February 2007 - Posts

patterns and practices Visual Studio Team System Guidance Now Available
This is our first release of our Visual Studio Team System Guidance . This project is a collaborative effort with VSTS team members, customers, field, and industry experts. What you'll see so far, is Practices at a Glance and Questions and Answers as Read More...
Posted 28 February 07 06:49 by J.D. Meier | 6 Comments   
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Using Scannable Outcomes with My Results Approach
Some readers asked to hear more on how I use my Scannable Outcome Lists in conjunction with My Personal Approach for Daily Results . Here's the work flow in a nutshell ... Mondays On Mondays, I figure out my key outcomes for the week. To do this: I remind Read More...
Posted 26 February 07 12:40 by J.D. Meier | 15 Comments   
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Scenario Frames for Guidance
When I tackle a problem domain, I first frame out the space. To do this, I list out scenarios and sub-scenarios. I group the scenarios under categories. Sometimes categories come first, sometimes scenarios do. I call the result, a Scenario Frame. I use Read More...
Posted 22 February 07 07:26 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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patterns and practices Performance Testing Guidance
We have a new Performance Testing Guidance project in progress. Our team includes some of the original members from Improving .NET Application Performance as well as some new faces. We're tackling various flavors of performance testing (stress, load, Read More...
Posted 12 February 07 05:56 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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4 Questions to Cap Your Day
At the end of each day, I ask myself the following: What did I learn? What did I improve? What did I enjoy? What kind act did I do? I use these questions to reflect on daily improvements as well as course correct. I also use them to appreciate life's Read More...
Posted 11 February 07 08:28 by J.D. Meier | 3 Comments   
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Scannable Outcome Lists
I realized another key for helping manage To Dos. It's having scannable lists of outcomes. I keep flat lists of outcomes chunked by area or project. These aren't the next actions. They're the results I want to accomplish. They act as prompts to help me Read More...
Posted 11 February 07 06:14 by J.D. Meier | 13 Comments   
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patterns & practices Enterprise Library Test Guide
We released the Enterprise Library Test Guide . I plan on analyzing the sections on security and performance testing. I do like the focus on testing for compliance with recommended practice over testing for all the permutations of bad (whitelist over Read More...
Posted 10 February 07 02:31 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Visual Studio Team System Technotes
I found the Visual Studio Team System Technotes while hunting and gathering resources for my team. I like the Technotes because they are short and focused on a specific concept or task. I also like the fact that they are first-hand from many of the product Read More...
Posted 09 February 07 09:17 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Task-Analysis Grid for Communicating Product Design
How do you communicate design decisions? … Srinath sent me a helpful link on the Task-Analysis Grid . A Task Analysis Grid is effectively columns of scenarios along with sub-tasks to complete the task. Here's the key points: The columns are organized Read More...
Posted 09 February 07 08:16 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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It's Between Your Ears
A friend of mine told me a story the other day. I liked his reminder of how your job sat, is more about your perspective, than the job. The story goes like this. As he was walking to his jet, on a picture perfect day, he thought to himself, how boring Read More...
Posted 07 February 07 05:24 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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MSF Agile Persona Template
I was looking for examples of persona templates, and I came across Personas: Moving Beyond Role-Based Requirements Engineering by Randy Miller and Laurie Williams.  I found it to be insightful and practical.  I also like the fact they included Read More...
Posted 04 February 07 10:01 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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Actors, Personas, and Roles
In user modeling, I usually come across actors, personas, and roles (user roles). I thought it would be helpful to distinguish these so that I can use the right tool for the job, or at least understand their relationships, strengths and weaknesses. Summary Read More...
Posted 04 February 07 09:39 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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Personas at patterns and practices
At patterns & practices , we introduced personas a few years back to help design user experience for our deliverables. Personas helped with a few things: Understanding demographics. Building empathy by putting a face behind the user role. Building Read More...
Posted 04 February 07 08:42 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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My Personal Approach for Daily Results
I'm dedicating this post to anybody who's faced with task saturation, or needs some new ideas on managing their days or weeks... One of the most important techniques I share with those I mentor, is how to manage To Dos. It's too easy to experience churn Read More...
Posted 04 February 07 02:46 by J.D. Meier | 16 Comments   
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Avoiding Do Overs - Testing Your Key Engineering Decisions
I noticed Rico has a Performance Problems Survey . From what I've seen, the most important problem is failure to test and explore key engineering decisions. By key engineering decisions, I mean the decisions that have cascading engineering impact. By Read More...
Posted 04 February 07 01:41 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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2 Key Process Pitfalls
If I had to pick two easily corrected issues I see show up time and again, I'd pick: Optimizing the wrong thing. Optimizing your process, when what you need is a different process. Two questions I think help: "What do you want to optimize?" (time? money? Read More...
Posted 03 February 07 03:51 by J.D. Meier | 1 Comments   
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World Class Testing
I've highlighted my take-aways from the "World Class Testing" section of Managing the Design Factory by Donald G. Reinertsen. It's an insightful book whether you're optimizing your product line or designing a new product. It's packed with empirical punch, Read More...
Posted 02 February 07 07:29 by J.D. Meier | 2 Comments   
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How I Explain Threat Modeling to Customers
Here's my trying to explain threat modeling (actually core modeling) to a customer … My core theme of the modeling is this: Define what good looks like (e.g. objectives) Establish boundaries of good (constraints, goals -- what can't happen, what needs Read More...
Posted 02 February 07 06:54 by J.D. Meier | 5 Comments   
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What Are You Optimizing
This is such a fundamental question. It has an enormous impact on your product design and how you structure your product life cycle. For example, are you optimizing time? ... money? ... impact? ... innovation? ... resource utilization? If you don't answer Read More...
Posted 02 February 07 06:40 by J.D. Meier | 4 Comments   
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How patterns and practices Does Source Control with Team Foundation Server (TFS)
We've used TFS for more than a year, so it's interesting to see what we're doing in practice. If you looked at our source control, you'd see something like the following: + Project X version 1 + Project X version 2 - Project Y |----Branches |----Releases Read More...
Posted 01 February 07 06:30 by J.D. Meier | 8 Comments   
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