Contents tagged with Agile
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Scrumming with the Trac Project
I got an email from ScrumMaster Andrea about an update I should do to my Scrum Tools Roundup post. Andrea drew my attention to the Agilo for Scrum tool, an open source add-on for the Trac Project. The Trac project is a wiki/issue tracking system (written in Python, my #2 favourite language next to C# these days) which has been around for ages and quite successful in it's own right. Agilo for Scrum is an add-on that sits on top of Trac and provides features to support the Scrum process.
I tried Agilo out this morning with a few projects. I always keep some data in Excel of some past projects with things like user stories, releases, iteration lengths, tasks, etc. that can be plugged into some tool for testing. It's my reference data for doing evaluations of tools like this.
The tool looks great. It has all the basics you need in a tool to support your use of the Scrum process (daily stand-up, burndown charts, etc.). A nice feature is the ability to link items together. This also has the capability of copying information from parent to child. Being able to do this, you can create some useful relationships with tasks relating to features, features relating to iterations or sprints, and all of these rolling up to releases (or whatever way you want to organize your projects). A key thing missing from tracking tools is the ability to link these items together easily. This facilitates creating a dashboard view of the project so you know at a glance where things are. Not something easily accomplished with an Excel spreadsheet. An added bonus with Agilo for Scrum is the ability to navigate back and forth between the relationships. Neat.
Something that I've come to realize over the years, it's not the tool that fixes the problem. Taking a more lean approach to things, if you need a tool to fix some problem you have a real problem on your hands. For example if you *need* a tool to manage your Scrum process, it might be an indicator that your Scrum process is too complicated. While I'm happy to see all of these tools out there evolving (and more new ones popping up), I'm a strong advocate of "fix the problem" rather than "get a tool" mentality. YMMV.
One note I wanted to mention. Being a blogger you make posts of course (well, duh!). These are sometimes series, or popular individual posts but they come back. 6 or 12 months later that original post might need some update love. That's the cool thing is that you can go back, look at what you've done and apply some new knowledge to it creating something interesting for everyone out there. I have a large backlog in my blog queue of just posts I've written that need updating like this, this, and this. Nothing like keeping yourself busy with your own work eh?
Anywho, check out the Agilo for Scrum tool here if you have Trac and if you're looking for a good bug tracking tool, you can't go wrong with Trac so check it out here.
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Lack of Coverage Tools for .NET
For the longest time, I've been using NCover for coverage. It was free, gave good results and with NCoverExplorer and CI integration it was the perfect tool. Easy to use, easy to setup, and worth the typical hassle of new tools (setup, learning, configuration, etc.)
NCover has since gone commercial and the old versions won't run properly against 3.0/3.5 code. I'm ditching NCover support in TreeSurgeon because of this. TS nees to be friction free and something anyone can just grab and run and not have to deal with buying or obtaining licenses for products the generated code depends on. I looked at Clover.NET as an alternative (last time I checked it was free?) but it's $600 just for an "academic" version.
So what's with coverage and .NET these days? Are these the only options? Have all the open source/free tools gone the way of the Dodo for coverage and .NET 3.0 projects? My quick Google checks this freezing morning (it was minus 38 as I drove in this morning, that's -36 in Fahrenheit kids) don't show anything.
To be friction-free a code coverage tool needs to be:
- Command line driven (have to be able to integrate into continuous integration process)
- Xml report output (again, CI ready)
- Usable with any unit testing framework
- Support 3.0/3.5 .NET framework
- Somewhat stable (i.e. non-alpha/beta versions)
Nice to haves:
- Free (or relatively cheap)
- HTML or Text output
- Ability to set thresholds and get failures back (for example, break the build if the coverage falls below 80%)
Looking for some feedback on your experience here. Thanks!
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ALT.NET, Round 2. Redmond, Washington. April 18-20. Be there.
Title says all. We're pleased to announce the 2nd major ALT.NET Open Spaces conference. This time we're in Redmond at the DigiPen Institute of Technology. It's a 5 minute drive from the Microsoft Campus and we're looking to have some softies come down for the fun.We start up April 18th (Friday) with the similar Open Spaces approach that was quite successful in Austin, getting together a list of topics to discuss and hammer out over the weekend. The 19th is for sessions, informal talks and whatever code mashups may come out of it. Finally we wind down on Sunday with maybe a closing session or discussion.
We've bumped up the number of first-come, first-served attendees from 120 to 150 this time. When registration opens up (sometime in early February) you'll have a chance at grabbing one of the 150 spots. Just get your name on the list. That's all. No mess. No fuss. And best of all, no cost!
Yes, the event is free again (you'll have to provide your way to the conference and any hotel bills you might incur along the way, whether it be by plane, train, or automobile).
The main website is up and running here. It's very minimalistic and not much to see there right now. Of course, that will change...
