Randy Miller's Blog

A little over 20 years ago, I started working for the other large software development company. They had recruited me from college and I was honored to join them. At the time, the perception at my school was that no one got to work for them because everybody...

Thanks to plastic bricks from Denmark, kids in the United States (and all around the world) are learning to program at age 8. I had the priviledge of coaching a young team of NC kids (9 to 11 years old) to win the NC State Championship in FLL in three...

Shadow Architecture is method of communicating architecture to others on your agile team. The idea is that components and classes cast "shadows". These shadows are simplified views of the code base. UML is a type of shadow. We can look at a UML model...

In the mid-1990s, the prevailing trend in the industry was to begin a software development project by building elaborate models of the system. The idea was that writing the code was simple once the architectural structure and requirements were in place...

It has been five years since I joined Microsoft and started writing MSF. There are a couple of milestones that this anniversary brings that I would like to share with you. First, the MSF book is not published and you have a right to ask why. Second, the...

For those of you who do not know - I have left the MSF team and joined the Project Recovery Team at Microsoft (back in January). At some point, I'll explain what we do in Project Recovery but for now, I want to talk about VSTS. I recently posted the following...

Discipline Product Management Role(s) Business Analyst Activity Write Scenario Description Short Description Scenarios are used to define the services that the software will provide to the user. A scenario can...

Title: Managing your teams and business process using Microsoft Solutions Framework (MSF) as a template Abstract: Microsoft® Solutions Framework (MSF) is a deliberate and disciplined approach to technology projects based work and organization...

Yesterday, we released brand new versions of MSF for Agile Software Development and MSF for CMMI Process Improvement. These new versions create the first commercial agile and CMMI-based software development processes with support for database unit tests...

A common question that I get is "What has changed in the latest version of MSF for Agile Software Development?" There are two reasons that this question is asked. First, people want to know why they should update their projects and secondly, they want...

There are newer versions (August 2006) of the MSF process guidance available for download. There has been a few issues with unzipping the CMMI process guidance. Take a look at Rob's post on this subject. Remember that if you want to replace the guidance...

Many of you have been looking for an updated version of MSFWinBuild. Sanjeev and his team have taken what Rakesh previously built, refined it, and packaged it up nicely. Take a look at our GotDotNet site and download the latest executable (under the Releases...

I get many questions about writing scenarios, but writing scenarios in general is a four-step process: identifying the scenarios, prioritizing & estimating scenarios, authoring scenario narratives, and decomposing scenarios into tasks. This blog entry...

There are so many advances on the MSF front that I wanted to take some time and document all that is happening. First, for those of you who have never seen MSF for Agile Software Development, there is a recorded webinar available. MSDN Webcast:...

Activity: Divide Scenarios into Tasks Project Manager Plan an Iteration Task Participating Roles Responsible: Project Manager Consult: Architect Developer...

It is pretty easy to change the process guidance for a new project but a common question that I get is "how do I change the guidance on an existing team project?" I want to start by scoping this post. I am just talking about the html pages or process...

The agile software development community is at a crossroads. On one hand, we have been told to use some very simple techniques to create customer value quickly and they have worked! Interact with your customer, use the simplest thing that might possibly...

The name 'Quality of Service Requirement' was suggested as alternative to 'nonfunctional requirement' or 'quality attribute' in MSF for Agile Software Development by Sam Guckenheimer. In retrospect, I believe that it was a good idea. 'Nonfunctional requirements...

I was fortunate enough to attend TechEd Europe this summer and attend (instead of presenting) a session on MSF presented by Rafal Lukawiecki . Rafal described the changes that we have made between the old (3.0) and new versions of this framework for building...

Agile software development is generally regarded as an activity geared for small projects. In fact, many see larger project size as a boundary condition for most agile software processes. These boundary conditions are the conditions under which a given...

The software development community has been looking for the silver bullet that will allow us all to magically deliver software with little effort and with the precision of a manufacturing line. If you have read my articles before, you are aware of my...

Today, I presented the newly named MSF for Agile Software Development at Web Services Edge. At this conference, Visual Studio Team System was being shown everywhere. Before my presentation, there was a two-hour .Net mini-tutorial where the latest modeling...

For those of you who haven't heard, Microsoft is creating a new agile software development process called MSF Agile. MSF Agile is part of the next generation of the Microsoft Solutions Framework version 4.0. This framework is in the process of being revised...