May at Agile Israel: Legacy Code Testing and MSF Agile

The May meeting of Agile Israel will be as scheduled, although the topics have changed a bit. for a link with full information on the meeting and arrival instructions, go here:

http://www.agileisrael.com/Default.aspx?tabid=58

 Also, we'll introduce an old-new concept - TDD workshops: hands on workshops with a small number of attendees, teaching the basics of TDD with .NET, Java or C++. More information during the meeting. If you're in Israel, I encourage you to register to the Agile Israel site: www.AgileIsrael.com for email notification on future events and various interesting stuff I have planned.

 May 31, Tuesday at 18:00

• 17:30 - Gathering and registration
• 18:00 - Techniques for testing legacy code (Roy Osherove, Team Agile)
• 19:15 - break
• 19:30 - What is MSF Agile and why it is the first process template in the new Microsoft Team foundation server Visual Studio 2005. (Gadi Meir, Idag)
• 21:00 - Raffle and questionnaire

Part I:

Techniques for testing legacy code 

In this talk Roy will review some very interesting techniques one could use to get over some of the more difficult hurdles in testing existing legacy code. For example - how do you test classes that use singletons? statics? private classes? and much much more.

Some of The techniques described are taken from the most excellent book Working Effectively with Legacy Code By Michael C. Feathers. Hopefully, we'll have a couple of copies from the book to give away this meeting as raffle prizes.

Part II:

What is MSF Agile and why it is the first process template in the new Microsoft Team foundation server Visual Studio 2005.

Details:

MSF is “not-a-methodology” used for years internally at Microsoft, as a framework for managing software and deployment projects. MSF is actually a group of guidelines and practices, which enables the “team-of-peers”, leading the project, to focus on doing the most important thing at every given time. Using MSF principles makes it easy to discover how far the project is from its target and what is the direction you need to steer the project to get back on track.

In the New Team foundation system server part of the new Visual studio 2005 suite, the first process template is MSF Agile.

In this lecture I’ll try to explain what MSF is and why Agile MSF is actually a proof to the fact that MSF is an agile frame ware.

Agenda:

§         What is MSF.

§         What are the MSF main Principles.

§         What do the Team Foundation server Agile MSF template include.

§         How to use Team Foundation server as an agile management tool.

§         Q & A

About Gadi Meir

Gadi has worked in the computer industry for many years (his second computer language was assembly of PDP 8). His main specialty is using MSF (Microsoft solution framework) principles to identifying errors and problems in the development/deployment processes and procedures. His main goal is trying to prevent these types of problems in the project’s planning phase. Unfortunately he is usually summoned for the post mortem phase, a fact that leads directly to his second specialty which is analyzing dumps, blue screens and other low level plumbing tasks. His favorite function is to accompany a project as a technical consultant/guide. In this position he is exposed to a wide variety of interesting problems, where he then has to find creative solutions. Gad is an official certified MSF trainer and a certified MSF practitioner. Gad insists on teaching from time to time and he is currently the R&D Manager at IDAG ltd. (http://www.idag.co.il)