So mark it in your calendars, get your traveling boots on, and make your way to Washington in April. It'll be a blast and you know it.
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To Release an Unbuildable TreeSurgeon?
I mentioned we were getting a release of TreeSurgeon out that included 2005 and now 2008 support. The code is all checked in so if you're interested in getting it, go for it. The "official" release hasn't been put together yet for due to problems with the third party libraries and tools TS includes when creating a new project.
The problem stems from the fact that TreeSurgeon uses old(er) and public releases of things like NCover in the build file it generates. These files are kept in a skeleton tree (where TreeSurgeon is installed to) and copied to the new tree you create when starting a new project. Trouble is Internet time has marched on and some of these tools no longer work for 2008.
When we updated the code/project generation for 2005/2008 support, it was a pretty simple matter of cleaning up the templates and generating new ones. The trouble comes from the tools that don't work with the 2008 compilers or .NET 3.5 framework. This is compounded by the fact that NCover is now commercial. The last (free) version is 1.5.8 but won't work against 3.5 assemblies and the new version (2.0) requires a trial key.
So it's a bit of a pickle when it comes to what version of a tool do we include with the latest version of TreeSurgeon that works for the new compilers? I didn't want to put together a released version of TS with a build that breaks (without developer intervention). There doesn't seem to be any other free coverage tool that I can find that will work here so I'm feeling a little stuck and looking for options.
Anyways, that's the cause for the delay in the official release. As I said, you can still grab the change set which will generate a 2005 or 2008 project however you'll need to manually upgrade the version of NCover and perhaps some other tools in the generated solution in order to get it to compile and pass all the tests. Need to take a look at the latest version of CI Factory to see what they're doing and maybe see if anyone else has some ideas. Feel free to chime in with your thoughts either in the comments here on the blog or the discussion forums here.
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Learning the Model View Presenter Pattern
The guys over at Patterns and Practices got it right. They've put together a package (available via a CodePlex project here) on learning and understanding the Model View Presenter Pattern (MVP). It's kind of a "mini-guidance" package and not the big behemoth you normally see from these guys that:
- Provides guidance on how MVP to promotes testability and separation of concerns within the UI
- Illustrates how to implement MVP with standard ASP.NET
- Illustrates how to implement MVP with ASP.NET and the Composite Web Application Block
The package contains full documentation on the pattern, unit tests, and source code (for both WinForms and CAB) demonstrating it. Very nice and very easy to digest! Check it out here if you're just getting started and want to see what MVP is about.
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DevTeach Day 3 - Justice Gray is my Hero
Justice is just starting up his talk and wow, we're off to a great start. Justice starts with a list of things that may offend, which include women beating up men, 5 level if statements, dissing datasets, and unchained masculinity. Luckily nobody left at the start.
We've been going for a few minutes and Justice is focusing on what the session is not (including the fact that Justice is not JP Boodhoo even though they both have an incredibly uncanny physical resemblance).
BTW, the women kissing men came into play when he showed the MonoRail slide. I wasn't offended.
Like David Laribee's presentation, this is the first time I've seen Justice present. I like his style as again its relaxed and has some nice departures from the typical PowerPoint crap that we all see. It's funny, it's casual, and it's to the point. It's a good way to take in information in a contextual way that makes it fun and easy to digest. In this day and age when we're looking at huge frameworks and technologies, there's a lot to take in. Presentations like this make it easy to take eat the elephant, one bite at a time.
Justice has the weirdest story of Steven Rockarts and his descent into druggie induced Hell. However it all relates (in Justice's strange and demented way) to MVC. Again, top skills as a presenter here. He finally winded into the problems between WebForms and MVC doing a compare and contrast example then the code samples came.
The code samples are fun (and I'm assuming available on the web somewhere) and an interesting read (especially the tests PuttingSteveInDetoxShouldGetRidOfMeth() and GivingSteveAHugGivesHimABlackEye()). Give a look see and in early December when the CTP release of the MVC framework is available you'll be able to build your own samples and start working with it.
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DevTeach Day 3 - David Laribee, The Coding Hippie
The model is the code. That's the message David Laribee started off with his Fundamentals of Domain Driven Design. As described by Kyle Baley, David walks us through DDD with the laid back and relaxed view as only he can do it.
"When you say design everybody has a definition which doesn't correspond with yours..."
David posted a quote from Paul Rand, one of my favourite graphic artists (he was responsible for the Art Nouveaux movie posters from the 60s). The quote is completely relevant to DDD since the client has one notion of an Invoice and you have something else. This is the foundation of the ubiquitous language. One of my more favourite Agile tools is the customer, and listening to them is a key action you take with them during the life of building a solution for them.
