PDC Session: Agile Software Development with Visual Studio

Speakers: Lori Lamkin and Sunder Raman

I must say, the degree to which the VSTS stack is being optimized for Agile software development is intriguing. VSTS drank the Agile Koolaid. Pretty striking.

  • "The debate on tools is over. Good tooling is necessary to a successful Agile implementation." Well, I guess I agree with most of that.
  • TDD in 2010 demo.
    • Using ASP.NET MVC
    • Wrote the test that referenced a non-existent class (because it isn’t written yet). Then right click the  classes and methods to gen them in the SUT project. Nice. This will save a lot of time. He just created a failing test that compiled by stubbing the classes being tested.
    • Basically, this is showing off some new, shiny refactoring tools. Looking at the new refactoring options, they are getting more complete but ReSharper is not quaking in its boots.
  • Continuous Integration
    • Gated Check In. Brian Harry showed a little of this sweetness in the last session, but this is the session showing the real juice.
    • "The longer you wait to integrate, the longer it takes to do it." Amen.
    • Gated check in
      • Creates a shelfset (invisible to the person checking in)
      • Does a merge to main with the shelfset
      • Builds on a build agent without
      • If all passes in the build, the shelfset is merged into main.
      • Now main will go build
  • They are talking about basic support for Scrum in the new Agile process template that comes out of the box.
  • Process Template and Work Items
    • The task work item includes actuals on hours.
    • Reports (like burndowns) are being moved into Excel worksheets. This will make passing around metrics about the teams and iterations so much easier.
    • Velocity is being calculated in hours. They still don’t get it.
    • The word Iteration is still used over the word Sprint. I am fine with that one.
    • Excel is being heavily favored over Reporting Services. Good.
    • Work Item management is primarily moving into the WSS and MOSS portals. Thank goodness! This means fewer sights and maybe we wont need a separate web access application.
  • How MSFT is using it.
    • MSFT is using this system to track and build VSTS 2010.
    • Feature crews 7+-2 people
    • Teams work against a Done Done List
    • The reporting against the Feature Crews is amazing. Looks very FDD.

That’s all for now, folks.

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