Sometimes technical, sometimes not, never a kitty

In Agile Software Development with Scrum, the authors recommend setting up a permanent scrum room, where the dev team can meet and where a scrumboard can be established.  Wouldn't that be lovely?  In the real world I'm in, it's tough enough to get a conference room for an hour, let alone permanently assigned.  We hold our daily scrum in the lunchroom, and depending on which weathergirl is doing the forecast on the TV (welcome back, Julie Bologna), I can usually hold my team's attention.

For my scrumboard, I had to get a little creative.  I ordered a bunch of magnets, and turned one of my wall panels and hutches into my scrumboard.  My project backlogs live on the wall panel:

Tasks we're working on start in the sprint backlog on my hutch.  As the rented mules dev team members progress on a task, they move it from from one status to another as indicated by the top row of index cards.  When a task is completed, they can grab another one from the backlog (this current sprint is winding down, so there are no tasks in the backlog).  The colors of the magnets have no meaning, but the diameter gives you a quick indication of the depth of each status pile.

A scrumboard on my hutch is one of the reasons we're writing Scrumr, which will replace all these magnets and index cards with a web based application.

In my spare time, I've been working on an open source project management tool called Scrumr.  Scrumr is a lightweight app for managing sprints per Scrum methodology.  You can find out more about the project at http://codeplex.com/scrumr/. 

In the meantime, we need your help.  Please go to http://communitycodingcontest.org/ and vote for Scrumr.  We need the tools to make better software.

Thanks!

I've had the "Access Denied" error on two machines when I tried to install Windows XP SP3.  The real bummer is it happens about halfway through the installation, and you've invested a pretty good amount of time just getting to that point.

I'm not sure what causes the error, but since both machines were development machines, it may be connected to the use of aspnet_setreg or similar security measure.  At the day job, the network guys have installed SP3 on over 125 other machines without incident.

The fix discussed below worked on both my machines:

http://blog.malwareteks.com/correct-access-denied-error-while-installing-windows-xp-sp3-release-candidate-2/

Be prepared

I wasn't aware books have beta versions too!  At any rate, it's free for now, warts and all.

Free e-book offer: Introducing Microsoft SQL Server 2008 by Peter
DeBetta, Greg Low and Mark Whitehorn Reviewed by Kathleen Atkins,
project editor, Microsoft Press

Peter DeBetta, the principal author of this book, welcomes readers to
the soon-to-be-released SQL Server 2008. An MVP for SQL Server and a
holder of many other credentials and longstanding SQL Server experience,
DeBetta (with his coauthors) offers in this electronic beta book a
discerning view of the new version of SQL Server.

DeBetta and his coauthors-Greg Low and Mark Whitehorn, who are also
database experts, consultants, developers, and writers-divide their
discussion of SQL Server 2008 into seven topics: Security and
Administration, Performance, Type System Enhancements, Programmability,
Storage, Enhancements for High Availability, and Business Intelligence
Enhancements. In each of these chapters, the authors describe new or
improved features. They could not address every additional capability of
or improvement in SQL Server 2008, however, because their view (and thus
their readers' view) into the product is an early one. Given the goals
of the book-to introduce and explore the product in a preliminary way,
both conceptually and practically (with sample code)-readers will find
plenty to interest them.

For example, database developers might be very glad to know that T-SQL
remains part of the product, and is, as yet, "still most often the best
choice for retrieving and manipulating data." CLR integration has been
improved since SQL Server 2005 and the new product introduces system CLR
types, but "T-SQL is still not going anywhere."

Because Peter DeBetta hopes to be the first technical book author on The
New York Times' bestseller list, he recommends Introducing Microsoft SQL
Server 2008 to everyone. But the people who really ought to read it are
those who want to begin using the new and improved tools in SQL Server
2008.

Register to download the free e-book, Introducing Microsoft SQL Server
2008 <http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9318707>.

This is awesome news:

CodePlex is now offering server support for SvnBridge, the tool that enables TortoiseSVN to talk to Team Foundation Server. Support for Subversion has been our number one requested feature, and by hosting SvnBridge, our users can now use their favorite Subversion client with any project.

...

Starting today, TortoiseSVN will just work as illustrated below, no extra software is necessary to work with CodePlex.

