March 2005 - Posts
If you have used a methodology like the
V-Model then the concept of functional specs and SRS (Software Requirements Specification) documents you may know. I have
seen a few posts that ask,
do we need them and can visual interface lead design be a better approach. I could be missing the point but an SRS in the scheme of the V-model is critical, high level design leads low level design. Create the use cases, realize the objects and the object flow. Know this information going into your high level design and let your testing mirror your levels. Using this methodology depends on you, its a tool and you use the best tool for the job. User interface lead design I would consider in the agile world/RAD world. I disagree that functional specs are the for big companies, they are useable in medium to small project teams, it really depends if you want to know where your going before you get there.
My new role has ment my time has been consumed this week, I don't doubt it will be that way for a good few months. This weekend however is a 4 day weekend so got some time to catch up and work some POCs. Busy day for discussions today for some reason, left some notes on the
Laszlo list and
Javalobby. I'll try and do a catch up post later today.
Some personal news. You may have noticed things for me have been a little hetic for me the last few weeks. I have a few reasons for this, but the main one is that tommrow I join the team at the
Reading Room heading up the dev team at the Manchester office. This brings many new and exciting challenges and I look foward to working with everyone there. On Friday I said good bye to my old team, some of the most most talented software engineers I have seen and I know they will go from strength to strength.
I have a
new software project running with the code for
SDC Build Tools plugin for CruiseControl
SoliutionLite a VS2002/2003 solution file builder for NAnt
InstallShield plugin for NAnt.
Any questions, let me know.
An internetnews.com article that referances this post on Xamlon, gee I feel almost famous :)
Spent the last few days dumping the tech depths of my brain into FlexWiki, I have to say that FlexWiki is a little tricky to setup but a breeze to use. Inspired by the old MbUnit build page I have been wondering about tracking build process from CC.net as a generated wiki page. I need to think about it more but it would be an interesting way of publishing build availabilty to business owners, as and when I make progress I'll post it here.
On the subject of CC.net I also came across this book by (fellow brit) Marc Homles, Marc works for the commerical arm of the BBC, great that his organisation are using amazing OSS tools like CC.net in there build process.
Mike R has added my XSL transform for MbUnit to the
newly created CC.net XSL transforms wiki page. This file is intended to replace the unittests.xsl file that ships with CC.net. You will also need the the XSL file that ships with MbUnit which replaces the tests.xsl file. With these two files you can view MbUnit results from within CC.net without the need to install plugins etc (although that is another option). Note that this file is still a work in progress but should get you well on your way if your using MbUnit and CC.net.
As per my last post, had a lot of things go on this week so not been keeping track of events, apologies if you have heard all this before :)
- Jasons baby boy, congrats to Jason and Liz on their new arrivial.
- Groove has been bought by Microsoft and Ray becomes CTO (via Jesse) - thats pretty amazing, all the best to Ray in his new role.
- Robin gives an update on the .NET edition of Xamlon and Jesse weighs in with a Flex/Laszo point. Jesse's point about .NET and Flex is a very valid one, I have made the same point to both the Flex and Laszo teams. At the end of the day, time will tell who listened.
- MSF for CMMI, great that solution frameworks for CMM and Agile are now available. Both additions IMHO are very important and its great that TS will support them out of the box. I highly recommend that if you are new to CMMI that you take some time to do some research on it, the shop I work in certainly hold it in high reguard and CMMI improvement is something we are working towards.
- TS for XNA development, makes sense that TS will support XBox development teams. Its a natural home for TS to support multiple teams where you have a very split group of managers, programmers, designers and testers. I can really see this being adopted by the XBox houses, I suspect also that templates may be created (such as the Agile/CMMI templates) that are targeted towards this enviroment.
This month is looking to be another slow blogging month, got a lot going on at the moment. Been spending a lot of time with FlexWiki, if your not running a Wiki on your project I really recommend you take some time to set one up. They are great for brain dumping and a good place to store thoughts, notes and other info that dev may be tempted to store on paper, word doc, bug manager etc. Also a good way of documenting process's and systems that may be related to your day to day, your build system for example.
I also noticed this GUI manager for CC.net, not used it all that much yet but a great example of the kind of apps that the web service API in CC.net lets you build.
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