Ed Hintz (MSFT)

The Most Valuable Field Missing From Your Bug Form

2009-11-12T01:10:00Z

The order of fixing bugs is like the order used to pack a truck when you move. If you have ever moved yourself you know that packing the biggest and most fragile items first in the truck is important. You can fit the smaller and sturdier things just about anywhere in the truck at the end. If you run out of room the smaller things can go with you in the car. You want to get as many as the big and fragile bugs\boxes into the truck as possible so you load them first. You don't want to be left with the refrigerator not fitting in the truck at the end.

The same is true with bugs - you want to fix the highest priority bugs that are the biggest (most time) and fragile (complex) first. Think of the moving truck as the amount of time and resources you have to fix bugs. To optimize this space bugs should be fixed in priority order with the most difficult and time consuming ones first. You can fix the smaller and easier ones late in the game without jeopardizing the schedule. If you wait too long to fix difficult bugs there is increase risk to the schedule because there is not enough time to test the fix OR the a fix won't be provided at all because of the risk. In either case, the quality of the product suffers.

Often in practice, the exact opposite behavior happens. Teams want to show measurable progress so even though they may fix bugs in priority order the easy ones tend to be done first.

Quick - go look at your bug form. Go ahead, I'll wait.... Is there a field that quantifies the level of difficulty of the fix? Most likely the answer is, "no". Some imply this from the priority or severity of the bug. However, this is often not the case. For example, a null ref crash is priority\severity 1, but is often trivial to fix.

Specifying Difficulty

Specifying the difficulty of fixing a bug is like any other software estimation practice - it is not an exact science. Sometimes you are not really going to know unless you dig into the bug more. Avoid spending too much time trying to determine a precise level of difficulty, the goal is to get the right order of magnitude.

Quantifying the difficulty of addressing a bug should factor in 3 elements:

Complexity\risk - how many components and moving parts are involved?
Duration - gut estimate of how many hours/days it will take to fix and test
Expertise - does this bug require rare specialized knowledge? If so, get this fixed as soon as that expert is available

You can keep it simple and use T-shirt sizes to measure difficulty - small, medium, large or use a numeric value. Some may find it valuable to place duration is a separate field for scheduling and load balancing purposes.

Regardless of how you specify the level of difficulty, fixing bugs in priority and highest level of difficulty order will decrease risk and improve the quality of your software. Don't be left with the refrigerator not fitting in the truck.

TFS Integration - a Top 10 New Feature of Expression Blend 3

2009-07-13T20:32:36Z

Last Friday Microsoft announced Expression Blend 3. The Team Foundation Version Control team has been working to provide seamless integration with Expression Blend as blogged by Brian Harry last year.

I was pleased to see that TFS integration made the top ten list of new features in Expression Blend 3 (see here). You will need to get a patch (KB967483) to Team Foundation 2008 for the integration to work.

Client Virtualization and TFS Version Control

2008-10-29T20:32:53Z

It is becoming more and more common for developers and testers to work with virtualized clients like those offered with Virtual PC or Hyper-V. We use this at Microsoft a great deal. Client virtualization offers many benefits for those working with pre-release software or who need to quickly change between client configurations. However, if you are using TFS version control on these virtualized clients you need to be aware of the impact of rolling back \undoing disks.

Rollback\Undo Disks

When you roll back to a snap shot or undo your session changes (with Virtual PC undo disks) the version of the files you have on disk can be different than the version that TFS thinks you have. Here is a worse case scenario:

User gets version 1 of foo.cs – takes snap shot of VPC/Hyper-V
A month passes. User gets latest foo.cs which is version 20
User rolls back VPC/Hyper-V to snap shot in step 1. Server still thinks user has version 20.
User pends a change on foo.cs and checks in. All changes in foo.cs that occurred between version 1 and 20 are lost since the server thinks user had the latest version (20) and thinks user deleted those changes with the check-in.

Similarly, if you replace step 4 with a normal get latest foo.cs will not be updated since the server thinks you have the latest version 20 already, which you don't.

What to do if you need to roll back \ undo your virtualized client

Use the Force - To get the server and workspace versions in sync again perform a get using the force option.

If you are using Hyper-V a better solution is to put your workspace on a drive that is offline to the host OS (Windows 2008) but known to the Hyper-V machine. You have to disassociate this offline drive from the Hyper-V machine before you do the rollback and re-attach afterwards. This keeps the rollback from affecting the workspace drive, leaving your workspace files the same.

