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Article: Levels of Team Foundation Server 2010 Build Automation
My article discussing how to adopt Team Foundation Server 2010 build and the various levels of build “awesomeness” is up at VisualStudioMagazine.com. The basic gist is how to think about going from no automated builds to achievable levels of automated builds using Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS2010) and what that process would be. For TFS2010…
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TechEd Atlanta 2011: Identify & Fix Performance Problems with Visual Studio Ultimate
I was lucky enough to get to speak at TechEd Atlanta this year and I did a session on fixing performance problems using the tools in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Identify & Fix Performance Problems with Visual Studio Ultimate It’s a common problem: you’re getting close to when you’re supposed to deploy your new ASP.NET…
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VSLive Vegas: Top 7 Lessons From My First Big Silverlight Project
I’m catching up on my blogging today and I’m posting stuff that should have gone up a while ago. A few months back, I did a Silverlight best practices session at VSLive Las Vegas. Top 7 Lessons Learned On My First Big Silverlight Project Silverlight is tricky. You’d think it’d be just like writing any…
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Scrum vs. Kanban: It’s All About The Complexity Of The Task
A few months ago I did a Scrum vs. Kanban session at VSLive Las Vegas 2011 with fellow Scrum Trainer, David Starr. It went well and I’m just now getting around to posting the slides. (Better late than never, huh?) The Scrum vs. Kanban Cage Match Scrum and Kanban: Apples and oranges or evil twins?…
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6 Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Tips for Unit Testing Silverlight, WP7, and WPF
My article for Visual Studio Magazine just went live. “6 Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Tips: Leverage ViewModel and Unit Test Silverlight and WP7 Apps” Here are the tips: 1. Separate the Model from the ViewModel, no matter what 2. The classes from “Add Service Reference” are not your Models or your ViewModels 3. Separate your ViewModel and…
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Top 4 Reasons Why a Shared Development Database is Evil.
It’s pretty common. A development team will frequently have one instance of SQL Server — filled with data from production — that all the devs use to develop and test the next version of the application. It’s one of those things in software development that feels like “common sense”. Of *course* you’re going to have…
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Microsoft ALM Summit, November 16–18, 2010
I’ve been in Redmond, WA for Microsoft PDC 2010 this week and I keep getting reminded or asked if I’m going to the Microsoft ALM Summit. It’s happening in Redmond from November 16 to 18 and unfortunately, I’ve got a conflict and I won’t be able to make it to this conference. Anyway, there are…
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TFS2010: Reconcile Workspace after Gated Checkin is weird if Visual Studio 2010 is Elevated
Problem: After running a TFS2010 Gated Checkin Build, Reconcile Workspace leaves pending changes if Visual Studio 2010 is running with “Elevated” permissions. Description: First off, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. The “what’s going on?” section for this post comes from Philip Kelley from Microsoft and the “fix” for this comes from…
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TFS2010: Configure IIS from Team Build with a Custom Team Build Workflow Activity
I find that a lot of the applications I write use IIS in some way. Silverlight, ASP.NET, WCF Services – these all usually need an IIS web application in order to run. Since I’m a unit testing / test-driven development kind of a guy and a everything-should-be-repeatable kind of a guy and an if-it-doesn’t-run-from-an-automated-build-then-it-isn’t-real kind…
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Article: “Static methods are a code smell”
I wrote an article a while back for TechTarget / SearchWinDevelopment about static methods being a code smell. It got published a few weeks ago and here’s a link to read it. Static methods are a code smell by Ben Day 02.26.2010 Ever heard of code smells? A code “smell” is a way of saying…