Blaine Wastell - patterns & practices client architecture guidance : Productivity

patterns and practices wants you to take the Web guidance survey

blaine — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 00:24:40 GMT

As I mentioned in a December blog post, the patterns & practices team plans to create new Web guidance. We need your help prioritizing the requirements through a survey that just went live. My blog post outlines the process that we will go through to define scope for the Web Guidance.

As an update, we decided to split the effort into 2 projects. The first project will be to update the Web Client Software Factory (WCSF) to run on Visual Studio 2010. The second project will take a fresh look at creating new Web Guidance. We took a similar approach when we created Prism (Composite Application Guidance for WPF and Silverlight). Your feedback from the survey will help define the scope for this second project.

So, go take the survey and let us know your priorities.

Announcing 6 new patterns and practices releases

blaine — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:28:52 GMT

The patterns & practices team just published 6 new releases in the last two weeks. Ajoy discusses the releases on his blog. The new releases include:

Enterprise Library v4.1
Unity Application Block v1.2
Distributed Agile Development white paper and Agile showcase
Application Architecture Guide v2.0 (Beta 1)
SharePoint Development Guidance v1.0
Acceptance Testing Guidance

Check out the new guidance as there is truly lots of new and useful guidance.

JD shares his insights from some of the best books

blaine — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 01:25:00 GMT

Earlier today I provided a link to JD's blog on a presentation from Stephen Covey. I have known JD for over 5 years now and worked closely with him on multiple projects for almost 2 years. During this time, I remember that JD read lots of books on lots of topics (I do mean lots of books) and was always trying news ways to improve himself and/or project execution. He publishes his review of the books he reads on Bookshare where his goal is to:

Improve your effectiveness at work and life with insights and actions from knowledge built to last. I regularly mentor people at work, so The Book Share is a place for me to share nuggets from books that I find useful.

Check out the site as there is lots of nuggets that provide insights to many different things in life. It is also a good place to continue to come back to as JD is always reading news books. After you go to the site let me know if you say WOW just as I have done.

JD Meier shares "Cliff Notes" from Stephen Covey's presentation to Microsoft

blaine — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:07:56 GMT

JD Meier recently posted a blog on Stephen Covey's presentation to Microsoft. The blog post includes:

Lighthouse principles
Values and principles
Personal and family mission statement and why
One of my favorites Urgent but not important
Office politics
Finding your voice
Keys to effective large teams
Win / Win agreements
Keeping top talent
Plus lots more

Check it out. I worked with JD on Whidbey Security Guidance and learned a lot from him. This guidance is still one of the best sellers on MSDN. He share many of his secrets on effectiveness on this blog.

View Web Client Software Factory Documentation on MSDN

blaine — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:13:38 GMT

As I mentioned in my previous blog, a complete copy of WCSF February 2008 release's documentation is now available to view on MSDN. Let us know your thoughts of viewing the documentation on MSDN. As an fyi, it will take some time for the links and content to replicate to all the servers worldwide. If you do not see the documentation, try back in a few hours.

You can navigate to the documentation using MSDN's Left Navigation:

Or you can access the documentation from WCSF home page on MSDN --> www.msdn.com/webclientfactory and scroll to the documentation section on the home page.

Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Shipped

blaine — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:14:34 GMT

After further ado, we finally shipped the Web Client Software Factory. Glenn and Michael describe what is in the new release. I want to highlight a couple of things from the release.

Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 Support. This factory supports Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5. Over the next 2 weeks we will re-release the bundles with support for Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5.
Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 Support on Codeplex. If you need support for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0, you can use the code on Codeplex. Over the next few weeks, we will migrate the existing bundles to MSDN and the Microsoft download center.
WCSF February 2008 and WCSF June 2007 run side by side: I'm excited that this release can run side by side with WCSF June 2007 so you can leave the previous release on your machine if needed.
Requires GAX February 2008 Release. You will need to upgrade to the Guidance Automation Extensions (GAX) February release. This release of GAX allows you to upgrade existing versions of GAX and keep your previous GAT packages. Thank you GAX/GAT teams. The delay in GAX/GAT caused us some delays but it is well worth the extra time.

Another item that I want to highlight is that we released WatiN Automated Acceptance tests. There are a number of good automated acceptance tools on the market. This one works well for our requirements. You can download WatiN from here. When you look at the source code, you will find solution files with "FunctionalTests" in the name. In order to run the these tests, you will need to have the WatiN dll.

Please give us feedback as how much you use the automated acceptance tests. In a later blog post, we will provide information as to how you can maintain the acceptance tests.

Note: this is a link to an external Web site that provides software that can be used to write acceptance tests. Please note that Microsoft is not responsible for the content of external Internet sites. This is for the lawyers.

We have received feedback that you really like the bundle documentation on the Web. Based upon this feedback, we plan to put all the Web Client Software Factory documentation on MSDN. This will take time as we figure out so keep checking back on www.msdn.com/webclientfactory.

Links

Factory Links:

WCSF Home Page.
WCSF February 2008 Download. This includes the guidance package, documentation (both HsX and CHM), source code installer for the blocks, source code installer for the guidance package, QuickStarts, and Reference Implementations.
Getting Started with the Web Client Software Factory
Installing the Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Release
Upgrading to the Web Client Software Factory - February 2008 Release

Factory Component Links:

Source code: includes source code for the guidance package, QuickStarts, and Reference Implementation.
Block Source code: Web Client Software Factory Source Code for Application Blocks
Documentation: Web Client Software Factory documentation and api documentation in CHM format.

Bundle Links (also for Visual Studio 2005 and .NET 2.0 Support):

Release Blog posts:

If you got this far, go download the factory and use it on your next project. When you start using it, give us your feedback on Codeplex.

Does the computer take over your life?

blaine — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:56:43 GMT

An interesting article has been circulating around Microsoft of late regarding Office or Home A.D.D. Ok, let's be honest how many of you are walking outside reading e-mail on you Smart Phone or at home with your family and friends and reading e-mail instead of engaging in conversation with them?

I can say that I do not read e-mail on my Smart Phone because I have not yet upgraded. Truth be told one of the reasons I have resisted is that I do not want it to take over my like my computer has at home. So I have stopped one form of interruption.

There are many nights when the kids want me to read to them and I say just a minute while I read e-mail or browse the Internet. Other times Ellen or I are up late on the computer instead of spending time with each other. We both agree that the computer is addictive and takes away our energy to work on what is important at both work and home.

This article by By Tom McGrath, Men's Health provides the following suggestions:

Protect morning bursts: protect the first 60 - 90 minutes of each day before reading e-mail
Monitor online time: if you know how much time you are spending it will help to cut back
Talk to your boss: discuss whether an instant response if necessary
Change the office rules: only check e-mail between certain hours
Empty your inbox: Only handle it once and check e-mail at specified times in the day maybe 10, after lunch, 3:30
Build the walls back up: Do not read e-mails at home

So what am I doing about it? During the period of time that the kids are getting ready for bed, we will not be on the computer. Additionally, many weekends I do not open my work computer so I am not tempted to respond to an e-mail which can wait until Monday. So I am employing some of the suggestions. The next one that I want to employe is the protect morning bursts.

As for following the changes, I would give myself a C. I am not as disciplined as I would like on keeping e-mail and the computer out of the bed time routine. I do feel good about spending more time with my children on the weekends reading, playing, going to the pool and attending their soccer games instead of reading work e-mail. I now need to spend less time on my home computer surfing the net.

Check out the article and let me know what you are doing to reduce the constant distractions of the computer and yet be successful at your job.