Conclusion

You can enjoy the benefits of client virtualization and TFS Version Control by keeping in mind the impact of rolling back \undoing disks have on your TFS workspace. A simple post roll back step or putting your workspace on an offline hard drive (for Hyper-V users) is all you need to do.

Team System Web Access 2008 SP1 Power Tool

2008-08-30T03:54:17Z

We have just shipped Team System Web Access (TSWA) 2008 SP1 Power Tool.

· Download TSWA 2008 SP1

What’s New in TSWA 2008 SP1?

· Work item only view for users without a client access license. [Previously known as Work Item Web Access (WIWA) feature]

· Run a single instance with multiple languages (*)

· Create work items with initial values by using a URL.

· Share ad-hoc work item queries by using a URL.

· Find and view Shelvesets - great for code reviews.

· Improved work item search syntax.

(*) Single instance with multiple languages

A single instance of TSWA now supports multiple languages. By default, the UI language is based on the user's browser settings (accept-language header). The UI language can be overwritten in profile settings. In total, 10 languages are available: English, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish.

Over 1 Billion Served

2008-01-04T16:54:03Z

Chandru Ramakrishnan, a TFS Version Control Platform developer who keeps our internal dogfood server humming, noticed this morning that our internal TFS Version Control dogfood server has over 1 billion rows for local versions. That is over 1 billion files/folders served to internally!

Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008 - Hot Now!

2007-12-21T22:43:56Z

The Team Foundation Power Tools for VS2008 are now available here. This is the first release of the Power Tools that work with VS2008. We did not want to just deliver a warmed over version of the VS2005 Power Tools, so we included lot of new goodies in this release.

Find In Source Control

From the Source Control Explorer you can right click on a folder and chose Find In Source Control. There is a sub menu containing Status search, wildcard search, and changeset. Below is a screen shot from a status search of all checked out *.cs files under $/Orcas/Migration:

This search shows all users that have files checked out under the specified path along with with the workspace and machine (shown between the []) name where the pending changes exist. From this view you can checkout files, undo changes (including someone else's changes if you have permission), view history, open the file (double click), and open the folder in Source Control Explorer.

Quick Label

The labeling functionality in TFS is very powerful, but sometimes you just want to create a quick simple label on a folder. Quick label does that.

Open in Windows Explorer

Have you ever wanted to open Source Control Explorer's currently selected folder in Windows Explorer? Now you can by selecting a folder that is mapped locally, right click, and choose Windows Explorer.

Team Build Notification

Now you can be notified on your desktop by a tray application when a Team Build of interest has been queued, started, or finished. This has been a highly requested feature that we are happy to deliver in this power tool release.

The Build Notification Application will pop up a "toast" message when build status changes. Below is an example of what you would see when the build is broken.

...and much more....

Additional TFPT.EXE commands for configuring Team Explorer connection settings (tweakui) and for destroying Work Items and Work Items Type Definitions (destroyWI, destroyWITD).
Updates to the TFS Best Practices Analyzer for use with a Team Foundation Server 2008 deployments.
The Process Editor is updated for use with Microsoft Visual Studio Team System 2008. It also has several improvements, including: performance improvements, improved discoverability and bug fixes.

You can discuss TFS Power Tools here or report bugs here.

Enjoy!

Pre-release of TFS to TFS Migration Tool Available on CodePlex!

2007-10-30T17:50:21Z

Back in June we released the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit - a toolkit that helps migrate data between 3rd party version control and bug tracking systems and TFS. Turns out that folks also want to migrate data between two TFS servers too, so work was begun on writing a TFS to TFS migration tool based on the toolkit. A pre-release of this TFS to TFS Migration Tool is now available on CodePlex! This tool enables migration of work items and version control items with history between TFS servers. To learn more about the tool, you can visit the TFS to TFS Migration Tool page on CodePlex.

The purpose of this pre-release is for testing and stabilizing of the tool before officially releasing the tool. We are hoping to get the kinks worked while in pre-release, so please keep in mind that while we've done a good amount of testing and a few successful customer migrations, there are many scenarios that we haven't run across yet.