Kudos to the CocePlex team!  Who says Microsoft doesn't listen to feedback, or make an effort to support open source tools?  Bah!

The SvnBridge client wasn't bad, but it was kind of a pain to have to start it to check out or commit changes.

Full story at http://blogs.msdn.com/codeplex/archive/2008/09/14/codeplex-launches-support-for-tortoisesvn.aspx.

I'm headed to DevTeach Montreal!  It was DevTeach or PDC, and I liked the sessions at DevTeach better.  If you're attending also, drop a line.

I'll be speaking at the Pgh Dot Net user group on October 14!  The talk will be based on my recently published Easy XML to SQL Using Linq article.  I'll have a download available prior to the talk, so you can bring a laptop and follow along.

Official announcement at http://pghdotnet.agileways.com/forums/t/9.aspx.

My latest DotNetSlackers article was published today: Easy XML to SQl with Linq.

Transferring data between partner companies is pretty routine, and XML is one of the common formats that data are transferred in. One of the more common destinations for the XML data is a SQL Server database. In the past, XML was difficult to work with, but the .NET framework improved XML parsing greatly. Linq to XML has made XML handling absolutely painless, and Linq to SQL makes entering the data just as easy.

This example isn’t meant to say this is the only way to transform XML into SQL, because like all things .NET, there are several ways to do this. This method may or may not work depending on your circumstances.

This article is based on my real world experiences using Linq-to-SQL, Linq-to-XML and the XML extensions in VB.NET to rapidly develop transformations of XML data into SQL Server databases.  This is an extremely common scenario in many businesses, and I wanted to highlight how easy it is.

Not sure how this one slid by me, but the MSDN Developer Freedom Roadshow is coming to Pittsburgh on September 19, 2008.  Since it’s being held at the MS offices, registration is limited to capacity (roughly 4 dozen or so).  The program looks to be very interesting, especially the morning half:

The Fundamentals of Liberty: Web Development Basics

Want to take advantage of the cool stuff that you can do with ASP.NET, but not sure where to start? Whether you’re a Windows programmer who hasn’t ventured into the web world yet, or coming from classic ASP or similar scripting languages, this session is for you. In this session, we’ll provide an overview of the .NET framework’s powerful web development features, from ASP.NET and its Web Forms programming model, to basic web services, to give you a foundation you can use to jump-start your web development efforts.

The Framer’s Intentions: What’s New in .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 for Web Developers and ASP.NET MVC

In the first part of the session we will look into new features for web development that are introduced in the .NET framework 3.5 SP1 -- ADO.NET Entity Framework , ASP.NET Dynamic Data, and ADO.NET Data Services. In the second part, we will introduce the ASP.NET MVC framework, which enables you to easily implement the model-view-controller (MVC) pattern for Web applications. This pattern lets you separate applications into loosely coupled, pluggable components for application design, processing logic, and display. A key benefit of ASP.NET MVC applications it that they provide clean URIs that can also be accessed in a RESTful manner.

More information and sign up at http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032388335

e accidentally sent this to me; it deserves to be blogged:

I’ve just spent two months carrying a terrible, ancient cellular phone and a mediocre non-Apple music player around the planet, and interacting almost exclusively with Windows XP terminals at internet cafes and hostels. As my frustration with these poor interfaces grew, I started a rough list of interface design guidelines. Here they are:

    * The application interface should be fast and non-blocking.
    * The application interface should be consistent.
    * Don’t interrupt users in the middle of common, nondestructive tasks.
    * Avoid notifying users of success.
    * Avoid giving users information that they cannot use.
    * Rare, destructive actions should be harder to complete than nondestructive ones, but always possible.
    * Give users the chance to ask for forgiveness rather than forcing them to confirm.
    * Deal with application failure gracefully.
    * Preserve state, mode, and user input for as long as it is relevant, until users save or discard it.
    * Provide multiple, complete navigation paradigms.
    * Design the interface before starting to code.
    * If the application violates one of these rules because its design makes implementation of a better interface too complex or too difficult, then the application needs to be refactored until it supports a better interface.

Full story at http://glyphobet.net/blog/essay/269.

Given that developers are notoriously bad UI designers, there is much food for thought.