ALM

If you're concerned about how your development process works, what methodologies to use, and whether (and how) to use Unit Testing, this is the place to be. We'll show you how to use Unit Testing in installation and deployment scenarios, how to leverage MSBuild, and how to create Web Tests (including validation and extraction rules). We'll also show you how to add effective User Interface Testing. And we've provided coverage of the up-coming release of VSTS/TFS, including its ALM support and Best Practices.

DT7Team Foundation Server 2008 – Migrate or Integrate?
Richard Hundhausen
Tuesday, December 9 – 11:15 a.m.
So, Team Foundation Server 2008 is installed in your company. That's great news. Now what? Should you migrate your existing tools and processes, or integrate with them? In my opinion, Team Foundation Server 2008 can comfortably replace any of your existing ALM solutions. The trouble is management may not be ready to give them up – for ROI, political, or egomaniacal reasons. That's fine too. In this session, we will look at the latest technology options for migrating-from, or integrating-with, your ALM tools. So, if you do happen to be chained to a home-grown defecting tracking system, 3rd party requirements management system, or an obscure, open-source revision tracking system, come to this session and find out how to put Team Foundation Server in the center of it all.

DT20Make Your Build Work for You
Trent Nix
Tuesday, December 9 – 4:45 p.m.
For most software teams, build is the first line of defense in assessing the quality of the software being constructed. Build can encompass anything from the compilation of code to unit testing, creating installations, and deployment. Some teams build occasionally, others build each days, and a few build continuously! This session is focused on presenting how build can be used to improve your software process including a detailed examination of MSBuild, how it can be used to automate the build process, how other tools can be used to schedule and dispatch builds, and how to mine your build results for data about the quality of the software being built.

DW4Agile Database Development
Richard Hundhausen
Wednesday, December 10 – 9:45 a.m.
Agile remains a popular buzzword these days. Some teams strive to become more agile, while others actively avoid it. Where do you weigh in? Regardless, it's not something that has traditionally applied to SQL Server database development until recently. With the proper process and configuration and use of Team Foundation Server and the tools found in the Database Edition, it is possible to satisfy your customer's changing needs if and when they should extend to the database.

DW125 Things I Learned from Lean that Could Have Saved My Last Agile project
Scott Bellware
Wednesday, December 10 – 1:45 p.m.
While Agile methods have enabled organizations to understand and to adopt more disciplined software development practices, Agile can be taken advantage of by software teams in ways that can lead to less desirable results and even project failure. This presentation tells the story of an agile project staffed with veteran agile practitioners that failed catastrophically, and the principals found in Lean Software Development that help explain the failure, as well as ways to avoid the same failures in the future.

DW17Practical Lean Software Development
David Laribee
Wednesday, December 10 – 4:45 p.m.
Lean thinking is gaining traction in the Agile community lately, but it's been an established movement for decades in the manufacturing industry. Toyota is the pioneering firm in lean manufacturing and product development. We'll look at some of their processes and practices -- on both the production and design side -- in order to understand how we can improve our Agile implementations and achieve the lean ideals of "pull" and "single piece flow." Specifically we'll examine how the practices of Obeya (the team room), Andon (visual management, information radiators), and Kanban (constrained, visual workflow) allow us to trim waste and achieve increased flow: where ideas efficiently move through our development system to production software. Sharing some early real world experiences, we'll look at how these concepts manifest themselves on an Agile team and discuss how Lean changes and refines our existing approach.

DTH15Scrum and Team System
Trent Nix
Thursday, December 11 – 3:15 p.m.
Scrum is an iterative incremental process of software development commonly used with Agile software development. Microsoft Visual Studio Team System has an active community of users that have used Team System to manage their Scrum projects and has a set of mainstream process templates that are Scrumbased. Join us for an examination of the process templates available for Team System that implement Scrum and for a discussion the merits of using Scrum to manage your software projects. This topic is intended to be accessible for people who are new to agile software development and intended to be informative even for the most seasoned Scrum advocate.

DTH17Test Your ASP.NET Apps with VSTS Web Tests & Load Tests
Benjamin Day
Thursday, December 11 – 4:45 p.m.
It's hopeless. There's no automated way to test your web apps. The only option is to test them by hand, right? Well, no. Visual Studio Team System has Web Tests that let you run and validate different paths through your ASP.NET applications. Each test simulates a user performing a bunch of actions across a series of web pages and allows you to check the response to verify that your app is going what you expect. Once you have your Web Tests defined you assemble them together to create Load Tests. Load Tests simulate hundreds of users hitting your web app in order to validate how well -- or not so well -- your application performs under stress.

In this session, Ben will show you how to write complex Web Tests using Validation Rules, Extraction Rules, and Web Test Plugins. He'll also cover how to make your tests data-driven using an external data source so you'll get better tests with less code. Then we'll move on to creating Load Tests using both a stand-alone machine and with multiple machines using VSTS Load Test Agent. We'll also talk about what your options are for profiling your application under load using Run Settings and Stress Test Counters. Ben will wrap up the session by showing you how to make it all work inside of a Team Build.