AllenD's WebLog : Scrum

VSIP Dev Lab

AllenD — Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:18:00 GMT

We just completed another Dev Lab on the Microsoft campus. This is an event for partners to bring their VS integrations on campus and have Microsoft help them get their code working with the latest platforms.

In this case we have several partners that are getting ready to launch their integrated tools when we launch VS 2005 later this year.

For me, it was a hectic time since I had just returned from a road-trip vacation in Califorinia the week before and had 2 presentations to give during the week.

I returned home on Friday night (late) and worked over the weekend for my Monday morning presentation. Then I worked on my second presentation on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday morning I gave that presentation. I was much more relaxed after having given that final presentation.

The first presentation was kind of a Sprint review over the last few Sprints to get direct customer feedback and what should be in the VS SDK. I showed the Product Backlog and demo'd some of the new samples in the SDK. We got a lot of good feedback that we will immediately begin taking action on to give customers what they asked for. Some of the same information is already public on the VSIPDev.com site.

The second presentation I delivered was a dry-run of a presentation I'm giving at PDC in Sept for the Visual Studio Extensiblity Pre-conference Session. (By the way the PDC is sold-out.) This presentation was a walk-through of the Managed Package Framework and I spent a great deal of time during the session writing code demonstrating an integration that took advantage of the strengths of the managed packge framework.

The integration that I wrote on stage was a To-Do Manager tool that used a Tool Window, the Property Browser, Task List, Tool/Options Dialog all in a Windows Form. Pretty cool. I will be blogging more about that project since it revealed a few technical areas that need some explanation and I had to come up with a workaround or two to some limitations in VS and the Managed Package Framework.

By the way, our August Sprint is coming to a close and we'll likely be providing a preview of the VS SDK as a result with some of the newest sample code. In addition to the reference samples for C# Package and C# MenuAndCommands from last month, we've added following reference samples: C++ Package, C++ MenuAndCommands and C# Services. We're still working on that last 3 on our list C++ Tool Window, C# Tool Window and C++ Services.

I'll be blogging more about the VS SDK in the future as well.

VS SDK July Sprint

AllenD — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 18:37:00 GMT

We're still planning our July Sprint, but I wanted to share what the team is (to this point) going to be doing in the next few months to improve the VS SDK.

Remember, the VS SDK is the replacement for the VSIP SDK. The idea is that eventually the VS SDK will be all-encompassing of the various SDK's that the Developer Division puts out here at Microsoft.

We've chosen Scrum as our project methodology in order to deliver SDK's more regularly and to be able to respond to customer input and adapt to changing requirements and requests our partners have.

So each segment of work is broken down into what is called a Sprint. A Sprint is a month (or so) of calendar time and in each Sprint the team conducts everything that is necessary in order to ship a product. Feature specfications, work breakdown, coding, testing, stabilizing, documentation all get accomplished in the Sprint so that at the end, the feature just delivered is 'shippable'. This is a vast difference from the way we did things in the past where months and months would pass before anything was ready for public consumption. We hope that employing this methodolgy will enable us to ship more often, engage with customers more meaningfully and increase partner satisfaction.

One of the things we'd like to do it create some "reference" samples. Reference samples are samples that have improved quality over past VSIP SDK samples. Reference samples are intended to show the "right" way to accomplish a certain task. So, for packages, it would show the right way to implement IVsPackage, participate in Help/About, the Splash Screen and register for a Package Load Key. Certainly there are a few ways to do these things, but the reference implementation would be the canonical implementation, resiliant, robust and fully explained. Reference samples would come with the following:

Unit Tests
Overview Document
Documentation (in VS SDK doc content)
Complete Error Handling
Localizability
Accessibility
Comprehensive Comments
Scenario Tests
Adherence to coding standard
Architecture Diagram

So, what are we planning in the near term (next few Sprints):

For samples, we plan to produce reference samples in the following categories:

Package
	IVsPackage
	PLK
	Help/About
	Splash Screen
	Activity Log (stretch)

Service
	Provider
	Local
	Global
	Consumer
	VS vs. .Net Service Provider (stretch)

Menus/Commands
	Common CTC Flags
	Common UI placement (menu, toolbar)
	Modifiers (accelerators)
	High-color artwork
	Place command on common VS menu elements (toolbar/context menu)

Tool Window
	Single Instance
	Track Selection
	Docking Context
	Toolbar in Tool Window
	Hosting - .Net user control
	Keyboard & Accelerator Handling
	Window Events
	Gradients (stretch)
	Auto-hide (stretch)

In addition to the above samples, we also need to do a bunch of infrasture work to get other teams on board and to make sure we are improving our engineering practices:

Help Integration SDK bits

Source Tree Structuring (for other teams)

Layout restructuring (for customers)

VC Property Sheets

Apply VC Property Sheets to samples and wizards

Turn off VSIP SKU Build

Retarget any existing samples to new build

Add MPF Project source to SDK

Change all Project related samples to SDK source

Publishing Tranparency (community)

Partner Team Interactions

SDK Roadmap thru Nov

SxS infrastruture testing

Enabling automated weeklies

Bug Bash

Tracing/Logging/Debugability in Sample Spec and Samples and Doc

Blog Each Sample

Sample Naming Pattern

Upgrad Wizards and Templates to Coding Std (& use new reference samples as templates)

Get RC files to compile under MSBuild

We'd love to get your feedback on our plans. So please let me know what you think.

Thanks,

Allen

Got Scrum?

AllenD — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 21:33:00 GMT

Just got done with a two-day certification in the Scrum Project Management methodology. I'm now certified as a Scrum Master. ;-)

Now, don't pass judgement too quickly!

I know these types of things can cause lots of angst and wars over strengths and weaknesses. Remember, I'm a pragmatist so I know Scrum has strengths and weaknesses. I'm sure there are situation where it doesn't work too well or isn't implemented in a common sense way.

In any case, I look forward to utilizing some of the tools in the methodology to improve life for me and my team. The course was very good and I learned a lot. Fun crowd to learn with and definitely adds to my arsenal of tools for management.

Sorry that I haven't blogged in so long. Rest assured, the Extensibility team and the rest of VS are working hard to bring you Beta2 of VS and VSIP with cool extensibility features (working better).

Please note: my wife is delivering our new son around Oct 24th, so I'll be out for 4 weeks when that blessed event occurs. We can't wait!

Later,

Allen