Productivity

We are pleased to announce that Test Studio's R1 2011 SP2 (version 2011.1.712) release is now available to download! This service pack features over 70 updates in almost every area of the application. Updated areas include: HTML automation, XAML (Silverlight & WPF) automation, Browser Plug-Ins, Dialog Handling, Test Explorer, DOM Explorer, Team Pulse Integration, TFS (Team Foundation Server) Integration, Results Viewing, Reporting, and more! We have added some major (and I mean major) updates to our Find Expression Builder - its been completely reinvented combining the ease of use you have come to expect from Test Studio, with the ...

I get asked this a lot.  Project Managers are asked to provide full project plans and are asked to commit to this plan.  In order for Project Managers to feel good about this, we try to get all of the requirements up front.  This allows them to derive a schedule and a cost for developing these requirements.  This makes perfect sense right?  If that’s the case, how in the world can an Agile team commit to a project that has a fixed cost and schedule?  Here is the assumption – if we figure out the requirements – we can derive ...

Agile teams like short iterations because they help to ensure tight feedback cycles in order to reduce waste and minimize uncertainty. However, what if you can’t fit all the work required to implement a product backlog item in a 2 week sprint? For example, with more and more emphasis on design a considerable amount of work might be required for a designer to work with the product owner prior to any development effort investment. A similar question was asked of me during a web cast on Agile adoption: “... it’s a challenge to incorporate integration testing in a short 2-4 ...

[Cross posted from http://www.skimedic.com] Technorati Tags: LINQ,.NET Yesterday, after my session on LINQ at MADExpo, a gentleman asked me how I would solve a certain problem that he is facing at work with LINQ.  Here is my solution (turns out I was a little brain dead after giving three sessions at the conference, so while he was sitting with me, I just couldn’t see it). The Problem The problem consists of a list of salespeople that have sales.  Here are the classes involved: public class SalesPerson { public string Name { get; set; } public IList<Sales> Sales { get; set;...

Making a slight deviation from the more code-happy posts I normally do, I want to take a chance to talk about something which is very important to .Net developers, specifically those of us working in the Xaml space – the importance of tooling in a development environment. (Hint, the above image was edited using a Telerik Xaml tool!) Good Tools As developers, these help us to create better products, internal applications, and websites.  With them we can achieve better results faster, complete with more code coverage for tests and better looking UIs on top of it all, all while making a more efficient...