I really like David's slide approach. Mind you, he's using a MacBook Pro and perhaps his background is Mac-like and more visually focused but he has a nice approach to presentation. All of the slides are simple in nature and really focus on the message. This is very much the Lawrence Lessig approach to presentation where you don't need a lot of fluff and flashy lights. For example a picture from the movie 300 with a the simple caption of "Impossible Odds". Brilliant!
Its tough trying to find the domain experts, the subject matter experts, on a project. However you have to work with them. It's more of an art than a science to try to extrapolate the information that you need to build systems out of your customers or experts. Of course having 7 experts in the room you'll probably get 10 different answers as to what an Invoice is. Or an Employee. Or a Product.
David walks through the basic patterns used in DDD (Entities, Value Objects, Aggregates, Repositories, Services).
A couple of tips for Repositories. 1 Repository for each Aggregate Root. David (and this is my preference too) is to have a Customer Entity and a CustomerRepository Repository. There's a big debate out there about calling Repositories Repositories and you can stand on either side. Sometimes a Repository makes more sense to call it using a domain concept rather than a pattern name. For example a FileRepository might be called a Folder. I would call it Folder in the domain rather than a FileRepository.
All in a great presentation, however we just got a fire alarm which has basically put an end to the session. Well, off into the cold now with the rest of the geeks.
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Agile in your schools
After the fishbowl session from the Edmonton Code Camp, one of the big aspects that came out of the discussion was around the lack of Agile and good software development practices (aka ALT.NET) in our schools and universities.
Chris Chapman posted a comment on my entry about a series of blogs he did last month on this exact topic. Let me tell you this has got to be one of the most definitive and well-researched pieces on the subject I've ever seen. Chris not only highlights a series of key practices (Agile/lean development, TDD, refactoring, etc.) that each university offers (or doesn't as is the case) but has a scorecard and breakdown of the best-of courses to check out.
If you're about to enter University and feel like you're going to be left out because you're a forward thinker and want to really challenge yourself, check out Chris' findings which may help you see what's out there!
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Lessons Learned from Edmonton Code Camp 2007
Got back from the Edmonton Code Camp last night around midnight, after having dinner with the group. It was funny because we all sat around the table (James, Justice, Donald, Rockarts, et. al.) and realized that the entire group was also going to be at DevTeach. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but I'm sure we'll be sharing a few beers over it again in November. Anyway, a full day of fun and discussion with a few surprises. I thought I would wrap everything up into this entry although some of these could almost deserve their own post.
Education Needs to Get Agile
In a fishbowl session something really came out about learning from a gent who recently (April) graduated from the UofA. He stated that these strange new concepts (MVP/MVC, ReSharper, Domain Driven Design, IoC, etc.) were all alien and he had never heard of any of them during his Comp Sci studies. It was events like the Code Camp that brought them out (or blogs or whatever) and it excited him. There was passion there and I could see a budding ALT.NET developer just wanting to burst out all over the room.
It's true that Java, C#, and Ruby are new when it comes to the academic space. I mentioned that the world was running on Internet time and schools seem to be running on Glacial time, just waiting for something to happen and not moving very quickly when it does. This I think is a huge problem. If people are coming fresh out of University with lofty goals of building huge Enterprise applications using what they've learned from school, it's obvious this is going to be an issue. It says to me that we, the forward-thinking and always-moving-in-some-direction have a responsibility to educate the educators. We need to get out there and let people know that alternatives exist and the universe is not made up of DataSets and XML. This might go a long way to helping foster diversity and knowledge in the community at large, and help make the shift from academic to implementation be a little smoother. People should be coming out of education hitting the ground running, and not being stopped dead in their tracks, told to abandon what they learned and go pick up a few good books from the Martin Fowler signature series. There's also a responsibility of the educators to know that we are out here and enterprise development isn't just regurgitating patterns and practices that were abandoned years ago. There are alternatives and better ways of building the mousetraps, you just have to be open to understand, discuss, and validate them for the appropriate solution at hand.
XNA
I have my dual-head presentation on XNA programming including some remote debugging into the XBox 360 from my laptop. Unfortunately I was in a rush and forgot that I didn't have audio for the 360, so I bought a pair of speakers that morning from the local Staples (I'll use them at work to peeve off the QA people sitting next to me when I blast some Don Ho out on Monday morning). In my fit of excitement I forgot about getting an adapter to plug the speakers into the 360 so no sound during the demos, except when I ran the Windows versions. My laptop wasn't beefy enough to render the Racing Starter Kit (but the sound was there) so it chugged along at 12 frames per second.
I think there was good interest from the community on XNA programming (although a guy asked me if this session was about "games" and proceeded to walk out when I told him yes) so hopefully we'll see some fun stuff coming out of the Edmonton community. I'm really looking forward to XNA Game Studio 2.0 and the networking support but most of all getting it to run on my regular Visual Studio. You don't know how many times I was hitting Ctrl+F12 and Alt+Insert in Express trying to get ReSharper to work.
