are 47 sessions registered. Plan on joining us for a great weekend of content and community.

Dynamic Languages and the DLR presentations at user groups and code camp

mikev — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:33:00 GMT

Over the past month, I’ve made the rounds of several Southern California user groups and the San Diego Code Camp presenting “Dynamic Languages and the DLR.”

· San Gabriel Valley .NET on June 18

· IASA SoCal/SoCal .NET Architecture on June 19

· SoCal Code Camp, San Diego on June 28

· LA C# on July 1

· Inland Empire .NET on July 8

· I’m scheduled for San Diego .NET on August 26

Each presentation works off the same theme but the delivery has focused on the audience. You can download the presentation material here http://mvasoftware.com/media/p/47.aspx. Dynamic Languages are providing us a great additional set of tools for our development toolbox. I’m exposing architects and developers to potential ways to leverage the unique strengths of dynamic languages. These include leveraging code execution in the browser by pushing data and code dynamically from the business tier at run time and building unit tests with dynamic languages. I’ll be posting more content on these areas in the near future.

TechEd Recap

mikev — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:12:00 GMT

With TechEd being split into two weeks for Developers and IT Pros, it was a long experience for me. I covered both weeks for INETA. The first week we had the whole team on board and a lot of community stuff going on. We kept the INETA kiosk area well staffed, especially during session breaks, to meet with the many folks who stopped by. INETA sponsored the Birds of a Feather sessions for the week, the BOF team did a great job keeping everything running smoothly. I enjoyed being a part of the BOF experience, see my Dynamic Languages at TechEd post. I had a chance to attend several sessions that included:

Pat Helland – Metropolis: Interchangeability of Operations

I wish I could have attended all of Pat’s sessions but this was it. Using his Metropolis analogy, his focus here is on the parallels of Manufacturing Goods to Structured Data and Operations. Standardization drove changes is manufactured goods leading to mass production and interchangeable components. The parallel is driving changes in data operations. Following the session I had the opportunity for some engaging discussion on extending the concept. I suggested looking at the quality push brought about by the Japanese auto manufacturers in the 70’s and 80’s and paralleling with the shift toward test driven development.

Mark Russinovich – The Case of the Unexplained

I attended the repeat presentation and it was packed. Great presentation style, Mark walked among the audience before start of session chatting and getting a sense of points of interest. The presentation covered tools, techniques and insight by peering beneath the surface for solving of sluggish performance, error messages, applications crashes, system hangs and blue screens.

Doug Seven - End-to-End Application Lifecycle Management with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System

Another great job of presentation delivery. Had a chance to chat with Doug afterward of both Rosario and effective presentations. Doug recommends Presentation Zen and Made to Stick.

John Lam – see separate post

Scott Hanselman – Car or Motorcycle: Choosing the ASP.NET MVC Framework

Scott’s presentations are always good, I like his way of making things understandable. In this presentation he provided a good description of the MVC framework. The MVC is about alternatives, its not for everyone or every project, rather it allow you to choose the best tool for the job. MVC provides some real benefits in terms of TDD and it plays well with others.

Ted Neward – Pragmatic Architecture: The Role of an Architect

Always good, Ted was busy doing 5 presentations. I caught just one that starts with the “… what is a software architect?” It’s Ted’s pragmatism and delivery style that made this presentation interesting and engaging.

I’m a big fan of getting the user experience right. The UX presentations by David Platt and Mark Miller provided some contrasting views on this important topic. Both made us think about the cost of lost productivity. There is a lot more to UX than these presentations could cover but I’m glad to see greater mind share around improving UX. Architects need to get their heads into this space in greater depth.

Mark Miller – The Science of a Great User Experience

Mark had a lot of good material in his presentation, backed up with good examples. He had a lot of material but kept the pace lively to get through it. In a couple of spots in his presentation his passion crossed over the line on appropriateness to the venue however.

David Platt – Why Software Sucks

Pragmatic, a little more conservative than Mark, but he made the connection with the audience.