trace of thought (Scott Colestock)

New version of XmlPreprocess...

Scott Colestock — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:29:05 GMT

A tool that has been an important part of the BizTalk Deployment Framework has been updated by Loren – see the codeplex project here.

XmlPreProcess is a general purpose tool in its own right for managing configuration files across multiple environments. The tool has pulled in previously separated functionality (the excellent stuff done by Tom) so that it can consume spreadsheets (that describe environment variations) directly, rather than needing a separate process for that. Very slick stuff !

TFS/Scrum Podcast...

Scott Colestock — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 18:17:25 GMT

I had a chance to sit down with Jeff Brand while down in Omaha for my presentation at the HDC. We recorded a podcast on all (most) things Scrum and TFS – you can check it out here. It was great fun – thanks Jeff!

Models as Text...

Scott Colestock — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:25:04 GMT

I’m not able to attend the PDC this year, but its been interesting to watch the definition of Oslo take better shape after watching it for a long while.

I was reading Jon Flander’s post on the topic, where he reiterated the “Oslo as language, model repository, and visual editor aka Quadrant” theme. The language, known as “M” – draws this quote from John: “visual models are useful for a certain portion of the developer population, but for the most part developers like to write code, which means text.”

Text is good. I can store text in a version control system, and branch it when needed. I can merge it with well-known tools later on, and compare the differences between versions easily. I can have multiple developers work on it at once with a sane reconciliation process upon check-in.

Even visual models that have a textual representation behind the scenes struggle with these basics…because the text is not first class – it is (often) just a convenient serialization format that is sufficiently opaque for the benefits of text to be lost.

So I’m all for “M”. It will be fun to watch the vision unfold further.

Heartland Developer's Conference 2008

Scott Colestock — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 01:00:45 GMT

I’m down in Omaha today at the Omaha edition of the Heartland Developer’s Conference 2008. I’m presenting on Scrum with TFS 2008 – with just a little bit more content than at MDC 2008, since both the Conchango Scrum template and the Task Board UI were both updated recently (like…yesterday!)

This is a great conference – they do a great job organizing this event, and there is a ton of great content. I did my session this morning, and then had a chance to record a podcast on Scrum/TFS with Jeff Brand later in the day – more on that when it actually posts.

Slides I presented today are here.

Slides from MDC 2008...

Scott Colestock — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 16:31:32 GMT

I had a great time presenting at this year’s MDC – thanks to all of you who attended. We covered Conchango’s newest Scrum template for TFS 2008, as well as their very cool new Task Board UI. We covered eScrum, VSTS Lightweight Scrum, Scrum itself, process customization in TFS…come to think of it, it was a lot of content for an hour and a half…

My slides are available here.