J.D. Meier's Blog
Software Engineering, Project Management, and Effectiveness
March 2007 - Posts
My Tag Cleanup
I made some changes to my tag cloud and learned some lessons along the way: A few useful tags are more effective than a laundry list. If I have to choose between tags too often, consolidate and eliminate. If I'm not using my own tags, they aren't working.
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New Video: How To - Personalize Team System Guidance with Guidance Explorer
If you are a hunter and gatherer of guidance, you'll want Guidance Explorer . Watch Video: How To - Personalize Team System Guidance with Guidance Explorer to see how you can use Guidance Explorer to build a custom collection of guidance from our Visual
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New Video: What Is - Branching
We just added Video: What Is - Branching to our Visual Studio Team System Guidance Project . Watch this video to see how branching may impact your strategy when using Team Foundation Server source control.
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New Video: What Is - New in Team Foundation Server Source Control
We added Video: What Is - New in Team Foundation Server Source Control to our Visual Studio Team System Guidance Project . Watch this video if you want a brief highlight of some of the differences between Visual Source Safe and Team Foundation Server:
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New Prescriptive Guidance for Visual Studio Team System
Our patterns and practices team has just released new prescriptive guidance for Visual Studio Team System ! Since my previous post we've made significant updates with the addition of the following content: Explained: Branching in Team Foundation Server
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Video-Based Guidance for Visual Studio Team System Now Available
As part of our Video-Based Guidance Experiment , we've released an initial set of VSTS Guidance Videos . Source Control Videos Video: How To - Setup Your Source Tree in Team Foundation Server (Length: 10:02 - Size: 4.2 MB) Video: How To - Structure Your
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Video-Based Guidance Experiment
We're piloting some video-based guidance. Here's what I want to accomplish for the videos: Factor "What Is" from "How To" type videos (i.e. reference vs. action) Do more, smaller videos vs. a few larger videos (modular vs. monolithic) Show me how vs.
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Why 30 Day Improvement Sprints
Why 30 Day Improvement Sprints ? I get asked this often enough that I think I should distll the keys: I can commit to something for 30 days. Starting something without an end in sight, can be daunting. It helps me deal with the now. It's a timebox to
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Journaling for Improvement
Whether I'm working on a 30 Day Improvement Sprint , or working through a complex problem, I find journaling is key. By journal, I simply mean a personal log in some form that I can easily add to and review. Journaling is key because I get to see at a
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Prioritizing Scannable Outcomes
How do I efficiently and effectively prioritize my day ... my week ... my life? In an earlier post, I talked about using Scannable Outcome Lists . For a quick reminder, this is simply a flat set of lists. I name each list by project or area I'm working
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patterns & practices Security Videos
We did a focused set of security videos with Keith Brown a while back. The problem is they're not very findable (most customers I talk to aren't aware of them). I added them to soapbox and listed them below to see if it helps (note soapbox may prompt
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Security Mantras and Metaphors
After reading Alik Levin's Security Language That Everyone Understands and Michael Howard's Security Analogies are usually Wrong , I reflected on some mantras and metaphors our team found helpful during our various security adventures: Know your threats
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The Secret of Time Management
The secret to time management isn't more time management hacks at all. Here's the keys I've found: Manage energy not time . Make room for your big rocks . Use anticipation to drive versus react . I often here the argument, "if I had more time for this
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Worst Things First
This a practice I learned long ago and it's actually helpful whether it's day to day or building software. It's doing worst things first. It's human nature to move away from pain. Sometimes I have a meeting or a conversation or even just a task for the
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Life's an Experiment
It's amazing how much the metaphors we use can be enabling or disabling. For example, I used to think "in life there are no second chances" or "you never get a second chance at first impressions." Once I adopted, "life's an experiment", it was much more
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Hacking Web Applications Exposed, 2nd Edition
I like Hacking Web Applications Exposed, second edition . I really do. Here's the foreword I wrote: "Reveals the magic behind the attacks that are so pervasive on the Web today. Knowing the attacks is a first step towards figuring out effective countermeasures.
