Grigori Melnik: Thoughts on Agile Software Engineering and Beyond : guide

Zen and the Art of Managing Crosscutting Concerns – EntLib Dev Guide Preview

gmelnik — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:44:00 GMT

A new public preview release is now available on Codeplex. It now includes the following chapters, revised and updated for V5.0:

Chapter 1 – Intro. Meet the Librarian
Chapter 2 – Much ADO about Data Access
Chapter 3 – Error Management Made Exceptionally Easy

Your comments are invited.

Stay tuned for more.

Acceptance Test Engineering Guide, volume 1 BETA2 release

gmelnik — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 03:30:00 GMT

Today I am pleased to announce the release of the beta2 of the first volume of our Acceptance Test Engineering Guide. We are getting closer to “done”.

As it became apparent that the primary reader personas for each part in the original guide (that was released as beta1) were different and the size of the guide was approaching 800 pages, we decided to split it into 3 volumes. It allows us to ship Volume I sooner while finishing Volume II and III. Incremental delivery for the win!

Based on the first round of reviews, Volume I has undergone some serious rewriting (especially, the Gating model, which is now called the Acceptance Process Model) and the entire new chapters were added (Part II – Perspectives on Acceptance).

Here’s the current structure of the guide:

Volume I provides an overview of the acceptance process and how acceptance testing and other key practices fit into the process. This volume is intended to be read from beginning to end. It is subdivided into three main parts:

Part I – Thinking about Acceptance explains six mental models that are useful when thinking about the acceptance process.

Chapter 1 The Acceptance Process
Chapter 2 Decision-Making Model
Chapter 3 Project Context Model
Chapter 4 System Requirements Model
Chapter 5 Risk Model
Chapter 6 Doneness Model

Part II – Perspectives on Acceptance describes the acceptance process from the perspectives of key stakeholders in two different kinds of organizations: the Information Technology Department in a business and the Product Development Company. Most readers involved in the acceptance process should find some commonality with at least one of the roles describes.

Chapter 7 Business Lead’s Perspective
Chapter 8 Product Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 9 Test Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 10 Development Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 11 User Experience Specialist’s Perspective
Chapter 12 Operations Manager’s Perspective
Chapter 13 Solution Architect’s Perspective
Chapter 14 Enterprise Architect’s Perspective
Chapter 15 Legal Perspective

Part III – Accepting Software introduces the practices that are necessary for planning the acceptance process, for performing acceptance testing and for improving the acceptance process.

Chapter 16 Planning for Acceptance
Chapter 17 Assessing Software
Chapter 18 Managing the Acceptance Process
Chapter 19 Streamlining the Acceptance Process

Volume II is a collection of what we call thumbnails that describe the practices introduced in Volume I in more detail. A thumbnail is a short overview of a practice that explains what it is, when you may want to use it, the risks that it mitigates, and an overview of how to perform the practice. Thumbnails also include a list of references to papers, books, and other resources that provide more complete descriptions of the practices in question. The main purpose of a thumbnail is to describe a topic well enough to provide an overview, serve as a mental reminder for someone who has used the practice on how to do it, and give someone unfamiliar with the practice enough information about the practice and its applicability to determine if they want to learn more about it. Some of these topics and practices have entire books written about them that describe the concepts in greater detail and depth than this guide could possibly do. Volume II is intended to be used as a reference; most readers will not read it from beginning to end.

Volume III. This volume is a collection of sample artifacts generated by applying different practices in a fictional but realistic situation for the fictional company Global Bank. These artifacts are embedded in a series of case studies of what the Global Bank team may have produced while building the application. The case studies provide some context to the individual artifacts. They also provide cross-references to the practices described in Volume II. The artifacts are intended to be used as way to learn more about how to perform a practice; they can also be used as templates for your own artifacts.

As always, we look forward to your feedback! Feel free to submit it through the Codeplex site (Issue Tracker or Discussion Forum) or simply email it to me.

Just Released – Hands-on Labs for Enterprise Library 4.1 and Unity 1.2

gmelnik — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:38:00 GMT

I know it’s easy to get lost in the plethora of announcements and buzz from MIX’09, but today we are releasing a set of hands-on labs for all the application blocks in Enterprise Library. We believe that this valuable release will not go unnoticed by the community of devoted EntLib users and want to take this opportunity to highlight it for new users as well. After all, the labs are meant to help you get up to speed with EntLib.

This release includes a refresh of the labs for the following blocks:

- Caching Application Block

- Cryptography Application Block

- Data Access Application Block

- Exception Handling Application Block

- Logging Application Block

- Security Application Block

There are also two entirely new hands-on labs covering Interception and Dependency Injection with Unity. The Validation Block hands-on lab was released back in December and the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve received on it encouraged the team to produce the rest.

You can download the entire set in both C# and Visual Basic .NET: Hands-on Labs for Enterprise Library 4.1
If you prefer to download the Unity lab as a standalone, it’s also available: Hands-on Labs for the Unity Application Block 1.2

You can do them in any order. They will guide you through common scenarios of using EntLib in various application contexts. Some labs go into advanced topics and you may want do them a couple of times. Also, don’t be shy about improvising and departing from the scenarios written in the lab instructions.