For feedback or support with the tool, please send mail to TfsToTfs@microsoft.com

How To Get TFS Power Tool Check-in Policies for VS2005 to Work with VS2008 (Orcas)

2007-10-19T22:54:02Z

The current TFS Power Tools support TFC/VS 2005 only. However, there are beta customers of VS2008 (aka Orcas) who want to use the check-in policies from the TFS Power Tools.

With a few manual steps (below) you can get the TFS Power Tool Check-in policies to work with VS2008 and observe how .Net binding redirects work as a bonus. I've only done some basic ad-hoc testing with this approach, so standard disclaimers apply. This is provided "AS IS" with no warranties and confer no rights. No need to consult a physician first, but please back up where stated to back up.

Place Check-in Policy Assemblies

If your client machine has TFS 2005 installed, you can install the Power Tool setup as normal (if you have not already). If your machine only has TFC/VS2008, then you will need to find a machine that has VS 2005 installed, install the Power Tools, then copy the following binaries

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ChangesetComments.dll

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.CustomPathPolicy.dll

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ForbiddenPatternsPolicy.dll

Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.WorkItemQueryPolicy.dll

For the rest of the steps, we'll use the same default location where the Power Tools install as the location for these check-in policies, namely,

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools\Check-in Policy Pack

Modify Registry so VS2008 (Orcas) Can Find The Policies

Edit the text below and put it in a .reg file. Be sure to replace the path to your installed path if is is not the same as shown below.

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\VisualStudio\9.0\TeamFoundation\SourceControl\Checkin Policies]
"Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.WorkItemQueryPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools\\Check-in Policy Pack\\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.WorkItemQueryPolicy.dll"
"Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ChangesetComments"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools\\Check-in Policy Pack\\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ChangesetComments.dll"
"Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.CustomPathPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools\\Check-in Policy Pack\\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.CustomPathPolicy.dll"
"Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ForbiddenPatternsPolicy"="C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2005 Power Tools\\Check-in Policy Pack\\Microsoft.TeamFoundation.PowerTools.CheckinPolicies.ForbiddenPatternsPolicy.dll"

Set Binding Redirects in DevEnv.Exe.Config

Since the TFS Power Tool Check-in policy assemblies reference the 8.0 assemblies, we need to configure devenv.exe to use the 9.0 assemblies whenever the 8.0 assemblies are referenced. Here is how you do that.

1. Close all instances of devenv.exe

2. Find where VS2008 (Orcas) devenv.exe is installed. Typically

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\IDE

3. Backup the existing devenv.exe.config file

4. Edit devenv.exe.config by adding the following in the <runtime><assemblyBinding> section:

5. Save devenv.exe.config

Restart Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas)

Restart Visual Studio 2008 (Orcas) and the Power Tool check-in policies will be available.

Check-in Policy Compatibility between TFC 2005 and 2008

2007-10-12T15:28:00Z

A frequent question among TFC 2008 beta customers is about check-in policy compatability. Will check-in policies work across TFC 2005 and 2008?

The answer is that evaluation works across versions in both directions, but editing the policy definition only works in one direction (TFC 2008 can edit a TFC 2005 policy but TFC 2005 cannot edit a 2008 policy).

Policy Version Added	Evaluate Policy		Edit Policy
	2005	2008	2005	2008
2005	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
2008	Yes	Yes	No	Yes

Policies are enforced on the client and require the proper assemblies to be installed on the client. If you have a custom or 3rd party check-in policy that works with TFC 2005, you will need a TFC 2008 version of the policy installed on TFC 2008 machines.

What about the popular Power Tool Check-in Policies?

Currently, the Power Tools target TFC 2005 only. The next Power Tool release will support TFC 2008.

Team System Web Access Power Tool Released

2007-07-31T19:10:46Z

Formerly known as Team Plain, the Team System Web Access Power Tool is now officially supported by Microsoft Customer Support Services. You can download it here. Brian Harry has the best post on the details. Enjoy.

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TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit Released to the Wild

2007-06-29T21:17:26Z

I am pleased to say the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit (toolkit) is officially released. You can get it here on CodePlex. The toolkit provides a set of classes and a reference implementation (and a good example) for migrating and/or synchronizing third party version control and work item tracking systems to Team Foundation System. The toolkit makes our lessons learned and best practices available for others to use when writing converters between their existing systems and TFS. If you follow the Team Foundation System blogs, then you've seen Brian Harry's dogfood statistics for Microsoft's internal use of TFS. Well, those changesets and bugs are migrated and synchronized with the systems we used before TFS. This is necessary because our build labs and some of our internal tools have not all been converted to TFS (yet), so we still need the previous systems. Given the volume of users, files, and bugs, we have a great deal of experience with the issues involved in migrating and synchronizing with TFS.

