Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2012 Adopting Agile Software Practices: From Backlog to Continuous Feedback

Sam Guckenheimer, Product Owner for the Microsoft Visual Studio product line strategy, acts as chief customer advocate, responsible for end-to-end external design of new Visual Studio releases. He has 30 years’ experience as software architect, developer, tester, product manager, project manager, and executive. Before joining Microsoft, he was Director of Product Line Strategy at Rational Software Corporation, now the Rational Division of IBM. He holds  five patents on software lifecycle tools, is a frequent conference speaker, and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard.  Neno Loje has been an independent Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) consultant and Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) specialist for seven years, helping many companies establish team environments and development processes with Visual Studio.

Forewords    xii

Preface    xvi

Acknowledgments   xxiii

About the Authors   xxiv

1 The Agile Consensus    1

The Origins of Agile    2

Agile Emerged to Handle Complexity    2

Empirical Process Models    4

A New Consensus   5

Scrum   6

An Example    12

Self-Managing Teams   14

Summary   15

Endnotes    16

2 Scrum, Agile Practices, and Visual Studio   19

Visual Studio and Process Enactment   20

Process Templates   21

Process Cycles and TFS    24

Inspect and Adapt    37

Task Boards    37

Kanban    38

Fit the Process to the Project    39

Summary    42

Endnotes    43

3 Product Ownership    45

What Is Product Ownership?    46

Scrum Product Ownership    50

Release Planning    51

Qualities of Service    69

How Many Levels of Requirements    73

Summary    75

Endnotes    75

4 Running the Sprint    77

Empirical over Defined Process Control    78

Scrum Mastery    80

Use Descriptive Rather Than Prescriptive Metrics    86

Answering Everyday Questions with Dashboards   91

Choosing and Customizing Dashboards    98

Using Microsoft Outlook to Manage the Sprint    100

Summary    101

Endnotes    101

5 Architecture    103

Architecture in the Agile Consensus    104

Exploring Existing Architectures    107

Summary    124

Endnotes    126

6 Development    129

Development in the Agile Consensus    130

The Sprint Cycle    131

Keeping the Codebase Clean    132

Staying “in the Groove”    139

Detecting Programming Errors Early    143

Catching Side Effects    154

Preventing Version Skew    162

Making Work Transparent    170

Summary    171

Endnotes    173

7 Build and Lab    175

Cycle Time   176

Defining Done    177

Continuous Integration   179

Automating the Build    181

Automating Deployment to Test Lab   186

Elimination of Waste    199

Summary    203

Endnotes   204

8 Test    207

Testing in the Agile Consensus   208

Testing Product Backlog Items    211

Actionable Test Results and Bug Reports    215

Handling Bugs    223

Which Tests Should Be Automated?    223

Automating Scenario Tests    224

Load Tests, as Part of the Sprint    228

Production-Realistic Test Environments    234

Risk-Based Testing    236

Summary    238

Endnotes    239

9 Lessons Learned at Microsoft Developer Division    241

Scale    242

Business Background    243

Improvements after 2005    247

Results    256

Acting on the Agile Consensus    256

Lessons Learned    258

The Path to Visual Studio 2012    262

Endnotes   263

10 Continuous Feedback    265

Agile Consensus in Action    266

Continuous Feedback Allows Build/Measure/Learn    267

There’s No Place Like Production    269

Summary    271

Endnotes    274

Index    275

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.