A Day of DevOps, Release Management, Software Quality and Agile Project Requirements Management.

Microsoft is organising two events for September, one in Cape Town and one In Johannesburg. If you are interested in seeing what TFS has to offer, feel free to register and come and have a look.
For those of you who will be joining us at the Cape Town event, I will be presenting the session just after lunch: Managing Work, Projects and Requirements with Team Foundation Server.
I'll be delving into:

• Requirements and Backlog Management
• Task Allocation, Prioritisation and Planning
• Agile Portfolio Management
• Task Boards and Kanban Boards
• Reporting and Integration
• Test Case Integration
• Project and Excel Integration

Hope to see you all there!

A Day of DevOps, Release Management, Software Quality and Agile Project Requirements Management

Are you looking to improve the way you manage software projects or release software? Perhaps you need some better processes for managing test cases and bugs? Join us for 2 half-day sessions in Cape Town and Johannesburg where we will focus on these topics and more.

Morning Session: Getting Started with DevOps, Continuous Delivery and Release Management

Audience: Developers, IT Professionals, IT Decision Makers, Testers, IT Managers Release management and DevOps have become an important part of the modern application lifecycle. This session will cover: Release Management and Automation, Release Pipeline and Approvals Treating Configuration as Code Working with Chef, Puppet and DSC Application Insights Cloud-Based Load Testing Production Debugging and Monitoring Leveraging Azure for DevOps and Dev/Test Environments System Center and TFS Integration

Afternoon Session: Improving Software Quality and Requirements/Project Management Practices

Audience: Business Analysts, Testers, Product Owners, Scrum Masters, Developers,
IT Managers
Delivering high quality software that meets users' requirements is a risky undertaking. Development and quality assurance managers, along with product owners and business analysts, need to be in a tight partnership in the war against software bugs.
This session delves into this and is broken into two parts.
1. Managing Work, Projects and Requirements with Team Foundation Server
Team Foundation Server provides a wide set of capabilities for managing requirements and work. These allow you to implement your own practices, or incrementally adopt the most agile or other practices that best fit your team.
Topics that will be covered include:

• Requirements and Backlog Management
• Task Allocation, Prioritisation and Planning
• Agile Portfolio Management
• Task Boards and Kanban Boards
• Reporting and Integration
• Test Case Integration
• Project and Excel Integration

2. Improve Software Testing with Team Foundation Server
Topics that will be covered include:

• Planning and Managing Test Suites and Test Cases
• Running Test Cases
• Logging and Managing Defects
• Web-Based Test Case Management and Execution
• Exploratory Testing
• Automated Testing

 

CAPE TOWN Date:    10 September 2014 Venue:    Crystal Towers Hotel & Spa, Century City, Cape Town Time:    09:00 - 16:00 RSVP:    Click here to RSVP Event ID: 1032593595 Call: 0860 22 55 67 Email: saevent@microsoft.com

JOHANNESBURG Date:    15 September 2014 Venue:    Microsoft Johannesburg Office, 3012 William Nicol Drive, Bryanston Time:    09:00 - 16:00 RSVP:    Click here to RSVP Event ID: 1032593593 Call: 0860 22 55 67 Email: saevent@microsoft.com

Delete Test Manager Test Settings

I was looking for a way to remove old test settings in Microsoft's Test Manager but was not having any luck finding a way to delete them.

I knew there was a way through the expensive API that TFS has, so I eventually resorted to creating my own little utility.
If you were stuck with the same problem, feel free to give this a go.

TFS 2013 Pre Build Script Assembly Version Updates

I was looking at a "simple" way to update the TFS build definitions and adjust the Assembly versions of the projects being compiled. I came across this article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn376353.aspx) leveraging the pre and post build scripts that are available in the newer build definitions.

The problem I had with the scripts included in the TFS Build Extensions is that it uses the Build Number or Label. This does not really make sense to me so I started hacking at it.
Fortunately it was not as big a task as trying to delve into the new build definition's workflow and trying to find the variables that "used to" exists.

If you are interested, I have posted the resulting PowerShell.
Simply add this to the TFS repository, and then reference it as a pre-build step in your build definition and you will notice that your AssemblyVersionInfo.cs files are updated before the build, replacing the revision to the changeset number.
This will give you a reference from the actual assemblies back to the code or changeset that they originate from.



Enjoy!