If you download the toolkit, I encourage you to look at the reference implementation that migrates with SharePoint (WSS). This implementaiton migrates documents between SharePoint and TFS version control as well as migrating SharePoint task lists with TFS work item tracking. By following the code in this reference implementation, you will get a good feal of how to implement your own converter from end to end.

There are a lot of version control and work item tracking systems out there that need converters! Be the first to jump on this opportunity. The toolkit makes this easy.

The Team Foundation Dogfood Gravy Train

2007-06-20T16:52:12Z

My wife, who is a nurse, chuckles at the computer slang she hears me use. One of her favorite terms is dogfooding. Both the origins of the term dogfooding and the benefits are quite interesting. Nothing says, "fix this problem now!" louder than running into it yourself or the peer pressure when a coworker runs or should I say, steps into it.

We started dogfooding TFS within a subset of the TFS team back in 2004. From there we have expanded to all of TFS, to the Developer Division, to the Office team, and now we are starting a roll out to the big kuhuna, the Windows team (see Brian Keller's blog). With each expansion, TFS improves in performance, scalability, and we learn more about feature gaps and improvements we need to make. This feedback often turns into power tools and future product features. This cycle feeds on itself - as we improve TFS then Microsoft's application lifecycle management improves. This is the dogfood gravy train.

See Soma's blog about what Microsoft uses for software development.

Brian Harry has the June 2007 dogfood stats here.

Sidebar: Some companies changed the "eating your own dogfood" phrase to "sipping your own champagne". I prefer the dogfood phrase because the champagne phrase sounds like you are getting intoxicated about how great your product is from slow/casual (sipping) use. That is the opposite of what you are trying to do.

Micro Focus COBOL and TFS

2007-05-24T23:26:50Z

Doug Neumann, one of our program managers for TFS, had a chance to do a keynote at Micro Focus World in Orlando earlier this month. For those of you not familiar with Micro Focus, they sell a set of tools for COBOL development. While preparing for the keynote, we had an opportunity to use Team System and Team Foundation Server for managing COBOL assets.

The experience works pretty well. One of Micro Focus’ tools plugs into Visual Studio for building .NET applications in COBOL. We were able to use static analysis, unit testing, code coverage, and version control in the IDE with very little work. Once we had COBOL in TFS, Team Build compiled it without any customization. Doug showed that during the demo and apparently it went over pretty well.

Micro Focus also ships their own IDE for building native COBOL applications on Windows called Net Express. That IDE supports the Microsoft Source Code Control Interface so we were able to install the TFS MSSCCI Provider to get integrated version control working. There was one catch, though. The MSSCCI spec is kind of up for interpretation by the person implementing it, so our provider has to behave differently in different IDEs. We ship a set of registry keys that are used to customize the behavior for various IDEs, but we don’t set the keys for the Micro Focus’ Net Express IDE. So, if you’re developing in COBOL and you’d like to try this out, set the following reg key to get to work properly:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\
Team Foundation Server MSSCCI Provider\Settings\Net Express]
“issues”=dword:000000e6

Visual Studio Team System Chat - Today (4/27/2007)

2007-04-27T17:09:58Z

Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the in the Visual Studio code name “Orcas” Beta 1 releases for Team Suite and Team Foundation Server.

We will be holding two sessions:

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

-or-

Join the chat on Friday, April 27th, 2007 from 4:00pm - 5:00pm Pacific Time. Add to Calendar | Additional Time Zones

TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit Prerelease Available On Codeplex

2007-04-21T06:52:10Z

Just released (or should I say, prereleased) tonight on Codeplex, the TFS Migration and Synchronization Toolkit (the toolkit) Prerelease. See here. We've be working on hard on this toolkit to make availalbe the best practices we have learned from migrating and synchronizing millions of files and work items internally and for customers. If you are thinking of migrating from an existing version control or work item tracking system to TFS, you'll definitely want to check this out. Let us know what you think.