September 2008 - Posts
I was reading the post on “if Microsoft is so good at testing, why does your software suck?” Written by James Whitaker.
I think that his observation is missing a very impotent aspects.
I totally agree that Microsoft is under the microscope at all times and there are many users that are using Microsoft's products and I also agree that the products are very complex but in my opinion testing and in the wider picture QA are science and by doing it right you can bring the quality of products no matter what their size and complexity is to very high level.I also disagree that the quality of Microsoft's products is low, I think that Microsoft is doing a great job in bringing high quality products to the market taking in account one parameter that has the biggest influence on their product and that is marketing constraints (For example Windows Vista).The problem in marketing constraints is mostly the time limits to get the product to market, Microsoft and any other company that do a correct QA process checks each bug to see if it will be fixed and when, some of the bugs will be never fixed because of time limits and resources so what a customer is seeing as a problem in the product (Not necessarily Microsoft) in most cases it is just a bug that the company decided not to fix (Assuming they are doing a correct QA).
I like to clarify that this is not always the case but if a company is doing a QA process in a scientific approach means they work with QA methodologies and they use enough resources most chances they already know about the bugs customers find.
"Time to market" in most cases is the biggest enemy of the QA because the QA department should put the stamp of quality at the end of the development cycle, the QA process starts at the beginning of each project and is being performed during the AL (Application Lifecycle) but it always left with the final testing at the end of the cycle and gets all the pressure from the marketing.
Has I mentioned in this short post although James Whitaker did a grate job describing Microsoft's problems with the quality of there products he omitted one impotent reason: "Time to Market".
This post is the forth post out of seven that builds the Excel Guide. See the first post here
On this post I will talk about the Publish and Refresh functions that are available in the Excel.
These functions are the back bone of using the Excel with the Team System.
The Publish function is used for sending all the changes you made in the Excel to the TFS (Team Foundation Server), which is the server side of the Team System, including new work items you have added.
The Refresh function is used for getting all changes from the TFS.
In order to use the publish function to send your changes click on the “Publish” button.
When publishing the changes to the TFS a check that there are no conflicts will be made first.
In case there are conflicts a window with a list of all conflicts will be shown, you will need to solve each of the conflicts to finish the publish.
In order to use the Refresh function to receive changes click on the “Refresh” button.
Note that when refreshing all changes that were not published will be lost.
Refresh function is working in two modes:
- By query
- By the list of items that are currently in the Excel document
The Refresh mode is set in “Configure List” that will be explained on my next post...
This post is the third post out of seven that builds the Excel Guide. See the first post here
On this post I will talk about the Choose Columns function that is available in the Excel.
This function lets us choose what fields out of the work item's fields we like to see in the Excel, all the rest of the fields will be hidden from us.
One important thing before we start, when we create new work items from the Excel we still bound to the required fields even if we choose not to show them in the Excel, make sure you have a default values to the required fields you don't show in the Excel otherwise you will get an error when you publish the new work items.
After finishing all the steps in the latest post I published of this guide you will see an excel document with a list of work items that you have chosen to export.
Next thing you would need to do is set up the columns so it will be comfortable to manage the work items so lets get to work...
In order to add or remove columns click the “Team” tab and then click “Choose Columns”.
To Add or remove columns use the Arrow buttons, all the chosen columns are located on the right hand of the screen.
When setting the “Work Item Type” dropdown list it will filter all the fields that are not in the chosen type.
In the screenshot I have chosen the Bug type so only the fields that are related to the work item of type bug will be shown.
One more function that you need to get familiar with is the “Add Required”, clicking this button will automatically set all required fields that are related to the work item type chosen in the WI type dropdown list.
Important field is the “Work Item Type”, the Excel “needs to know” what is the work item type in order to start a new work item.
It is recommended to put this field at the top of the fields list so you will never forget to fill it.
See you on my next post...
On the 08/09/2008 the ALM User Group gathered in Microsoft Rahanana offices.
I had the honor to lecture in that gathering about the "Camano" using my experience from the Team System implementation project in Microsoft were I participate has a senior consultant.
The project is the first "Dogfooding" project of the Team System "Rosario" version
implementation in the world.
The presentation can be downloaded from here.
Enjoy!!!
This post is the second post out of seven that builds the Excel Guide. See the first post here
On this post I will talk about the export to Excel options that are available in the Team System.
There are two options in the Team System to export work items to excel:
- Export from a query.
- Export from a query result.
In order to export from a query do the following:
Step 1: Create a query in the Team System project. (Creating a query is out of the scope of this guide)
Step 2: Right click the Query you have just created and choose “Open in Microsoft Excel” option.
In order to export from a query results do the following:
Step 1: Create a query in the Team System project. (Creating a query is out of the scope of this guide)
Step 2: Run the query
Step 3: From the query results choose the work items you like to export, you can use the Shift and Ctrl buttons from the keyboard.
Step 4: Option 1 - Right click and choose the “Open Selection in Microsoft Excel” option.
Step 4: Option 2 - Click the Excel icon to export.
After exporting from the Team Explorer is done a new Excel document will be opened with the Work Items we have chosen to export.
You can save the document for future use, saving the document will not publish your changes to the TFS server, remember to save your document often in order not to loose your data.
As promised I will show more on the export options on post 6 were I will talk about the improvements in the Team System "Rosario" version.