Re-awarded as a Visual Studio ALM MVP

I have just found out I have been re-awarded as a Visual Studio ALM MVP for the third year (though it was called Team System the first two times). It is a privilege to get to work with such a great group of people as a have met via the MVP programme.

July 1, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Using my Typemock TMockRunner Custom Activity for Team Build 2010

[Also see http://blogs.blackmarble.co.uk/blogs/rfennell/archive/2010/08/13/how-to-edit-a-tfs-2010-build-template-when-it-contains-custom-activities.aspx ] A couple of months ago I wrote and published a custom activity for Team Build 2010 to allow Typemock tests to be run within the build process. Whilst setting up a new build need to use this activity so I though I would see if there was an easier way to use it in a build without all the branch and fuss required for development. This is what I had to do...

July 1, 2010 · 3 min · Richard Fennell

Fun presenting last night at BCS

Thanks to everyone who attended my session last night at the West Yorkshire BCS on Agile and Lean development process. The projector failing after only a few minutes meant I had to adopt a good agile approach to the session. It was nice that so many people came up afterwards to say they enjoyed the lack of PowerPoint. This got me thinking, as I enjoyed not having it as well. All I really missed was a couple of slides one that showed a Kanban board and another that diagrammatically showed the Scrum process, I got round the lack of both of these by pointing wildly at the blank projector screen and asking people to imagine....

July 1, 2010 · 2 min · Richard Fennell

Speaking at the BCS this week on Agile

Just a reminder I am speaking at the West Yorkshire BCS meeting this Wednesday on the subject ‘Agile is so old hat all the cool kids are doing lean now’. The meeting starts a 5:45 for refreshments, and 6:30 for my session. The venue is the Old Broadcasting House, 148 Woodhouse Lane, Leeds LS2 9EN (www.ntileeds.co.uk) Hope to see you there

June 28, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell

Professional Scrum Developer with TFS course in the UK

My fellow UK ALM MVP, Martin Hinshelwood, is running a Professional Scrum Developer course in London at the end of next month. I understand there are still some places left, and some good discounts available. So if you was looking at wanting to implement a Scrum process on TFS it could be well worth a look If you want to know more about the whole PSD programme have a look at the Microsoft site

June 25, 2010 · 1 min · Richard Fennell