Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2012

Book description

Discover how to turn requirements into working software increments—faster and more efficiently—using Visual Studio 2012 in combination with Scrum and Agile engineering practices. Designed for software development teams, this guide delivers pragmatic, role-based guidance for exploiting the capabilities of Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools in Visual Studio and Team Foundation Server. Team members will learn proven practices and techniques for implementing Scrum to manage an application’s life cycle, as well as seamlessly plan, manage, and track their Scrum projects.

Table of contents

  1. Dedication
  2. Praise for this book
  3. Foreword
  4. Introduction
    1. Who should read this book
    2. Who should not read this book
    3. Organization of this book
      1. Finding your best starting point in this book
    4. Conventions and features in this book
    5. Code samples
      1. Installing and using the Scrum Robot
    6. Acknowledgments
    7. Errata & book support
    8. We want to hear from you
    9. Stay in touch
  5. I. Fundamentals
    1. 1. Scrumdamentals
      1. The Scrum Guide
        1. Scrum in action
        2. Scrum roles
          1. The Development Team
          2. The Product Owner
          3. The Scrum Master
          4. Stakeholders
        3. Scrum events
          1. The Sprint
          2. Sprint Planning meeting
          3. The Daily Scrum
          4. Sprint Review meeting
          5. Sprint Retrospective meeting
          6. Product Backlog grooming
        4. Scrum artifacts
          1. Product Backlog
          2. Sprint Backlog
          3. The Increment
        5. Definition of “Done”
          1. Undone work
      2. The professional Scrum developer
      3. Chapter burndown
    2. 2. Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 ALM
      1. Delivering continuous value
      2. Visual Studio 2012
        1. Editions
          1. Professional edition
          2. Test Professional edition
          3. Premium edition
          4. Ultimate edition
          5. Express editions
        2. Team Foundation Server
        3. Team Foundation Service
          1. Hosted builds
          2. Agents for Visual Studio 2012
        4. Visual Studio Team Explorer Everywhere 2012
        5. MSDN subscriptions
      3. Chapter burndown
    3. 3. Microsoft Visual Studio Scrum 2.0
      1. Dissecting the process template
        1. MSF process templates
        2. Exploring a process template
          1. The Process Editor
      2. Visual Studio Scrum 2.0
        1. What’s new and different
          1. What’s new
          2. What’s changed
          3. What’s removed
        2. Work item types
          1. Product Backlog Item
          2. Bug
          3. Task
          4. Test Case
          5. Impediment
          6. Hidden work item types
        3. Work item queries
        4. Reports
          1. Backlog Overview report
          2. Release Burndown report
          3. Sprint Burndown report
          4. Velocity report
          5. Build Success Over Time report
          6. Build Summary report
          7. Test Case Readiness report
          8. Test Plan Progress report
        5. Common customizations
      3. Chapter burndown
  6. II. Using Scrum
    1. 4. The pre-game
      1. Setting up the development environment
        1. Team Foundation Server: Buy vs. build
        2. Create a team project collection
        3. Configure Team Foundation Build
          1. Team Foundation Build features
        4. Configure Lab Management
      2. Setting up product development
        1. Create a team project
          1. How many team projects will you need?
          2. Creating a !Backlog team project
          3. Supporting the entire lifecycle of the product
          4. What should you name your team project?
        2. Source control
          1. Set up the folder structure
          2. Choose a branching strategy
          3. Local workspaces vs. Git (DVCS)
        3. Automated builds
        4. Project portal
          1. Definition of “Done”
        5. Reports
        6. Security groups
        7. Teams
      3. Chapter burndown
    2. 5. The Product Backlog
      1. Creating the Product Backlog
        1. Team Web Access
          1. Licensing and permissions
        2. Using the “quick add” experience
          1. Removing an item from the Product Backlog
          2. Customizing the “quick add” panel
        3. Handling epic PBIs
        4. Importing existing PBIs
        5. Reporting a bug
          1. What makes a bug report good?
          2. Where do bugs come from?
          3. In-Sprint vs. out-of-Sprint bugs
          4. Bug reactivations
        6. Effective Product Backlog creation
      2. Grooming the Product Backlog
        1. Specifying acceptance criteria
          1. Scope creep (a.k.a. Feature creep)
        2. Estimating items in the Product Backlog
          1. Planning Poker
          2. Avoid anchoring
          3. White Elephant game
        3. Tracking estimates in the Product Backlog