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Performance vs. Load vs. Stress Testing
This conversation (er, debate) comes up a lot. What's the difference between performance, load and stress testing? I'm sure there's tons of *official* definitions. At the end of the day, I think about them like this: Performance - is about response, time
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Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance Now Available
The Team Foundation Server Branching Guidance whitepaper is now available! It's a comprehensive whitepaper that covers strategies, patterns and anti-patterns for branching and merging with TFS. You can view the branching guidance online or you can download
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5 Tips for Blogging
Here's some quick blogging tips I shared with a colleague, that they found helpful: Have a purpose or a theme -- I find having a simple purpose helps. For example, my one-liner for me is to journal my Microsoft adventures. Within that, I'll tend to focus
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Building a Custom Set of Guidance with Guidance Explorer
Today I was reminded of the powerful scenario for building a custom set of guidance on the fly using Guidance Explorer . One of the scenarios for Guidance Explorer that's probably not well known, is the ability to generate MS Word documents. You can also
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Security Influencers
IT Security posted their list of The 59 Top Influencers in IT Security . They say their list includes "...most influential security experts of 2007 - from corporate tech officers and government security types, to white hat hackers and bloggers." I don't
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Perspectives Frame
Building software involves a lot of communication. Behind this communication, lies perspectives. These perspectives often get lost somewhere between initial goals and final product, which can lead to failed software. I found that by using a simple Perspectives
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MUST vs. SHOULD vs. COULD
Whether I'm dealing with software requirements, or I'm prioritizing my personal TO Dos, I think in terms of MUST, SHOULD, COULD. It's simpple but effective. Here's an example of some scenarios and usage: getting a quick handle on my day - what MUST I
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Tag Big Buckets First
Here's an example of a mistake I made tagging to illustrate how I'm now thinking about tags. I originally created the following three tags for my team system nuggets: Visual Studio 2005 , Team System , and Team Foundation Server . I did this because I
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View-Driven Tagging
I'm not satisfied with the browsability of my blog. While I can get to a lot of the nuggets I need, sometimes I have to dig. My initial reaction was that I just need to throw all my nuggets into a Wiki and do what I do best. Then I realized, no, I'm making
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Driver's Guide vs. Owner's Manual
One of the metaphors I use to explain the distinction between documentation and guidance is Driver's guide vs. Owner's Manual. While I could go into the finer details, it's a good starting point. From an owner's manual, I expect to see how things work
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Code Sharing in Team Foundation Server
How do you share code in Team Foundation Server? That's what our team is working through at the moment. We're looking at what's working, what's not working, and what should customers be doing. Here's how we're basically thinking about it so far: There's
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Progressive Development Blog
How do you turn around your software development practices? Well, follow along in the adventures of Maven and Motley in the Progressive Development Blog . While the stories are fiction, they're based on practical experience and learnings by a member of
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Thinking About Career Paths
I'd like to share some of the insights that others have shared with me over the years about choosing paths. My favorite insights have always been guiding questions that help me choose my own adventure. Mentor #1 Do you want more fame, fortune, time, or
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Meeting with Anil
I met with Anil John today since he's in town for the 2007 MVP Global Summit. I always like talking with Anil because he asks the tough questions, he has thoughtful feedback and he keeps things real. Anil's first question for me was why are there three
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3 Tips for Branching in Team Foundation Server
One of my readers asked me if I could provide a bit more insight on branching. I think the best thing I can do here is summarize a few tips and then point to some useful resources. Key Tips Don't branch unless you need to . You can always label a release
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Meeting with Rudy
I got some face time with Rudy Araujo today. I always enjoy our meetings because we talk about anything from security to personal productivity to future software trends. Today, we bounced around topics including compliance, agile, systemic problems, software
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Multiple Solutions and Flat Projects
Graham Barry, one of the key VSTS members helping us pave our paths through Team Foundation Server, shared a model he likes to use. He uses multiple solutions, but with a flat project list: /Source /WinFormsProject /WebProject /WindowsServiceProject /ClassLibrary1
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Structuring Projects for Team Foundation Server
I've seen a few customers asking how to structure projects for Team Foundation Server. I don't blame them. Finding a structure that works well for you can be tricky, particularly if you don't have the benefit of hind-sight or a bunch of reference examples
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Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us
Web 2.0 means a lot of things to different people. For me, it means moving from a read-only, one-way Web to a read-write, conversational Web. I think the most exciting part is the shift from sites serving content to humans driving the experience. The
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Roles and Goals
The next time I need to get a set of requirements, I'm simply going to start with roles with goals. I made the mistake of asking for a set of scenarios. What I ended up with is a list of user tasks. Tasks aren't the same as goals. Flying a kite is not
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David Anderson's Recipe for Success
David Anderson distills his software management learnings down into four bullets: Focus on Quality Reduce Work-in-progress Balance capacity against demand Prioritize He names this set a recipe for sucess. Here's what the recipe mean to me. Focus on Quality.