The labs may also be of value to trainers and academics, since they can be used as teaching aids in the classes devoted to Enterprise Library specifically or in courses on Component-Based Software Engineering, Enterprise Application Development, and Aspect-Oriented Programming.

With this release, the EntLib team reiterates its commitment to enhancing learnability and increasing ease of use of Enterprise Library. Please, try them. Whether you love them or feel frustrated (especially if you feel frustrated), please send us your feedback.

News: Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance BETA1

gmelnik — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 03:46:00 GMT

I am pleased to announce the release of the Acceptance Test Engineering guide BETA1. You can download it from http://codeplex.com/TestingGuidance

Common Scenarios Addressed:

How to Plan for Acceptance Testing
What Kinds of Acceptance Tests to Run
How to Create and Run Acceptance Tests
Defining What “Done” Means
How to Justify Your Approach

Contents at a Glance:

PART I – THINKING MODELS: an overview of acceptance testing and explains several models that are useful in conceptual thinking about acceptance testing. It also includes items that are necessary for planning acceptance testing. This part is intended to be read from beginning to end.

PART II – THUMBNAILS: a thumbnail is a short overview of a practice that explains what it is, when you may want to use it, the risks that it mitigates, and an overview of how to perform the practice. Thumbnails also include a list of references to papers, books, and other resources that provide more complete descriptions of the practice in question. The main purpose of a thumbnail is to describe a topic well enough to provide an overview, serve as a mental reminder for someone who has used the practice on how to do it, and give someone unfamiliar with the practice enough information about the practice and its applicability to determine if they want to learn more about it. This part is intended to be used as a reference; most readers will not read it from beginning to end.

PART III – SAMPLES: a collection of sample artifacts generated by applying different practices in a fictional real-world situation for Global Bank. These artifacts are embedded in a series of case studies of what the Global Bank team may have produced while building the application. The case studies provide some context to the individual artifacts. They also provide cross-references to the practices described in Part II. The artifacts are intended to be used as way to learn more about how to perform a practice; they can also be used as templates for your own artifacts.

Webcast

Gerard, Jon and I did a webcast talking about the concepts and the way we are writing this guidance.

Feedback

Your feedback is invited. Please post it under Discussions on Codeplex. Also, if you have an interesting experience with acceptance testing that you’d like to share and perhaps be profiled in our guide as a case study, we’d like to hear about it.

Acceptance Test Engineering Guidance - project kick-off

gmelnik — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 20:07:00 GMT

Traditionally, p&p primary audience included developers and architects. Even though we have some coverage of the testing discpline (in particularly Testing .NET Application Blocks - Version 1.0 guide and Performance Testing Guidance for Web Applications), it is a small portion of the p&p assets [link to catalog]. In our interactions with customers, we hear requests for good guidance on testing – all kinds of testing.

So, back in the fall 2007, I’ve put a number of projects related to test engineering and test automation on the patterns & practices backlog. Several other important projects took precedence (GAT/GAX, Unity, Enterprise Library). And now, after we have shipped GAT/GAX 1.4 and Unity 1.0, I am happy to be able to kick off this project with the focus on acceptance test engineering.

The core team consists of Michael Puleio, Jon Bach and I, Grigori Melnik. Michael is not a tester but a great developer with passion for testing, test automation and test tools. Jon is a professional tester, he is the manager of corporate intellect at Quardev Labs and a co-inventor of session-based test management for managing and measuring exploratory testing. I have devoted a number of years researching executable acceptance test-driven development (with FIT) and the relationships between software requirements and acceptance tests (see this article with my stance on this).

The topics we plan to focus on in this project include:

- test objectives and strategy,

- product readiness/acceptance,

- defining and reconciling good-enough criteria in various industrial contexts,

- working with customers and customer-proxies,

- supporting stories/requirements with acceptance tests.

We intend to support our guidance with case studies and exercises from the real world.

We are running this project as an agile project, with weekly iterations, standups, collocated team, etc. This deserves a separate blog post, which I’ll probably do later this month.

In the meantime, feel free to post your comments and thoughts on any specific (painful) aspects of acceptance testing that you would like help with. Also, if you have an interesting experience with acceptance testing that you'd like to share and perhaps be profiled in our guide as a case study, we'd like to hear about it.

Just released: "Team Development with Team Foundation Server" Guide

gmelnik — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 21:28:00 GMT

The final version of the "Team Development with TFS" Guide is released today by the patterns & practices team. It targets both audiences - those who are already using TFS and those who are just starting to adopt it. The actionable how-to's are particularly useful.

This is the guide that's been in beta for the last couple of months (with over 11,000 downloads). It has received a great deal of feedback (both through dogfooding and external reviews) and is truly a collective guidance of what really works in the industry.

More info on the blog of J.D. Meier, the lead author of the guide at http://blogs.msdn.com/jmeier/archive/2007/08/06/new-release-patterns-practices-team-development-with-team-foundation-server-guide.aspx

Check it out at: http://www.codeplex.com/TFSGuide

Happy reading!