3rd February 2012 meeting – Software Project Rescue: A Fairy Tale

28 January 2012 No comments

Software Project Rescue: A Fairy Tale

with Andrew Harcourt

Abstract:

This is a tale of a naïve protagonist, misguided advisors, princesses[1], dragons[2] and knights[3] in shining armour[4].

Like most fairy tales, this story has an idyllic beginning, a middle, and a happy ending. Also like most fairy tales, the middle of this tale is a grim, dark, scary journey through the Woods of Requirements, blithely past the Ivory Tower of Architecture, into the Depths of Design Despair,  under the Mountain of Technical Debt and finishing with an agile leap of faith over the Waterfall of Doom to reach the rainbow on the other side.[5]

This talk starts with a post-mortem of a 3.5-year, $2m project that went horribly wrong. We’ll look at where the project failed: the architectural choices; the management strategies; the personalities involved and some sample code. We’ll also look at the changes that were made to bring the project back on track, get its wildly spiralling technical debt under control, re-release a functioning version and refactor it to something testable – and all in 3.5 weeks.

Finally, we’ll discuss ways to identify the issues encountered in this project so that you can spot them before they bite, strategies for regaining control over a project that’s already in trouble, and effective methods for managing troublesome stakeholders.

[1] There may or may not be actual princesses.
[2] Or dragons.
[3] Or knights.
[4] Motorcycle helmets.
[5] Bingo!

Date:
Friday, 3rd February 2012

Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:
Microsoft Office – South Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane

RSVP: Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

Andrew Harcourt is a Senior Consultant at Readify.

Andrew is a solutions architect and software engineer with experience in large-scale, high-load, geographically-distributed systems. Andrew specialises in project rescue, governance and development methodologies. Andrew’s main areas of technical expertise are in the web and mobile space with interests in WPF, Silverlight and cloud computing. Andrew’s mother wrote COBOL on punch cards, and Andrew has been coding in one form or another since he was five years old.

Last month’s meeting

A big thanks to David Cook for his talk in December.

Meetings

2nd December 2011 meeting–Technical Debt: How to Quantify and Mitigate it

25 November 2011 No comments

Technical Debt: How to quantify and Mitigate it

with David Cook

Abstract:

Technical debt is a metaphor for describing the cost of putting off good development practices. This debt must be paid back to avoid the “interest payments” becoming crippling to the business and teams need to have an understanding of the types of technical debt, how to properly identify, manage and handle it. This presentation will focus on a number of common developer (and project) anti-patterns that can lead to the build-up of technical debt in a project and, having identified these behaviours, we’ll look at techniques to firstly quantify and then to mitigate against them.

Date:
Friday, 2nd December, 2011

Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:
Microsoft Office – North Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane

RSVP: Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

David has been working in software development for nearly 15 years in many large organisations within Australia and the UK in a range of industries such as Government, Banking and Finance. Currently David is a Developer Productivity Analyst with Technology One where he is responsible for ensuring the right processes, tools and training materials are in place. Through the promotion of software craftsmanship and software engineering best practices, he is able to improve developer productivity and streamline the application lifecycle management process. David is currently involved in the rollout of TFS 2010 and Agile development methodologies across all developer teams within Technology One.

Last month’s meeting

A big thanks to Damian Brady for his talk last month on being a Good TFS Master. He has shared his slides online at http://www.slideshare.net/damovisa/how-to-be-a-good-tfs-master

Meetings none

4th November Meeting – How to be a good TFS Master

1 November 2011 No comments

How to be a good TFS Master (with a sprinkle of Scrum of course)

with Damian Brady

Abstract:

Team Foundation Server is the leading tool from Microsoft for .NET teams. We all want successful projects and it can be used well and used poorly. Lets look at how to use it well, make happy and focused developers by smoothing the software development process.

Date:
Friday, 4th November, 2011

Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:
Microsoft Office – North Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane

RSVP: Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

Damian Brady is one of SSW’s ‘TFS Masters’ and a Scrum trainer and he will share best practices for both your Team Foundation Server and your dev team. Walk away with top tips and rules to put you on the right path to becoming a TFS Master.

