Aaron Bjork https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/feed.xml Working on TFS... Tue, 16 Apr 2019 04:26:34 GMT en-US hourly 1 Sprint Mails https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/sprint-mails Fri, 22 Feb 2013 11:22:55 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2013/02/22/sprint-mails/ A few weeks ago at the 2013 ALM Summit I gave a presentation titled Un-Managing Agile Teams covering my perspective on how to create healthy environments for agile development teams. The full talk is available at the link above.

During the talk I shared some a few of the practices we use with our own teams – one of those practices is what we call “sprint mails”. So, what is a sprint mail?Sprint Mail 1

Let me start by sharing a bit about our process. Our teams work in 3 week sprints. Now, these aren’t just 3 week “time periods”… but real sprints that you’d expect from a scrum team. We start and finish stories during a sprint, and follow the basic mechanics – sprint planning, daily scrum/stand-up, retrospectives, etc. Our teams range from 8-12 people, made up of dev, QA, and a product owner. One of the practices that we’ve developed to keep everyone in the org up to speed is to have each team send two mails during the sprint – these are what we call sprint mails.

Sprint Mail 2The first mail is sent after the team completes sprint planning (usually at the end of day 1 of the sprint). The goal of the mail is to share broadly what the team has planned for the sprint. The mail usually consists of a list of stories the team is tackling, along with a basic description of the goal for the sprint. Nothing too fancy, just some basic sharing of the plan the team has put together.

At the end of the sprint, the team sends another mail communicating what they accomplished during the sprint. The same list of stories are included with updates on progress; and if the team has completed a story or set of stories, they include a short video demo’ing the functionality. The demo videos are key because they show the changes there were made in a way that pictures or text can’t convey.  In the attached screenshots you can see the level of detail we include in these mails.  The stories from this particular sprint (sprint 39) shipped on the Team Foundation Service late last year.

Sprint mails have become a standard practice for our teams to help communicate plans, progress, and celebrate success.  They keep everyone abreast of what’s going on with partner teams, and they provide a place for the team to publically celebrate key achievements. 

]]> Team Foundation Service Updates 8/27 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/team-foundation-service-updates-827 Mon, 17 Sep 2012 11:21:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2012/09/17/team-foundation-service-updates-827/ Today we deployed another set of incremental updates to Team Foundation Service.  Details are available here:  https://tfspreview.com/en-us/home/news/2012/sep-17/

]]> Agile Tip #9 – Motivation 2.0 https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/agile-tip-9-motivation-2-0 Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:49:50 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/11/07/agile-tip-9-motivation-2-0/ In last month’s column of Visual Studio Magazine we talked about Dan Pink’s book DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us and how it relates to motivating Agile teams.

If you haven’t read Drive, I’d recommend you pick up a copy. For a quick teaser, watch this quick video that animates the main points in the book.

]]> Agile Tip #8 – Planning and Learning https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/agile-tip-8-planning-and-learning Thu, 22 Sep 2011 08:00:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/09/22/agile-tip-8-planning-and-learning/ My column in this month’s issue of Visual Studio Magazine talks about the value gained by Agile teams as they plan and learn. 

]]> An Agile Retrospective by Jeff Sutherland https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/an-agile-retrospective-by-jeff-sutherland Tue, 02 Aug 2011 07:47:25 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/08/02/an-agile-retrospective-by-jeff-sutherland/ Jeff Sutherland, one of the founders of Scrum, recently wrote an artilce on MSDN titled "Ten Year Agile Retrospective: How We Can Improve In The Next Ten Years".  The article captures key takeways (ten years later) from the original signatories of the Agile Manifesto.  I'd highly recommend giving it a read.

]]> VS 2010 and TFS 2010 How-To Videos https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/vs-2010-and-tfs-2010-how-to-videos Thu, 16 Jun 2011 08:00:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/06/16/vs-2010-and-tfs-2010-how-to-videos/ Esther Fan posted a nice set of how-to videos yesterday focusing on VS 2010 and TFS 2010.  Check them out here:  https://blogs.msdn.com/b/vstsue/archive/2011/06/15/videos-about-visual-studio-alm-team-foundation-server-2010-on-msdn.aspx

]]> Agile Tip #7 – Learning From the Past https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/agile-tip-7-learning-from-the-past Thu, 26 May 2011 07:24:59 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/05/26/agile-tip-7-learning-from-the-past/ Retrospective meetings have been commonplace in software development teams for many years. Teams hold a meeting at the end of a project or milestone to discuss successes and failures.  They use the data from that meeting to look for ways to create more success and less failure in future projects or milestones.

Agile teams in particular have embraced retrospectives as a way to drive continuous improvement into both teams and processes. As stated in one of the twelve principles behind the Agile Manifesto, "At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behavior accordingly." In this month's column, I dissect this principle and examine a few key elements of effective retrospectives.  Read the full article at Visual Studio Magazine.

]]> Agile Tip #6 – An Effective Daily Stand-up Meeting https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/agile-tip-6-an-effective-daily-stand-up-meeting Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:45:16 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/04/21/agile-tip-6-an-effective-daily-stand-up-meeting/ Yesterday, I published my first installment of a new monthly column I’ll be writing for Visual Studio Magazine.  The column will focus on Agile practices and how to use them effectively on your teams.  The first installment focuses on holding an effective daily stand-up meeting.

]]> Professional Scrum with TFS 2010 Released! https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/professional-scrum-with-tfs-2010-released Thu, 21 Apr 2011 19:36:00 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/04/21/professional-scrum-with-tfs-2010-released/ Today, Wrox released Professional Scrum with Team Foundation Server 2010!  This is a new book I co-authored with Steve Resnick and Michael de la Maza.  The book serves as a road map for using Scrum to organize teams and activities and shows you how to use Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (TFS) to execute a Scrum project with the Microsoft Visual Studio 1.0 process template.  If you're new to TFS, or new to Scrum, I highly recommend picking up a copy. I authored 3 chapters in this book:

  • Chapter 3:  Tracking What's Important in Team Foundation Server
  • Chapter 5:  Work Items, Queries, and Reports
  • Chapter 11:  Improving Scrum by Using Spikes

I'd love your feedback on the book!

 

]]> Programmatically Reading Work Item Comments https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/aaronbjork/programmatically-reading-work-item-comments Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:57:22 GMT https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/aaronbjork/2011/01/10/programmatically-reading-work-item-comments/ I recently ran across a few posts from people looking for samples on how to programmatically read user comments from TFS work items using the TFS API.  It’s a simple operation, but it might not be clear at first unless you discover that you need to loop through the collection of Revisions of the work item in order to view those comments.  Below is a quick code sample that demonstrates this behavior. 

// get a reference to the team project collection
using (var prjCol = 
    TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(collectionUri))
{
    // get a reference to the work item tracking service
    var workItemStore = prjCol.GetService<WorkItemStore>();

    // grab work item 1460 and print out all associated
    // user comments.
    var workItem = workItemStore.GetWorkItem(1460);
    foreach (Revision r in workItem.Revisions)
    {
        // grab the history field
        Field f = r.Fields["History"];
        Console.WriteLine(f.Name + ": " + f.Value);
    }
}

For more code samples like this check out the Team Foundation Server 2010 SDK on the MSDN Code Gallery. ]]>