Release Management Event

Last week Microsoft hosted a Release Management for Team Foundation Server 2013 talk where I ran through managing releases using Release Management.

I am pleased to say that there was literarily not a seat available, and the audience was responsive and interested. This is obviously a topic that is on a lot of people's minds.

For more information, you can visit the official site.

If you are interested, I have uploaded the slides here.

We will have to try and schedule a similar event shortly

Thank you to all those that attended and participated, and to Microsoft for making it possible.

Comparing TFS and Rational Team Concert

A while ago I did a comparison between TFS and Rational Team Concert.
It came up in a discussion amongst the ALM Rangers and I posted it here for information purposes.

ALM Discipline	TFS	Rational Team Concert
Requirements Management
Project Management
Change Management
Configuration Management
Build Management
Test Case Management	(MS Test Manager)	(Rational Quality Manager)
Software Deployment
Design	(VS Ultimate)	(Rational Software Architect)
Release Management	(Release Management)	(Rational Build Forge)

Feature / Component	TFS	Rational Team Concert
Automated Testing	Visual Studio & MS Test Manager	Rational Functional Tester
Visual Studio Integration		(VS 2012 as of v4.0.1)
Build Infrastructure	Windows Workflow Foundation and MSBuild	MSBuild
Check-in policies
Code review workflow	(TFS 2012)
Branching & Merging

This is a very high level and brief overview, if you have any comments corrections or additional information, feel free to give me a shout.

Release Management Event in Cape Town

Getting to know Release Management…

In partnership with Microsoft SA, Team Foundation Consulting will be bringing you an afternoon focussed on Release Management.

Join us and see how to manage your deployment to create better value.

This event is free and seats are limited.

Please reserve your seat now.

Visual Studio Online Pricing

Seems Microsoft has finally released the pricing model for Visual Studio Online!

Edition	Note	Intro Price	Actual Price	More info
Basic	5 users free	$10.00 per additional user	$20.00	http://www.visualstudio.com/en-za/products/visual-studio-online-basic-vs
Professional	Incl VS Pro	$22.50 pp	$45.00	http://www.visualstudio.com/en-za/products/visual-studio-online-professional-vs
Advanced		$30.00 pp	$60.00	http://www.visualstudio.com/en-za/products/visual-studio-online-advanced-vs

The interesting thing here is that the Professional subscription actually includes a "rented" version of VS Professional for the duration of the subscription. The downside is that you can only have up to 10 pro users on your account.

For an overview go and look here: http://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-online-overview-vs

TFS 2013 Update 2 Gems

Just been busy installing and playing around with TFS 2013 Update 2 RC and just off the bat noticed two little gems…
1) You can now specify the TFS server's cache as part of the install. So you are able to put it on a non-system drive

2) Looking at the upgrade process there were a couple of hints, and I finally tracked it down in the test area… It would appear that you are - or at least will be able to share parameters across test cases -- very cool…

You will also notice that web access is looking a lot closer to Visual Studio Online

 

 

And yes, if you look close enough you may notice some indication that it is in fact a RC and some polishing for on-premise purposes may still be needed...

Wonder when the application insights will become available on-premise

Free books from Microsoft

I found a great resource for free ebooks from Microsoft.
Go see for yourself : http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/ebooks

I have been delving into Azure Pack and DSC recently and this helped a great deal…

TFS Build "Machine"

The TFS Build environment can be a bit complex with a couple of things playing on each other. Let's see how everything fits together.

TFS Build

Let's start with the basic build… When you install TFS, and you "Configure Build" using the TFS Admin console, you are in fact setting up 3 components. The build service, controller and as many agents as you may need.

The build service is a communication mechanism between TFS and the build components. You need to have a service running on every build machine, whether or not that machine only has agents or contains a build controller and agents. The controller (as its name implies) controls the agents and manages which builds are being handed off to which agents. Finally, the agents preform the work.

The controller and or the agents can run on separate machines. So you could have an instance where TFS in on Serv1, the controller and potentially one agent is on Serv2 and another 2 agents are on Serv3. One thing to note is that a TFS Project Collection can have multiple controllers associated to it, but a controller can only service one project collection.  You can also only have one controller installed on a machine.

You may also be tempted to have multiple controllers to a team project collection, but in most cases you should only require one controller and then a number of agents spread across multiple machines.