Domain Driven Design
I think I had fun with my Domain Driven Design session. I struggled with this topic as I couldn't figure out how to squeeze a fairly large topic like DDD into 50 minutes of discussion. I left the session open to talking about issues with development in general, what pain points people were facing, and how DDD might serve to ease the pain (or not in some cases). I covered the basics of DDD which was really only scratching the surface and we spent a little time looking at a fairly rich domain (Ben Scheirman's NHibernate video store series) and dived into writing a builder object and a test using a fluent language to describe the domain better through code.
For future sessions on DDD I'm probably going to spend more time on building fluent interfaces, maybe a DSL using Ruby or something. Writing academic examples of DDD is a little too brief and doesn't really help grok the principles or values of what DDD personifies. I did talk to a few people after the session and a few lightbulbs turned on as a result of it, so it wasn't a complete loss and people did enjoy the session (based on the feedback forms, although maybe they were being nice because it was so late in the day ;)
Community and Adoption
This was probably the coolest sessions of the day and focused on talking about good software design, the community, and how to get the word out (whatever that word is). It's funny having a session at a code camp when there's no code, but this worked (although it wasn't as filled as James' ALT.NET session). One of the reoccurring themes during the session was how does the community get to know about things like ReSharper, DDD, and patterns (to name a few). And more importantly, how does one adopt that in your own organization or community practice when you're the lone wolf?
This is a challenge. Going back to your office and telling everyone "I just saw this great tool/technique at Code Camp and we should all change to using it" isn't going to fly. My message is clear. Practice, practice, practice. And do. Or do not. There is no try (sorry Yoda). Take what you see and practice it against your work. If there's a pain point in how you build or deploy your application then download NAnt and automate the task. There's no need to ask for permission from upper management. How would that conversation go?
You: I would like to use [insert tool here] as it would reduce our deployment time by half.
Pointy-haired boss: Sorry [insert tool here] isn't on our list of approved tools and your job is to code. Get back to work!Maybe not the best advice (and some upper-management guys may come back to me on this) but just do it. Do something that works and if it works and is better than what you're doing now, isn't it worth it?
All in all, a great day and one that spurred new ideas and things to try that might make your geek life a little better.
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RYO AltNetConf
There's a tremendous amount of goodness (the "new" goodness?) that's circulating around the 'sphere. Martin Fowler chimed in with his take on it and I'm glad we're all generally singing from the same song sheet.
Jeremy MillerJeffrey Palermo brought up mention of how the original Code Camp spread like wildfire as the format and idea was easy to implement. As time goes on, I think this is true for the AltNetConf idea. Jeff summed the idea of the AltNetConf best with this quote:AltNetConf's are open spaces conferences where DotNetters get together to discuss how to build better .Net software.
Short and sweet. Just the right amount of description.
Given this the idea of new conferences springing up and spreading the new goodness is a great idea. What does it take to start up your own AltNetConf? The passion and desire to do so. So why not? There's nothing stopping you.
On the heels of the first one in Austin there are a few good ideas that you could use when you're building your own AltNetConf:
- Keep the size manageable. I think the 100 person limit was great for the Austin one. This also helps you locate a place for it.
- Self-organizing agenda. Rather than pre-canned agenda of topics, the first day/night of the conference is the time to collaborate and drill out what people are passionate about. What bugs people, what do they want to talk about. This is an agenda driven by both speaker and speakee (as I would consider everyone a speaker for each session, with someone keeping the conversation on topic rather than coffee-talk, much like a Scrum Master does during the daily standups)
- Nothing but .NET. This isn't Alt.JAVA so the conversations follow building on Microsoft platforms using the most appropriate tool, technology, and technique that makes sense for the problem at hand.
- Don't turn it into a vendor fest. While it may be Microsoft related, I think the last thing an AltNetConf needs is "Brought to you by [insert .NET vendor product here]". True, it should be free and things cost these days, but there are too many ideas that spiral out of control and become product showcases rather than guys and girls talking about software development.
- Follow the OpenSpace approach to organization and flow. Just resonates on the ideas above.
I'm at a disadvantage as I didn't directly attend the conference in Austin so I'm looking for those that were there to maybe bring out a AltNetConf retrospec. What worked well? What didn't work. What can we do better?
So spread the news, pick a location, and start doing it. For me, I'm looking to see if we can get an AltNetConfCalgary or AltNetConfEdmonton (or AltNetConfAlberta for that matter) going so ping me if you're interested. Let's keep the momentum going!
Hopefully lessons learned and ideas here would be applied to future conferences like this (which we all hope to see soon everywhere as we don't all need to coalesce to one single place once a year).