Speaking about Coded UI Tests at Chicago Code Camp

We are just days away from this year’s Chicago Code Camp and it is shaping up to be an outstanding event. Chicago Code Camp is an entire day of FREE sessions for developers of all walks, including C#, Java, F#, SmallTalk, Clojure and more. If you are a developer in the Chicago-Milwaukee area, you should set aside this Saturday, May 14th to attend Chicago Code Camp.

I will be presenting “Testing the User Interface: Coded UI Tests with Visual Studio 2010” and expect this session to be educational and interactive. In an attempt to make this session as valuable and targeted as possible, I’ve setup a UserVoice forum where you can suggest and vote on the content presented. I’ve seeded the forum with the topics that I have envisioned, but I’m sure there are other great ideas I haven’t considered. If you are planning to attend, please visit http://ericdboyd.uservoice.com to suggest and vote on the topics you would like to see.

There is an amazing lineup of speakers and sessions for Chicago Code Camp 2011, and you can get a complete listing with the schedule at http://chicagocodecamp.com. If you are planning to attend and you haven’t yet registered, please do so at http://chicagocodecamp.eventbrite.com. It is a completely FREE event, but event logistics are a lot easier when you know how many people are attending.

The organizers of this event have spent a great deal of time making this a world-class code camp, so please thank them when you see them. I would like to extend a special thank you to Michael D. Hall, Scott Seely and Clark Sell for all of the work they have done to make this event great.

The Agility Revolution: It’s Here

Throughout the history of man-kind, we have innovated and strived to achieve maximum efficiency. In the 18th and 19th century we experienced the Industrial Revolution which streamlined agriculture and manufacturing through the use of technology and machinery. In the late 1990’s, the Information Age revolutionized the accessibility of information with new communication channels and technologies like the internet and world-wide web. Most consider the Information Age as a period of process improvement and technology, but when you look closely, that’s not really what happened. This period was extremely inefficient and rarely delivered real value which is what paved the way to the dotcom bubble and the burst that soon followed. Cash was thrown around like it grew on trees, if you could fog a computer monitor you were a Senior Programmer, and technologies were developed without considering whether customers even existed. I do consider the Information Age to have been extremely valuable for the world; however, it was not about maximizing value.

The “this is too good to be true” bubble burst in the early 2000’s and challenging economic periods followed. These times have motivated organizations to seek ways to increase efficiency while delivering more faster than the dotcom gold rush. Everyday I observe our technology industry take steps to improve and at the recent Microsoft Partner ALM Summit this was very apparent in multiple areas. Microsoft has been and is committed to improving software development through Scrum, Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and development tools. Agility in the development process increases deliverable value, reduces development cost and accelerates the time-to-market. At the other end of the technology and software development space, Microsoft’s Cloud strategy is boosting efficiency by eliminating huge upfront investments in infrastructure, reducing management costs and shortening provisioning time to accelerate time-to-market while enabling massive scale to appropriately accommodate demand. Gluing these improvements together, Microsoft, Apple and other industry leaders continue to innovate the mobile connected workforce, through smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices.

Our industry appears to be in an Agility Revolution and all of these efforts are increasing agility in a lot of ways which ultimately leads to increased value for everyone. If you are in the middle of this revolution and are increasing agility in your organizations practices, exploring the cloud and looking for opportunities to enable your workforce to stay connected wherever they are, pat yourself on the back and keep innovating. If you are not because you’re not sure where to begin, this is what I recommend.

Agile Practices

Agile ManifestoPrinciples of the Agile Manifesto
The first place I would recommend is the Agile Manifesto. In February, 2001, a group of seventeen thought leaders in our industry gathered on a ski trip and out of that the Agile Manifesto was born.

  • Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
  • Working software over comprehensive documentation
  • Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
  • Responding to change over following a plan

These four statements are simple and seem like common sense. But, when you drop your guard and truly consider them, are you headed in the opposite direction? You should consider these principles as you walk through your agile journey and your steps should align.

Scrum.org – Scrum Guide
The next place to check out would be Scrum.org. Scrum.org is an organization founded by Ken Schwaber who is one of the creators of Scrum. Their purpose is to help organizations with knowledge, training and implementation of Scrum in order to improve the software development profession. Now you might be asking yourself, what is Scrum? I have good news, Scrum.org provides a FREE 21-page Scrum Guide and it is a great, concise overview of the Scrum Framework and whether Scrum is a new term or you have experience with Scrum, it is a good read.