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Making 30 Day Improvement Sprints More Effective
In my 30 Day Improvement Sprints post, a reader asked, what tips do I have to make 30 days sprints more effective. Here's my short list Buddy up . Seriously. One guy's hurdle, is another girl's breeze. Don't beat yourself up . If at first you don't succeed,
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Requirements Perspectives
Here's a simple set of perspectives I use for rationalizing requirements: User Business Expert / Technical Industry/Standards Believe it or not, simply identifying these perspective helps a lot. You'd be surprised how many debates happen simply because
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30 Day Improvement Sprints
I'm using 30 day improvement sprints as a way to sharpen my skills. I pick a focus to work on and I committ to improving it for a 30 day timebox. Committing to 30 days of improvement in a focused area, is easier to swallow than changing for life. However,
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Prashant Bansode is Blogging
Prashant Bansode has stepped up to the blogging plate. He's been a core member of my team for a few years. I first met Prashant, when he reviewed our Improving .NET Performance and Scalability . I was impressed by his attention to detail, focus on the
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Influencing Without Authority
Today I got some relevant training for today's world - how to succeed when you don't have authority and control over execution. This is a common scenario in cross-team, cross-group scenarios. At Microsoft, you don't get rewarded by saying, "...if only
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Ward and the Wiki Way
When Ward Cunningham was on our team, I learned a lot about building Wikis. He walked me through my first Wiki page. He probably didn't expect that 4 days later, I'd have more than 500 Wiki pages (he added a counter to my wiki!) Ward told me Wiki Wiki
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30 Days of Living Foods Ends Today
Today ends my 30 day experiment eating living foods. I'm a burger and pizza boy at heart, so this was a big change. Friends and family noticed my slimmer look and healthy glow. A friend of mine said I found the Fountain of Youth. Here's what I noticed:
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Deep Enterprise 2.0 Penetration
In Now THAT's What I'm Talking About! , Andrew McAfee writes about a case study of deep Enterprise 2.0 penetration: "Highly popular, and highly useful. I find that the sites I visit most often these days are ones that give me 'the latest.' They help me
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MVPs for Team System
I updated our index of Team System MVPs index today so that my guidance team can quickly see the profiles and blogs. I couldn't find some blogs, but I'll add them as I find them over time.
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Enterprise 2.0
I like how Most Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools In Business summarizes a Web 2.0 + Enterprise world ... "Enterprise 2.0 can't just be about a wiki here, a blog there forever. Taken together, the emergence and convergence of Web 2.0 and IP
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Guidance 2.0
Imagine what a Guidance 2.0 world might be like ... browse tag clouds of reusable "architecture nuggets" subscribe to "guidance feeds" that give you the latest practices and recommendations share your "guidance" playlists with friends (share your favorite
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