Smelser.NET

I walked into a meeting earlier this week, only to find a huge count-down clock projected on the wall. There was no mistaking what this meant... We were going to have time-boxed discussions. I wrote about a similar pattern in my post Your Time is Up, but I've never seen anything quite like this. As it turns out, this tool is called "Big Time" which is appropriate. But the real hidden gem is the voice-over which had a distinct measure of desperation in his voice. As if to say... "I got a Computer Science Degree and THIS is what I am doing?"

With that said, the real credit goes to the my Scrum Master... This worked brilliantly...  Simple and effective... Nicely done Jon. 

Tags: processes

These two tools are pretty neat, I cannot tell you how many times I have gone through the process of capturing images and attaching them to TFS Work Items…  These two tools have taken a step closer to making this easier...  One is Free and one is based on a cost product…  I did not write these, but enjoy them all the same.

Open Source Cropper Plug-in for TFS
http://notsosmartbuilder.blogspot.com/2007/05/cropper-tfs-work-item-plugin.html

SnagIt Output for Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
http://www.techsmith.com/community/blogcomments.asp?thread=356

Enjoy…

If you want to see a list of other cool TFS tools, look at my TFS Tag or Checkout the Accentient TFS Widget list which I contribute to.

Tags: tfs

If you have every read through the SSW Rules to Better... you can see how may people live within Outlook.  In fact, there was a really interesting DotNetRocks Show that spoke with one of the SSW authors, and it is worth a listen.  Recently, I found a neat Outlook 2007 plugin that lets me add TFS Work Items from within Outlook and saves me the time of entering Team Explorer.  I have been using it for a little while and it is pretty nice...  That being said, this product requires use of integrated Windows Domain credentials and does not work for people making Workgroup-style connections.

Team System Outlook 2007 Addin - v1.0
http://blogs.microsoft.co.il/blogs/srlteam/archive/2007/03/04/Team-System-Outlook-2007-Addin-_2D00_-v1.0.aspx

If you want to see a list of other cool TFS tools, look at my TFS Tag or Checkout the Accentient TFS Widget list which I contribute to.

Tags: tfs

I ran across the below blog entry and was really excited...  Back in the days when we all dreaded Visual Source Safe (VSS), many of us used open source products like CVS and SVN.  One of the great tools that grew out of this community was a Source Control Client that was implemented as a Windows Shell Extension. TortoiseCVS and TortoiseSVN, are really easy to use Revision, Version, and Source control software. Until now there was no similar solution for TFS-based source control.  Dubbelbock TFS is the first project to attempt to bring a shell integrated experience to TFS users. 

Benjamin Day Consulting Blog Entry

Since it's not an integration for a specific IDE you can use it with whatever development tools you like. TortoiseSVN is free to use. You don't need to get a loan or pay a full years salary to use it. Ever heard of Tortoise SVN?  It's a great tool that lets you control Subversion source control from Windows Explorer.  Right-click on a file or folder and you can do operations like check-in, check-out, add, etc.

I use Team Foundation Server for my source control and have missed the convenience of being able to access source like that.  So, I wrote it. 

This is the official announcement of “Dubbelbock TFS“.  With Dubbelbock you can select a directory or file and do “Get Latest“, “Check in“, “Check out“, “Lock“, “Add“, “Undo“, “View Status“, “Compare to Server Version (diff)“, and “View History“.

If you want to see a list of other cool TFS tools, look at my TFS Tag or Checkout the Accentient TFS Widget list which I contribute to.

Tags: tfs

For those of you who use Team Systems here a couple of Vista Gadgets to help keep you update to date on Work Item Numbers.  Ostensibly, these are targeting the out-of-the-box Microsoft Process Template.  I am using the Conchango SCRUM Process Template so these are not 100% for the SCRUM process template.  Enjoy 

TFS Tasks

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=bded877c-aead-4ed3-82db-387eef322f86&bt=1&pl=1 

TFS Projects

http://gallery.live.com/liveItemDetail.aspx?li=443cb551-fb75-494a-9c70-cded2ec5d882&bt=1&pl=1

If you want to see a list of other cool TFS tools, look at my TFS Tag or Checkout the Accentient TFS Widget list which I contribute to.

Tags: tfs

I recently had one of those head-knocking V8 moments.  I ran across a great little open source tool that captures Bug details and screen captures directly into TFS Work Items from IE.  This is a simple idea that has a lot of tremendous benefits.  If you are a web product tester working in a TFS environment then you really need this. As stated on this Source page...

IEeee is an addin to Internet Explorer to easily allow testers / developers to raise a bug against the currently loaded page. The bug report will be automatically generated to include all the information a developer needs to reproduce and resolve the problem, including:

• A screenshot
• HTML source of the page and any frames and IFrames
• Any style sheets referenced by the page
• Any script files referenced by the page
• Details about the user's machine and browser (OS version, browser version, screen size, ...)

http://www.gotdotnet.com/codegallery/codegallery.aspx?id=9de82f8b-f006-4c6f-819d-15b1ad1d461a

If you want to see a list of other cool TFS tools, look at my TFS Tag or Checkout the Accentient TFS Widget list which I contribute to.

Tags: tfs