I have tested custom applications for over 10 years now. However, I find I still have a hard time estimating tasks for an Agile project. Why is that? It’s probably because my background is not nearly as technical as the background of our Lead Developer, who is generally the person who runs the Sprint Planning sessions. I tend to think it terms of hours and not story points, and I tend to allow the developers…
I’m sure there are hundreds of posts out there trying to define DevOps. What is DevOps, and why is it important? Here are my two cents: If you subscribe to the Lean software development way of thinking, you think about a pipeline of value that results in working software. For example this might be: Analysis -> Dev -> Test -> Deploy -> Monitor As with any pipeline, there is likely a bottleneck somewhere…
Imaginet’s Top 6 Favorite New Features of TFS 2017 With the recent release of Visual Studio 2017, now is a great time to upgrade your Team Foundation Server (TFS) to 2017! This new release is jam-packed with over 25 new features and fixes that help your team develop software better by improving communication and collaboration throughout your software development process. Here are just a few reasons why you should consider upgrading to TFS 2017: …
Imaginet Blog Series — Part 1 Mastering Your Deployment Pipeline Most users of your application will never see the requirements or read notes from your sprint retrospectives. But something they will appreciate – or condemn – is your team’s ability to deploy an update to the mission critical software they use on a daily basis. Can you initiate and finalize a deployment in a small window of time? Can you do it…
As the new year kicks off, now is a great time to upgrade your Visual Studio Team Foundation Server to 2015 (with Update 1) and have it ready for 2016 ahead. Why Upgrade to Team Foundation Server 2015? This new release of Team Foundation Server 2015 is jam-packed with over 25 new features and fixes that help your team develop software better by improving communication and collaboration throughout your software development process. Here are just a…
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server 2015 RTM (Release to Manufacturing) is now available! This is the newest version of Team Foundation Server (TFS), the collaboration platform at the core of Microsoft’s application lifecycle management (ALM) solution. Why Upgrade to TFS 2015? This new release of Team Foundation Server 2015 is jam-packed with over 25 new features and fixes that help your team develop software better by improving communication and collaboration throughout your software development…
Imaginet Blog Series — Part 2 Mastering Your Deployment Pipeline The Real Cost of Deployment In the Part 1 in the series, we looked at some of the reasons why we might neglect the opportunity to nurture the build process and create an automated solution for deployment. To really see why we should consider our build and deployment system as first class citizens on our development team, perhaps we should start by…
In Part 1 of this series, we examined how to identify two types of software development waste – Over Production and Inventory – and how to reduce them. In Part 2, we’ll look at three more types of waste – Motion, Defects, and Extra Processing – that often arise from the waste discussed in Part 1 and how we can address them in our software development processes. Motion Motion is work that takes more effort than it…
Every software development process, whether it is highly formalized and structured, post-it notes and napkin diagrams, or anything between, always leads to the same questions. Are we providing the most value we can? Can our team be more efficient? The Lean manufacturing process has spent considerable time identifying causes of and solutions to waste of time and resources. This same analysis can be applied to the software development process to remove wasted work and increase…
