New Team System Stuff - 2004-09-15
Team System Web & Load Tests
Tim Weaver has been experimenting with the web and load testing features of Team System. In this post, he talks about some of stuff he tried. A few weeks ago, Josh Christie provided some fundamentals about web tests. Now, Josh is looking for your feedback on web and load testing.
Branching Source Control
Every Wednesday, the Burton team gathers to see demos of Team System features that have recently been implemented or improved. This Wednesday, Doug Neumann demonstrated branching using the Source Control Explorer. Things just keep getting better.
As Chris Rathjen discussed in this post, his job is to make sure features work for the user. To that end, he needs to grok what users expect from a particular feature and how they want to use it. In today's post, Chris is looking for your input on branching and is asking for specific examples on how you expect to use it.
Team System in the News
The goal is to make the sometimes unpredictable and chaotic process of software development into "a disciplined business process, like enterprise resource planning," said Rick LaPlante, general manager of Microsoft's Visual Studio Enterprise Tools, at Borland Corp.'s annual user group Monday in San Jose. He said enterprises have imposed highly structured processes on their supply-chain automation and can do likewise with their software development.
He [Rick LaPlante] promised VSTS would be simple for developers to use. "If you have to go and hire a consulting firm to figure out what you installed, we have failed," LePlante said. "If, in order to collaborate, you have to do 20 more steps, then you are using Rational's tools."
Documentation-Driven Development
Korby Parnell raises the notion of documenting software before coding it, which Korby notes is somewhat similar to Test-Driven Development. In the feedback section of that post, a couple of people have noted that they've used a similar process. It would be kind of fun to have the developers coding to our documentation, and then watch them have to rework code because we cut or added feature topics. After all, turnabout is fair play.
New Infrastructure for Visual Studio 2005 Online Documentation
Speaking of documentation, take a look at the new infrastructure over on MSDN2. As noted here, this represents several changes, such as a new URL scheme and a new Table of Contents. They want feedback, so share it if you have it.