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After not really enough sleep it seems a good time reflect on DDD5. My session I felt my session went well, and the initial feedback was good. It is always good to be asked question all day about your session, proves it got people thinking; I certainly learnt a few tricks for TFS from these conversations. A common question I got was ‘I am using Product XYZ should a change to TFS?’. To this my answer is always a question ‘Does your system, whether off the shelf or home grown work for you?’ If it does then don’t rush to change it. Certainly look at TFS and see if it is better solution for your project needs - if it is not don’t change to TFS. If you don’t a working system to manage software development certainly look at TFS, or anything for that matter. Good software only comes out of a structured process, whether the process is Agile or Formal in style all the team must know what it is and adhere to it. ...

I have just got back home from today’s DDD5 conference. Time for some more considered posting later, it has been a long day, but I thought I would get my slide stack up as quick as I could. You can find the Power Point stack (with the speaker notes included) at http://www.blackmarble.co.uk/SectionDisplay.aspx?name=Publications&subsection=Conference Papers, along with previous DDD presentation. Thanks to everyone who attended my session, I look forward to hearing some feedback, but now some sleep I as up at 5am…… ...

I have been looking at eScrum and first impressions are good. This is not the first Scrum process template for TFS, there is also the one from Conchango. My feeling over the Conchango one was that it seemed very like the standard MSF Agile template, more a terminology rename. Hence it felt a bit ‘clunky’ to use and not too agile. Sticking to a ‘post-it notes on a white board’ model seemed a better way to manage a Scrum sprint. ...

If you want to install TFS add-ins, such as Attrice Team Foundation Sidekicks and Teamplain, on the TFS Orcas release you have to install the TFS V8 Client (the one which is shipped with Team Foundation Server 2005). If you don’t have this version both products fails to start/install as they claim they cannot find the correct assemblies. Once you have installed the V8 client (as well as the Orcas V9 ones) both products work fine with Orcas. ...

It seems that DDD5 was full within a few hours of registration being opened.

DDD5 Registration has opened, register fast the DDD events fill up fast.

I see the agenda for DDD5 is up, thanks to everyone who voted for my session on TFS. I better write it now!

I can confirm that putting a Corsair Flash Voyager USB Stick in 40C Mixed Cotton wash is not the best way to clean it of old data. A traditional format remains the best solution for dirty data. However, it does show these rubberized USB sticks are tough, two hours in a washing mean seems to have done no harm. Also the new orange colored moels are fast enough for Vista TurboFlash usage. ...

Went to a great session last night at the Yorkshire Extreme Programming Club, a intro to Test Driven Development using just Excel. The presentation was given by Clarke Ching, you can find out more about him and this presentation on his blog I just had not occurred to me that Excel is a great way to show TDD principles to people who are not developers, such as project managers and business analysts. It is interesting how using TDD, refactoring and pair programming (well the whole room actually) anyone can see how to get a complex business requirement to elegant code in nice easy steps. ...

On Wednesday 19th of September I will be speaking at an evening event organised by Guy Smith-Ferrier of the .NET Developers Network in Bristol. The session will be on Microsoft Team Foundation Server. For full details have a look at http://www.dotnetdevnet.com/Meetings/tabid/54/EntryID/7/Default.aspx