Jason Barile - Testing Testing

It sounds obvious enough, but time after time I see testers in particular taking action before they've clearly identified what their end goal is or worse, what problem they're trying to solve. I'm guilty of it myself, I'm afraid to admit! Maybe it's a...

I was involved in a conversation today that started something like this: Team X:  “Feature Y is completely broken, but we don’t want to fix it because we don’t think any users will actually use it this way.” My first instinct was, “Are you crazy...

In software testing, what you don’t know is often your biggest risk. As smart as we think we all are, no reasonable amount of brainstorming and careful test planning can discover all possible tests that should be put in place for a given system. ...

My team discovered a bug recently that had been around in our daily builds a while.  We did a retrospective after the fact and found some interesting facts.  We had a test case covering the scenario, and it had been passing with no problems...

I’m saying goodbye to the term “Test Plan”.  To me, “Test Plan” implies a plan that details how the test team will measure the quality of the product is and report it back to the team.  While this an important piece of the a quality strategy...

With mixed emotions, I want to announce that I’ve decided to leave the Team Foundation Server team for a new opportunity within Microsoft.  I’ve been on the TFS team for the past 7 years in various capacities from tester to test lead to test manager...

After we shipped Team Foundation Server 2010, I took on a new role on the TFS team as a Test Architect. I’m excited about this role because it’s a little more hands-on than being a manager and because I get to help tackle some of the most...

The TFS command line client, tf.exe, is a powerful tool that may be somewhat intimidating or elusive to learn if you primarily work through within Visual Studio. In fact, you can do many things in tf.exe that are not available through the Visual Studio...

I'll be doing a talk at the Triangle .NET User Group tomorrow night on "Real World ALM with Team Foundation Server". It's a no-slides introduction to TFS 2010 with some practical tips thrown in. More info here . If you're in the area, I hope to see...

I have this debate with other testers and developers from time to time, so I thought I post my own thoughts on the subject.  Many applications today consist of multiple layers.  For example, a typical ASP.NET MVC web application may have views...

Here’s a quick tidbit that might save you sometime as you install VS2010 and TFS2010 RC.  In our previous releases, Team Explorer (the client for TFS) was a separate installation.  In VS 2010, it’s now included in the setup for Visual Studio...

From time to time, I get questions from customers on how to diagnose performance issues with their TFS 2008 SP1 servers and how to improve performance. Here’s a set of blog posts I refer to frequently, now rounded up into one convenient place: General...

I do a lot of ad hoc technical support for Team Foundation Server via Twitter (follow me at @JasonBarile ).  As a Test Manager, I love interacting with customers directly, and I often find that Twitter is a great source for finding issues people...

One of the more common points of confusion around TFS source control is the checkout model.  This typically comes from users who are more familiar with the checkout-less model (e.g. Subversion).  I acknowledge the TFS approach is a different...

Not that it’s a huge deal to have stale workspaces lying around, but if you’ve ever wondered how to undo a pending change on a workspace you no longer have (e.g. if you repaved your computer to install Windows 7 and didn’t delete your TFS workspaces first...

In TFS 2010, we’ve added a new organizational concept called Team Project Collections . This abstraction helps with flexibility in administration scenarios. One TFS 2010 server can host multiple collections of Team Projects. When you’re connecting...

One of the things I spend a lot of time doing as a test manager is mining for interesting data in our work item tracking system (TFS of course).  For example, this morning, I went through a query of bugs that had been resolved as “won’t fix” but...

The other day on the way to work, I was almost side-swiped by a big rig weaving all over I-40.  The truck’s erratic driving continued, and after I watched a few more cars quickly veer out of its way, I decided to call 911 to report the truck. ...

You’re pulling your hair out.  Any file saved to the bin directory (even log files and temporary files you generate) end up getting added to source code control.  You’re getting more frustrated by the minute, especially when you try to build...

If you read this blog, you’re probably already following me on Twitter ( @JasonBarile ), and you probably already know that I really love Twitter.  I stumbled upon a new reason for loving it today – real time crowd sourcing of data for a bug triage...

This question came across Twitter recently, and I had to do a little research to answer it.  I thought I’d pass along what I found in case others are wondering how to do the same thing. The scenario – You want to add a “placeholder” account to the...

If you installed Team Explorer into Visual Studio after you applied Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, you’ll need to re-apply the service pack.  If you don’t, then you’ll be running an unsupported “mixed mode” installation, meaning the core Visual...

We've just launched a new page on MSDN to help give some visibility to the great contributions from the VSTS community.  Check it out at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vsts2008/bb964396.aspx .

TFS Build Tweeter has been renamed to TFS Build Monitor to better refelct its purpose. This cool community project can send out alerts for TFS Build events via Twitter or light up a USB powered " build light ". Visit the project's page on Codeplex for...

If you're like me, you're sitting at your desk working today instead of attending PDC '08 .  Luckily, sessions are available from Channel9 24 hours after each event (tags: PDC 2008 , PDC08 ), so you can still get all the scoop.  First up for...