Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2012: Effective Collaboration

Chapter burndown

Here are the key concepts we covered in this chapter:

• Collaboration is key Software development is a team sport. The Scrum Team needs to communicate with each other, as well as stakeholders, effectively.

• Active listening Communication techniques that enable better, more effective dialogue.

• Collocated teams Development Teams working in close proximity are more productive and generate more business value than teams that are geographically distributed. Large, open-space team rooms can be particularly effective.

• Meet effectively Scrum has all the built-in events (meetings) that a Development Team needs. Limit attendance to other meetings, or send the Scrum Master instead.

• Limit interruptions Turn off or otherwise neutralize cell phones, email clients, and IM/chat clients. Limit Internet searches and attending non-essential meetings.

• Collective code ownership The entire Development Team owns every aspect of the code. Everyone can read, check out, or check in code for any assembly, namespace, or class. TFS will effectively track all changes made.

• Comments When commenting code, be sure to explain your actions to others, assuming the code and/or check-in comments can’t do it for you.

• Code reviews Practice these in person, or consider pair programming as an alternative. Developers should be open to giving and receiving criticism. Use the code review features in Visual Studio only when in-person reviews are not possible.

• Continuous integration Merging is painful, so do it more often so it hurts less. Stay in touch with your builds, especially when they fail. Get them healthy again as soon as possible.

• Builds check-in policy This check-in policy requires that the last build was successful for each affected CI build definition.

• Build Notification tool Configure and use this to receive alerts from TFS in your notification area (system tray) when a build queues, starts, or completes.

• Gated check-in build Use this on production code to ensure that the codeline stays healthy. CI is a better practice for the active development codeline.

• Email alerts TFS can be configured to send individuals or the entire team an email when something interesting happens, like a build breaking.

• My Work A page in Team Explorer that enables a developer to see and manage their current, in-progress work. The page is available to Visual Studio 2012 Ultimate or Premium users. Work can be suspended and resumed as other priorities crop up.

• PowerPoint storyboards Mockups and illustrations can be created in a familiar environment and shared with remote stakeholders to obtain their feedback.

• Feedback client A freely downloadable, lightweight tool that enables desktop video, audio, screenshots, and notes to be recorded as a stakeholder evaluates a piece of software. This feedback can be requested, or it can be offered voluntarily, without solicitation.