        4. Ordering the Product Backlog
          1. Customizing the backlog columns
      3. Planning a release
        1. Time-driven vs. feature-driven releases
        2. Controlling and prioritizing scope
        3. Using Velocity to estimate
          1. The forecasting tool
        4. Release Burndown report
      4. Chapter burndown
    3. 6. The Sprint
      1. Creating the Sprint Backlog
        1. Forecasting the PBIs
        2. Capturing the Sprint Goal
        3. Creating the plan
          1. Capacity planning
          2. Customizing the (Sprint) backlog page
      2. Daily Scrum activities
        1. The Daily Scrum
          1. Handling impediments
        2. Taking on work
          1. Decomposing tasks
        3. The task board
          1. Viewing tasks by team member
          2. Adding new tasks
          3. Setting task ownership
          4. Changing a task’s state
          5. Updating remaining work estimates
      3. Chapter burndown
    4. 7. Acceptance test-driven development
      1. Keep the conversation going
        1. Collaborative specifications
        2. Executable specifications
      2. Acceptance test-driven development
        1. Test-driven development
      3. Automated acceptance testing
        1. Creating a test case
        2. Associating an automated test
          1. CodedUI CodeFirst
        3. Executing automated acceptance tests
        4. Reusing test cases
        5. Other acceptance-testing frameworks
      4. Acceptance
      5. Chapter burndown
    5. 8. Effective collaboration
      1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
        1. Listen actively
        2. Collocate
        3. Set up a team room
        4. Meet effectively
        5. Collaborate productively
        6. Achieve continuous feedback
      2. Collaborative development practices
        1. Collective code ownership
          1. Tracking ownership in TFS
        2. Commenting in code
        3. Code reviews
          1. Pair programming
      3. Collaborative development tools
        1. Team Foundation Server
        2. Continuous integration
          1. Builds check-in policy
          2. Build Notifications tool
        3. Gated check-in builds
        4. Email alerts
        5. Shelving
        6. My Work
          1. Suspending and resuming work
        7. PowerPoint Storyboarding
          1. Creating a storyboard
        8. Feedback client
          1. Requesting feedback
          2. Providing feedback
          3. Voluntary feedback
        9. Code reviews
      4. Chapter burndown
  7. III. Improving
    1. 9. Continuous improvement
      1. Common challenges
        1. Bugs
        2. Impediments
        3. Estimation
        4. Assessing progress
        5. Renegotiating scope
          1. Canceling a Sprint
        6. Undone work
          1. Feature toggles
          2. Handling undone work in Visual Studio
        7. Spikes
        8. Fixed-Price contracts and Scrum
      2. Common dysfunctions
        1. Not getting “done”
        2. Flaccid Scrum
        3. Not inspecting, not adapting
        4. Development Team challenges
          1. Measuring performance
        5. Working with a challenging Product Owner
        6. Working with challenging stakeholders
        7. Working with a challenging Scrum Master
        8. Changing Scrum
          1. Old waterfall habits
          2. ScrumButs
      3. Improving
        1. Get a coach
        2. Build a cross-functional team
        3. Achieve self-organization
        4. Improve transparency
        5. Swarm
        6. Use a Kanban board to limit WIP
        7. Professional Scrum Developer training
        8. Assess your knowledge
        9. Become a high-performance Scrum Development Team
      4. Chapter burndown
    2. A. The Scrum Guide
      1. Scrum Overview
        1. Scrum Framework
      2. Scrum Theory
        1. Transparency
        2. Inspection
        3. Adaptation
      3. Scrum
      4. The Scrum Team
        1. The Product Owner
        2. The Development Team
          1. Development Team Size
        3. The Scrum Master
          1. Scrum Master Service to the Product Owner
          2. Scrum Master Service to the Development Team
          3. Scrum Master Service to the Organization
      5. Scrum Events
        1. The Sprint
          1. Cancelling a Sprint
        2. Sprint Planning Meeting
          1. Part One: What will be done this Sprint?
          2. Part Two: How will the chosen work get done?
          3. Sprint Goal
        3. Daily Scrum
        4. Sprint Review
        5. Sprint Retrospective
      6. Scrum Artifacts
        1. Product Backlog
          1. Monitoring Progress Toward a Goal
        2. Sprint Backlog
          1. Monitoring Sprint Progress
        3. Increment
        4. Definition of “Done”
      7. Conclusion
      8. Acknowledgements
        1. People
        2. History
  8. Index
  9. About the Author
  10. Copyright

Product information

  • Title: Professional Scrum Development with Microsoft® Visual Studio® 2012
  • Author(s): Richard Hundhausen
  • Release date: October 2012
  • Publisher(s): Microsoft Press
  • ISBN: 9780735669536