Does your organisation have both Project Mangers as well as Product Owners?
This is the dysfunction of teams with Project Managers as well as Product Owners. Does your organisation have both Project Mangers as well as Product Owners? If so, to whom do your teams report? What does it depend on? Because if it does depend then you are doing a disservice to your teams and will have difficulty moving towards greater agility. I have a customer right now that has this situation with cross application teams however there are additional complications.
Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2013
About 6 months ago I was approached by Mickey to help him on the third edition of Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2013. I jumped at the chance, only to be in dismay at the amount of work, and now relieved that it is all over. I could not believe the amount of work that goes into producing a book of the calibre and while fun, deadlines were not…
Upgrade your server to Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 1
With the release of Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 2 I wanted to make sure that all of my demo machines are up to date. I have a Domain Controller and a TFS server that are separate boxes but which are both running Windows Server 2012 R2.
Should I upgrade to TFS 2013 Update 2?
With the launch at Build of Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2 I wanted to make sure that the update goes seamlessly. So I am upgrading my demo box to both Windows Server 2012 R2 Update 1 and Team Foundation Server 2013 Update 2.
What my father taught me about Evidence-based Management (34 years before it was invented!)
A few weeks ago I headed out to the Scrum.org offices in Boston to participate in training to hone my skills as an Evidence-based Management Consultant. I was talking to my father about it when I got back and was surprised that he recognised many of the practices and tools.
TFS for cross team and cross business line work item tracking
I was asked by current customer to come up with a solution, within TFS, to allow an entire division to work together in delivering software for a bank. This divisions made up of over 10 teams than work on many pieces of software. Some have simple requirements while others require harsh security and compliance. This is a standard problem and not unique to this company, however the perception still prevails with both TFS users and administrators, that one must have a single Team Project for each [Project | Team | Product] under way. This perception is not only incorrect but Team Foundation Server was designed to be used differently. The Developer Division (DevDiv) at Microsoft, who built the product, uses a single 20+ terabyte Team Project for their Work Items, Source Code and Builds for over 2k people. Team Foundation Server was designed and built to be used with fewer large Team Projects rather than many small Team Projects.
Metrics that matter with evidence-based management
I was recently asked to speak at ALM Days in Dusseldorf and more specifically to create a talk on Metrics and KPI’s for Quality. As I have been working a lot recently with evidence-based management. I am pretty sure that my session title translates as “Test management and reporting – KIP’s for better decisions” so I am going to concentrate on reporting and KPI’s as the session before mine is on Agile Testing.
Team Foundation server 2013 Update 2 RC is coming, are you ready?
While naked ALM Consulting can help you install and configure TFS you may want to take advantage of the upcoming TFS Upgrade Weekend from Microsoft for free. Just as with the TFS 2013 Preview Microsoft is putting its money where its mouth is and setting up a raft of experts that will be on hand to help you upgrade to TFS 2013 Update 2 RC. They are so confident that you will not have any problems that on Friday 28th February and Saturday 1st March they will have experts standing by to support you. All they ask is that you register for the http://nkdalm.net/TFS13U2UpgradeWeekend so that they know how many folks are taking advantage… you know… just in case.
Building a release pipeline with Release Management with Visual Studio 2013
With the release of Visual Studio 2013 we now have release management built right into the product that we can use to build a scalable release pipeline. It’s not perfect but it does hit the spot.
Install Release Management 2013
Just recently I have been doing a lot of work in Release Management 2013 and noticed the lack of documentation. I have done a number of installs and documented them is posts like Installing Release Management Client for Visual Studio 2013 and Installing Release Management Server for TFS 2013 however there is always things that don’t quite join up. I often have to head off an fix problems or get support as part of my posts an while I almost always blog those issues there is no joined up experience.
Installing Release Management Server for TFS 2013
Unless you have been living under a rock you might have noticed that Microsoft has added a Release Management tool to its Visual Studio product line. I have been playing with it for a while now and I think I have it figured out. However as this is a new addition to the product it is extremely poorly documented.
Execute Tests with Release Management for Visual Studio 2013
Last week I was onsite with a customer who was trying to do automated release and test with Lab Management. I showed him a better way by execute Tests with Release Management for Visual Studio 2013.
Move your Active Directory domain to another server
I was trying to install TFS 2013 yesterday and I found that my local demo domain was not working. After a little investigation It looks like I was running Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview and it had just expired.
Installing TFS 2013 from scratch is easy
It had been a while since I installed TFS from scratch and I had a few questions from a customer on the subject. So instead of creating yet another installing TFS post I decided to create a couple of videos instead.
Change the Release Management Server that your Client connects to
As a consultant I am onsite at a different customer every week and as I use my own laptop for most engagements I need to be able to change the Release Management Server that I connect to from the thick client.
Installing Release Management Client for Visual Studio 2013
With the addition of the new Release Management Client for Visual Studio 2013 to the Visual Studio ALM roundup many folks are going to be giving it a go. If you might remember some of my post during the preview days of this tool there were some issue with installing it. It looks like Microsoft has gotten most of them sorted out and I can now get everything installed.
Error adding Active Directory Group to Release Management Client in Visual Studio 2013
When you try to add a group from Active Directory in the Release Management Client in Visual Studio 2013 you get an unhandled exception. When trying to add an Active Directory group to release management the other day I saw a little popup after adding the group that disappeared too quickly to action. I noticed that the group that I was trying to add did not end up in the list so I gave it another go.
Professional Scrum in Immingham, UK
As my first engagement as naked ALM Consulting in the UK I got to work with the fantastic team at DFDS Seaways and teach the Professional Scrum course from Scrum.org.
ALM Consulting in Scotland, UK, Scandinavia & Europe
Well, that’s me started ALM Consulting in Scotland, UK & Europe as naked ALM Consulting – Martin Hinshelwood. As I write this I am on a train on my way to my first engagement in the north of England is what looks to be and awesome group of folks to talk a little Scrum and Team Foundation Build.
Issue [ TFS 2013 ] Value cannot be null. Parameter name: key
When customising your process template work item tracking gives you an “ArgumentNullException: Value cannot be null. Parameter name: key” exception with no more details. I have been onsite at a customer creating a custom processes template and migrating their current data into the new format. Because they make extensive use of Area Path for documentation purposes we could not use it for Team. So I dutifully configured their TFS for ‘team field’ as their client field so that they could create ‘teams’ that represent the work that is done for each client. All looked good for a few hours until the tester tried to edit one of their old work item; 2663.