Meetings none

LightSwitch and Azure – Microsoft Briefing in Brisbane soon

10 October 2011 No comments

Andrew Coates has reached out to me to let our user group members know all about a great Microsoft Briefing coming to Brisbane next week. Make sure you ask him how you can integrate LightSwitch development with your TFS server Smile

The agenda sure looks interesting and you can choose the sessions most interesting to you when you register.

7:30 – Registration opens (will run throughout the day)
8:00 – 9:00 – Business Applications and the “Un”-Professional Developer: LightSwitch on Windows Azure
9:00 – 9:30 – Breakfast
9:30 – 10:30 – Discover Windows Azure Platform Part 1: Business Overview
10:30 – 11:00 – Morning Tea
11:00 – 12:00 – Discover Windows Azure Platform Part 2: Technical Overview
12:00 – 13:00 – Break (lunch will not be provided)
13:00 – 15:00 – Build your first Azure application using Visual Studio LightSwitch – with (almost) no code!

Find all the details about the event including the link for you to register on Coatsy’s blog.

General News none

7th Oct Meeting–What’s new in Visual Studio vNext?

22 September 2011 No comments

What’s new in Visual Studio ALM vNext & //Build Conference Recap

with Anthony Borton

Abstract:

This month we have a presentation from our user group president, Anthony Borton. Anthony has recently attended the Microsoft //Build Conference in Anaheim and has lots of news to share with us about what’s coming up in the next version of Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. He’ll also be bringing his Samsung Series 7 slate along running Windows 8 Developer Preview that everyone attending //Build received.

As an added bonus, Anthony will also be giving away a free ticket to the Australian ALM Conference which is happening in Sydney on the 8th & 9th November. More information at www.australianalm.com.au

Date:
Friday, 7th October, 2011

Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:
Microsoft Office – North Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane

RSVP: Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

Anthony Borton is the lead ALM consultant for Enhance ALM Pty Ltd, an Australian consulting and training company specializing in Application Lifecycle Management and Microsoft Visual Studio. He has been working with Visual Studio Team System full-time since 2005 and has worked with a variety of companies ranging up to some of Australia’s largest companies and financial institutions. Anthony is a sought after trainer and has delivered technical training and consulting in the United States and all across the Asia Pacific region. He is a Microsoft MVP (Visual Studio ALM), a Professional Scrum Developer Trainer and a Microsoft Certified Trainer.

Meetings ,

2nd Sept meeting – Heterogeneous Development with Visual Studio 2010

29 August 2011 No comments

Heterogeneous Development with Visual Studio 2010

with Mitch Denny

Abstract:

Does your organisation do more than just .NET development? Did you know that you can manage technology projects that use non-Microsoft technologies using Team Foundation Server?

In this session learn how to plug Eclipse into TFS using the Team Explorer Everywhere plug-in and get some tips and tricks for tackling engineering disciplines such as continuous integration with platforms like Java, Android, iPhone and more!

You’ll come away from this session knowing how to get end to end visibility across your projects regardless of the target platform.

Date:
Friday, 2nd September, 2011

Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:
Microsoft Office – North Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane

RSVP: Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

Mitch Denny, Chief Technology Officer, Readify Pty Ltd

Mitch as a Microsoft ALM MVP, a member of the ASPInsiders community and the organiser of the Code Camp Oz event held annually in Wagga Wagga.

As CTO of Readify Mitch is focused on delivering innovative solutions to customers using Agile project management methodologies and the latest Microsoft tools and technologies.

Meetings

5th August 2011 meeting–ALM Best Practises for SharePoint Development

18 July 2011 No comments

ALM Best Practises for SharePoint Development

with Richard Angus

Abstract:

Does this sound familiar?

