Chad Albrecht's Site

User Story Role in TFS
Posted:Thu, 11 Mar 2010 08:47:16 -1000
As I mentioned, I received numerous questions during my presentation at the WI .NET User Group a few weeks back. One of the them was: “Is there a way to add the subject of a user story as an explicit field?” After probing the individual a bit, I discovered he wanted to be able to sort user stories bases on this field. As a recap a user story is typically in the form: As a <type of user> I want <some goal> so that <some reason> In this post I will show you how to add the <type of user> or user story role to the user story in TFS 2010. First make sure you have TFS Power Tools installed. For the TFS 2010 RC, download them here. Second, I’m going to show you how to do it using the MSF for Agile v5.0 User Story Work Item Type (WIT). While other templates are going to...
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Estimate Histograms in TFS
Posted:Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:53:30 -1000
Last July I posted an article on how to use a histogram to gauge how accurately you or your team members estimate. I’ve had a few people ask me about this recently so I thought I’d post on how to create these histograms in TFS 2010. For a quick recap on what we want to accomplish with these histograms, take a look at my July article. You will need a process template that allows you to capture and Original Estimate and Complete Work values. (Such as the MSF for Agile v5.0 template) Assuming you have Excel 2007 and Team Explorer 2010 installed, go ahead and open Excel and follow the steps below: Step 1: Click on the Data Ribbon and Select Existing Connections. ...
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Technical Debt
Posted:Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:56:39 -1000
First let’s start with Ward Cunningham’s definition here. The way I explained this at MADdotNET was poor at best. ;) While I tend to include measures of waste in technical debt, this is NOT generally shared by the Agile community. Simply put, technical debt is the cost (debt) from hasty software design and development. Steve McConnell expounds on this here. I hope this clears things up!...
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MADdotNET - Succeeding With Agile & TFS 2010
Posted:Thu, 04 Mar 2010 07:40:34 -1000
I presented “Succeeding With Agile & TFS 2010” for the MADdotNET User Group last night to a full house. I want to thank everyone for the turnout and the great questions and discussions! I’m going to try to post some articles as follow-ups to some the the questions that were asked last night that didn’t get the attention they deserve. Some of these topics will be: Agile Estimation, Technical Debt, Code Churn and including bugs and refactoring on the Product Backlog. Let me know if I missed anything you want me to cover. For those that are interested, here is the presentation: ...
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Locking a Task’s Original Estimate in TFS 2010
Posted:Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:04:58 -1000
During my presentation at the WI .NET User Group the this past week, I had a number of questions on customizing the TFS Process Template. I’m going to answer some of these questions in detail on my blog. The first one I’m going to cover is “Can I lock the original estimate in TFS so I can see how good we are at estimating?” The answer is yes. But before we begin, a couple of notes. First make sure you have TFS Power Tools installed. For the TFS 2010 RC, download them here. Second, I’m going to show you how to do it using the MSF for Agile v5.0 Task Work Item Type (WIT). While other templates are going to be slightly different, you can use this same method as a general guideline on how to do this. Finally, what we are looking to do here is lock (make read on...
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Succeeding With Agile & TFS 2010
Posted:Tue, 23 Feb 2010 04:17:00 -1000
Making the transition to Agile can be challenging for even the most seasoned organization. Having good leadership and the right tools can make all the difference. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience Chad will be walking us through methods that can be used to avoid common pitfalls and using Team Foundation Server (TFS) 2010 as an Agile platform. In this highly interactive session, Chad will demonstrate some of the new features of TFS 2010 as they relate to Agile estimation, planning, execution and measurement. If your organization is considering a migration to Agile or the TFS 2010 platform, you are encouraged to attend. I presenting the above topic tonight at the Wisconsin .NET User Group. Register Here! I will also be giving the same presentation at the Madison .NET User Group on March 3rd. Register Here! Look...
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Analyze your Value Stream, A Quick How To Guide
Posted:Tue, 02 Feb 2010 07:16:17 -1000
Inspired by Michael Dubakov's article Flow. Discover Problems and Waste in Kanban, I thought I’d spend some time looking at Value Stream Analysis. We talk a lot these days about delivering value to our clients, but many of us don’t understand the details of how that is accomplished. Sure we understand that raw ones and zeros couldn’t be sold for the same amount as the aggregated application, but let’s take a more concise look at a couple questions? 1) How do we define value. and 2) How do we analyze the process by which we deliver value? (Value Stream) The first question we seek to better understand is the definition of value. Without diving head first into an economics discussion, we can simply look at value as our client’s perceived worth of the product or service we provide. This has a dollar fi...
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A Successful Software Organization – Leadership Reading
Posted:Sun, 31 Jan 2010 05:20:39 -1000
I am spending most of my time as of late providing management consulting services to my clients. Most of them have made, or are making, the transition to Agile and often facing the same set of issues. While I think there is no replacement for a good Management Consultant/Agile Coach, a close second is reading as much as you can from those who have successfully made the transition to Agile. With that, I would like to present a select list of my favorites: ...
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Jumping the Chasm to Management
Posted:Fri, 29 Jan 2010 08:08:00 -1000
I was recently asked: “What mentoring techniques have you used to help engineers make the move into management?” Great question! While there are many tools that can be used here, I think it’s important to start with some key factors in making this jump: Engineers thrive on building things and the resulting sense of accomplishment when it’s built. To improve yourself, the must be an awareness of the improvement area. Starting with the first point, I’ve seen (and personally experienced) a sense of floundering when engineers are asked to manage others. Being used to writing code all day they often feel like they aren’t accomplishing anything day after day. As far as I can tell, there is no way around this and represents the first half of the chasm. Tool #1, Patience. We must remind our manager in training that what they are experiencing is perfectly normal and that things ...
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Using the ‘Release’ Concept in Agile
Posted:Mon, 18 Jan 2010 11:42:27 -1000
I’m spending quite a bit of time these days helping organizations implement Agile methodologies. As such I hear the same set of questions and see the same set of issues over and over again. One of the issues I see quite often is the “long sprint.” To explain what I mean by this I’ll use a hypothetical conversation with a Team Lead new to Agile. Team Lead: “How do you deal with the fact sprint planning and reviews take so long?” Me: “How long is long?” Team Lead: “Sometimes a week!” Me: “How long are your sprints?” Team Lead: “Usually 3-6 weeks.” Me: “How did you determine that 3-6 weeks was a good length?” Team Lead: “Because we couldn’t spend 2 weeks out of every month not coding! We use longer Sprints to avoid spending so much time in review and planning.” For those of you that are experienced in Agile, you should see a few problems here. For now, let’s just ...
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