Agile Project Management with Scrum
If you are the type that likes a good book to gain knowledge, Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber is for you. This book will provide you with rules and practices for implementing Scrum through a series of case studies and real-world lessons with successes and failures for you to learn from.

Partner with Success

Once you decide to set sail on your journey and begin organizational transformation, partner with a successful agile consultancy. I strongly believe that this is critical to be successful with agile adoption. I intentionally chose the word partner and in order to be effective, you need a solid partnership.  You need a team who is there to guide you and help you through the complex issues that come with this significant culture change. Your partner should be able to demonstrate previous successes, provide training, consulting, long-term coaching and a team to jump start your development project. Agile adoption is not an overnight makeover and you need to be prepared to run the race and not expect a short dash.

These are my suggestions for getting started with agile and I will continue my thoughts about the Agile Revolution and Cloud Computing in follow-on post.

Microsoft embraces OS X, Linux and Unix developers

Typically when developers think of Microsoft development, Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and Visual C++ come to mind. Rarely is Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX or Eclipse a thought. However, over the past year Microsoft has embraced these OS’s and the Eclipse IDE with a new product called Team Explorer Everywhere. Team Explorer Everywhere 2010, or TEE, is a new Microsoft product that came out of the Teamprise acquisition that occurred in November, 2009. TEE makes it possible for developers using non-Microsoft OS’s and IDE’s to collaborate and take advantage of the great application lifecycle management tooling provided by Team Foundation Server.

Now, as a Java developer running Eclipse on OS X, you can make use of TFS just like the .NET developers using Visual Studio. You can manage projects, tasks , version control and builds using Ant and Maven. Even if your development is split between technology stacks like Microsoft, Unix and Java, you can now collaborate, share assets and get a combined view of the project across the teams who were previously disconnected.

Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 provides:

You can get more information about Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg413285.aspx

Whether you are new to TEE or have been using since it was Teamprise, this week you will have the rare opportunity to meet and hear from Ed Thomson, one of the engineers who created the product.

Ed will be touring the Midwest and presenting:

Collaborate Across Platforms without Compromise
Save time and add value to your development team process

During his talk, he’ll examine how the non-windows platform support provided through Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2010 enables development teams to easily collaborate across platforms. It provides the tools and plug-ins you need to access Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2010 from within Eclipse-based environments, so everyone can work together to achieve business goals.

Key Discussion Points:

  • The current state of Team Foundation Server tools for non-windows development
  • Feature parity of Eclipse and Team Foundation Server
  • Discussions on the direction of Team Explorer Everywhere
  • Eclipse and tools for TFS for non .NET developers

Speaker Bio

Edward Thomson is a software development engineer for Microsoft Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere on the Team Foundation Server team. He develops the Team Foundation Server plug-in for Eclipse to provide Java developers and cross-platform users first-class access to the integrated Application Lifecycle Management functionality of TFS. Before joining Microsoft, Edward spent a decade developing version control and work item tracking tools for the Microsoft platform as well as for cross-platform users.

Ed will be visiting the following cities and they are filling up fast. If you want to hear from the Microsoft product team about cross-platform development using TFS, you should register now.

Austin, TX
Monday, April 4th @ 11:30AM to 1PM
TFS Austin User Group
https://sites.google.com/site/tfsaustinusergroup/project-updates/tfsproductteaminaustinapril4thtotalkteamexplorereverywhere

Chicago, IL
Thursday, April 7th @ 2PM to 4:30PM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032481095&IO=FugavZ%2bXR1EgFiFq7swLOw%3d%3d

Thursday, April 7th @ 6:30PM to 8:30PM
Chicago ALM User Group
http://chicagoalmug.org

Milwaukee, WI
Friday, April 8th @ 9AM to 11:30AM
https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032481099&IO=FugavZ%2bXR1FKUHEf842Wzw%3d%3d

Bringing our ALM Summit experience to You

As I leave Milwaukee and head towards Redmond on a full flight with five of my Centare colleagues , I cannot help but think about the week ahead at the Microsoft Partner ALM Summit. The question that keeps entering my mind is, how will this week of insight, guidance and relationships add value to our team, company and customers? All of these groups are important to consider and should benefit from this trip, but how? Pondering these questions, I’ve decided to offer some ideas for how these groups will benefit. While these ideas will be specifically considering the ALM Summit, they should apply to any educational event or conference.