Lab Management

Lab Management brings with it a bunch of additional resources and components. More specifically it has its own Test Controller and Test Agents.
You would use test controllers and agents when you want to "run tests remotely, distribute tests across multiple machines or run load tests".

Unlike the test agents in the previous section, you would only have a single test agent deployed on a machine. These components form part of the BDT (Build, Deploy and Test) workflow.

Release Management

The new kid on the block, Release Management, leverages the default build to obtain compiled artefacts. In fact it has a custom build template that actually instantiates a release pipeline in Release Management.

Recap

So to recap, TFS has the primary build (Team Build) infrastructure that consist of a build controller and build agents. This is used to compile and do initial tests on the code that is in version control. Then Lab Management with its test controllers and test agents takes this a step further and allows some deployment workflows and once again adds test capabilities.

ALM days South Africa 2014

January 23rd 2014 saw the launch of ALM days SA in Cape Town.

This event was organised and sponsored by Team Foundation Consulting, South Africa’s only consultancy focussed solely on ALM, TFS and Visual Studio.

Attendees came to learn about updates to Microsoft’s Application Lifecycle Management offerings which enable software development teams to be more productive and to collaborate more effectively.

The event aimed to provide insight, advice, strategies and techniques to improve quality and ensure that the final application meets the needs and expectations of users

A HUGE thank you to all who attended and participated in the first ALM days!!

We had a lively crowd of about 40 people, all of whom chose to spend their day learning something new.

Some of the positive feedback from those who attended…

“Broad coverage of topics, well done”
“Keynote was excellent, Agile was interesting, looking at new tools & features was great…”
“Great presentations, very informative. Awesome keynote…”
“…Lunch awesome & venue great. Thank you for taking the initiative of organising this day. Much appreciated.”
“Would be nice to see this every year.”
“Nice mix of topics – technical & theoretical.”
“Good speakers, good content, good location, learned a lot.”
“Hope you host TechDays 14.”
“Great food!”

Thank you to all our SPEAKERS who helped to make this event possible!

Roderick Lim Banda, our Keynote speaker, set the tone for the day and got everyone thinking about the future of IT and the people who are involved in the industry.

”Awesome keynote…” “Enjoyed Roderick’s views on CPT IT industry.” “Keynote was excellent…”

Cara Turner gave us some insight into a real world business situation where Agile proved invaluable.

Daniel van Wyk showed us how to incorporate SQL in the development process.

Dawie Snyman showed us a few of the cool features in TFS 2013.

Niel Zeeman provided insight on how to incorporate Quality Management & Enablement in day-to-day processes. He also showed us what is possible when it comes to Continuous Deployment as a key concept in Velocity Culture and how it all comes together.

A special thank you to Ahmed & Michelle from Microsoft SA who kindly organised the Visual Studio 2013 info sheets as well as the 2 books and Visual Studio USB’s which were given out to participants

At Team Foundation Consulting, we saw the need to have
an ALM event where developers and members of the IT community could share experiences, learn new concepts, have access to experts and engage with likeminded individuals.

Judging from the feedback from those who attended…we were right!

We are proud to have launched ALM days, and we look forward to making the next one even better!

www.alm-days.co.za

We are currently in the process of gathering slides and will make them available on the ALM days site. Keep an eye out for updates either on http://www.alm-days.co.za , or on this blog.

Exam 70-498 - Delivering Continuous Value with Visual Studio 2012 Application Lifecycle Management

I recently completed the ALM exam. This was my first Microsoft exam and I was apprehensive about doing it. I passed (Yay!) and decided to follow Niel’s example and write down what I think would help preparing for and completing it successfully.

I think the starting point and source of ALM is the Agile Manifesto and principles behind it. This is at the heart of ALM and this exam, and can be referred to with almost every question.

The next valuable resource is the scrum guide. A substantial part of the exam is about scrum in TFS so know and understand it. Reading “Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2012” by Richard Hundhausen. This is a fabulous resource on scrum with TFS and would get most developers excited about the prospect of working in a high functioning scrum team.

Then last, but not least go to Microsoft Virtual Academy and work through their Applying ALM with Visual Studio. Watch the videos and do the questions at the end.

Use TFS! Set up a few projects, play with it and familiarise yourself with the templates.

When you sit for the exam make sure you read the questions properly. There are several that you can pass by process of elimination. Watch out for small clues like backlog item vs. requirement vs. stories.

Good luck with your exam!