  • “SharePoint is too hard.”
  • “It does not integrate into our ALM strategy.”
  • “The development requirements are too high”

The truth is, SharePoint development  *is* challenging, and it is because it is challenging that there are great rewards in integrating it into your ALM strategy. SharePoint adoption is growing, and with it the need to integrate the development process into your ALM strategy. During this session, we will explore the some of the strategies you can employ to bring the traditional developer ALM experience to your SharePoint projects, including

  • Choosing between using SharePoint Designer and Visual Studio
  • Using Work item tracking with your SharePoint development
  • Automating SharePoint builds on the Build Server

Date:

Friday, 5th August, 2011

Time:

7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish

Where:

Microsoft Office – South Stradbroke Island room

Level 28, 400 George Street

Brisbane

RSVP:Reserve your free ticket now

 

Speaker BIO

Richard Angus is an ALM consultant and trainer based in Brisbane, Queensland. He has worked for a number of organisations, including banks and major international IT Consulting companies such as Unisys where he was involved in small and large scale projects across Australia. He has helped a number of organisations upgrade to TFS from earlier products including a large VSS migration project for a large QLD government department. He is passionate about ALM practices, development and architecture, and currently provides consultancy services to organisations looking to improve their application architecture and development processes. He is currently focusing on TFS integration into SharePoint development and Dynamics AX development environments.

Meetings , ,

1st July 2011 meeting -

27 June 2011 No comments

Topic:

Building a Cloud Platform on TFS, Visual Studio & SQL Server

with Andrew McGrath

Abstract:

SaaS systems are all the rage at the moment, but a platform for creating, modifying and managing those SaaS systems is what enterprises really need.
A thorough integration of TFS, visual Studio and SQL Server can deliver such a platform.

Topics to be covered include:

1. The Business Problem to be solved
2. SaaS – the current fad
3. APaaS – an Application Platform as a Service is the answer
4. Visual Web GUI vs Javascript vs ASP.NET for the UI
5. Steps to create and deploy a System
6. Technical challenges, solutions and amusements

Date:

Friday, 1st July, 2011
Time:
7:30am Breakfast – 8:00am Presentation – 9:00am Finish
Where:
Microsoft Office – South Stradbroke Island room
Level 28, 400 George Street
Brisbane
RSVP:
Reserve your free ticket now

Speaker BIO

For many of the past 13 years Andrew has built and deployed systems in an "extreme Agile" manner. These systems have been created to manage the operational side of major construction and engineering projects. Over the last few years this effort has evolved into a cloud platform.

Meetings none

TechEd Australia–User Group Discount

23 June 2011 No comments

Are you considering heading to TechEd Australia on the Gold Coast this year? If so, Microsoft have kindly extended a special user group members discount.

As a member of the Queensland ALM Users Group, you can get a special discount of $100 off the Early Bird rate. Pay just AUD$ 1,700 to attend Microsoft’s premium technology event in Australia.

How to get your discount
If you would like to take advantage of this special offer, you MUST ACT BEFORE 15th JULY.

Simply email me the following three pieces of information and I’ll submit the list directly to Microsoft.

Given Name: First or given name
Family Name: Family or Surname
Email: One (only) email address where the code will be sent

Once Microsoft receive 30 requests for the UG discount from across ALL user groups in Australia (easy), the codes will start being sent out to allow you to register using the discount.

To qualify, you must be on our user group mailing list.

Meetings none

Presentation from June’s Meeting

7 June 2011 No comments

A big thank you to David Cook for his presentation on Acceptance Test Driven Development. The session was well received by our members who had plenty of questions on the topic. The only thing missing from the presentation were some photos from his holiday work trip to Bali.

David has kindly shared his powerpoint presentation for anyone that wants to review the key points of his presentation.

You can download the PPTX file here (2.01Mb Zip file)

Downloads , ,

Welcome

Welcome to the home page of the Queensland ALM users group.

Contact Details:
Anthony Borton
President, QALMUG
anthony@qalmug.org

Richard Angus
Vice President, QALMUG
richard@qalmug.org

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