Knowledge Transfer
At any educational event knowledge is gained, some more than others, but non-the-less education occurs. Two things can happen with this new knowledge. It can be horded and guarded like trade secrets, or it can be shared with others. I strongly believe in community, and members of the tech community should frequently collaborate and share work experiences to strengthen the group. At Centare, we make a conscience effort to gather our team regularly for educational and social events. We will strengthen our internal community by sharing the knowledge and best practices learned with our team through these gatherings.

Boost Effectiveness
Not only will we pass along new insights, but the team will collaborate and bounce ideas which will naturally improve retention and practicality. Our team is a great group of leaders who are passionate about delivering business value through software development. Our team also constantly seeks ways to sharpen the saw and be better at what we do. New information will be considered by our team and will eventually lead to experimenting, dissecting and developing personal conclusions. Ultimately, the new information is a catalyst for thought, leading to action and resulting in increased efficiency and effectiveness.

Spread the Word
Thus far, I’ve been completely focused on how this benefits our internal team and company but have not talked about our customers. This would all be a waste if our customers didn’t gain value. Our customers will certainly benefit from our team being more knowledgeable about software development practices and specific technologies. Our customers will also benefit from our team’s increased effectiveness. But how do we make it practical for our customers as quickly as possible? I believe our customers would benefit from sessions similar to our internal sessions. The word should be spread and we should equip our customers with insight and practices to be most effective. We regularly hold Lunch & Learn events for our customers and the community to where our leaders present emerging technologies and best practices. This would be a potential forum for passing along this information. However, we could also engage organizations through targeted, intimate sessions. These Customer Briefings would provide insight and guidance and create an environment that encourages good dialog.

Get Involved
You might be asking, how do I get involved? If you are a part of an organization in Milwaukee, Chicago or Madison area and would like to hear about the practices and knowledge that we pick up this week at the Microsoft Partner ALM Summit and in the future, please contact me and let us know to include you on our Lunch & Learn invites. If you are interested in a private Customer Briefing, shoot me an email with your contact info, a little information about your organization and what would be most valuable for your Customer Briefing. Unfortunately, because of the fixed size of our team, Customer Briefing availability will be limited and available on a first-come first-serve basis, so get in quickly.

Hello, My Name is Eric D. Boyd

My name is Eric D Boyd. I am a technology enthusiast and practitioner with expertise in Microsoft technologies and tools starting with ASP Classic 1.0 and VB 5 to the current .NET Framework, C#, W* Foundations and Azure. I started in IT 15 years ago and have learned a lot from the experiences of my journey. I have also had a ton of fun and have really enjoyed my work.

The other facet of my career that I thoroughly enjoy is “the startup”. I love entrepreneurship and business startups, especially when it’s a tech startup. I kicked off my technology career by starting a web design firm. This was a great way to get exposure to a number of diverse business models and assist with their marketing efforts.

During this time, the dotcom boom of the late 90’s was developing and I was recruited to work for a transportation-related dotcom startup. This was one of the pinnacle times of my career. We assembled an amazing, passionate, unique team of leadership, IT professionals, software developers, designers, customer service reps and sales reps. We worked round the clock together, played video games together, consumed loads of pizza and caffeinated beverages together and in the end we produced a killer dotcom property. Unfortunately, the dotcom boom became the dotcom bubble and the bubble burst.

Immediately after the transportation dotcom, I started a tech company with another exciting team of individuals. Our company produced business and developer focused software and provided software development consulting services. This team of talented developers, designers and business professionals worked together for 5 years and had lots of exciting times. We not only worked together but we spent a lot of time hanging out away from the office. We had lots of all-nighter client projects and all-nighter Halo parties too. BTW – I have lots of room for improvement with Halo.

And then, after that exciting ride, I circled back to transportation again. I became the Senior Director of IT for a company that transports heavy-duty trucks across all of North America and was responsible for IT and the software development efforts that facilitated operations and drove innovation for the organization.

After all of that adventure, I recently joined the amazing team at the Centare Group and have jumped back into the world of technology consulting.

I am originally from Southwest Missouri which is where I spent most of my life. However, a few years ago, my wife Shelly and I moved to the Chicago-Milwaukee Megalopolis. And we truly love both Chicago and Milwaukee and have a great deal of fun living here. The city of Chicago is beautiful with great culture and Summerfest in Milwaukee, the world’s largest music festival, is tough to beat. We have a one year old son named Jaxon who has greatly enriched my life and given me a new happiness that I didn’t even know was possible.

So that is a little summary of my history and background. My intent here is to share information about emerging technologies, noteworthy startups, and helpful advice from my experiences and endeavors. I hope this is a place for you to provide feedback and enables dialog with the community too.