Using Visual Studio 2010 to Optimize Software Development ALM and Things That Cost Money

Challenges: Quality Can you afford software problems? Software quality errors cost U.S. businesses over $59 billion annually The bulk of this cost is absorbed by the end users of the software

Challenges: Quality Source: NIST, The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Infrastructure for Software Testing 2002 The Cost of Inadequate Software Testing (billions) Software users Software developers $0 $10 $20 $30 $40 How can a business absorb these costs?

Quality as an Afterthought Testing starts late in development cycle Quality tough to enforce Multiple IDEs affects productivity No integration / no collaboration Silos of tools Testing Cycles Ineffective Code churn Cycles too long Repetitive process

Process Things That Are Expensive! Doing Software Development Correctly means you will: Identify Bugs, Triage and fix them Build for Scale Manage Deployment These things are expensive: Usually need subject matter expertise Usually need specialized tooling Usually require a lot of human time and interaction

because we are humans BUGS

Bug Triaging Why did the bug occur? There are lots of places they can creep in. What can we do to reduce bugs? Better Requirements Specificity- Are we building the right thing Are our test cases testing for the right requirement? Proper Unit Testing Make sure to use code coverage Don’t assume code will work because it’s simple Code Analysis Use the “experts” in the tools Find memory and performance hotpaths

Bug Fixing But no matter what you do, Bugs happen! It’s hard to identify the source of bugs No Repro Scenarios – “it doesn’t happen on my machine” Performance Issues It works, but it’s really slow When bugs happen, how quickly and effectively can you deal with them?

Approaches to finding bugs early Finding and Resolving Bugs means using a lot of approaches, as part of your routine! Developer-QA Interaction IntelliTrace Profiling (with and without load tests) Unit Testing Load Testing Code Analysis Test Automation in Regular Builds Lab Manager to test “real” environments

demo Finding and fixing bugs using Intellitrace

How do you know how many users it’ll handle? What happens if it doesn’t? Scale

Building for Scale A single user system is different from a multi-user system: Resource contention, locking, serialization Processing hot-paths It has been traditionally difficult and expensive to build for scale: Specialized tooling, domain knowledge Lots of human cost: build test environments, analyzing Results

Performance Tools- Demo Make use of automation to regularly run: Web, Unit, and Database unit tests Load Testing Code Analysis These give you insights early in the process

demo Load Testing and Analysis

Users don’t run imaginary software! Deployment

Challenges Around Deployment Users (hint, the people that pay) want to see it in action The bigger the project (hint, the bigger the $) the more often they want to see it They don’t like bugs, they lose faith, and you lose sleep Better Quality if you are testing against “real” environment all the time, but: Deployment scripts maintenance is a bear Hardware provisioning takes time Linking the builds to the environment and going back is time consuming

Deployment Tools Demo Use virtualization and deployment as a friend! It gives you insight It gives you a quality bar It gives the user confidence Automation can ease this burden substantially! Build Server Automation Automated Tests Virtualization and Lab Manager

Build-Deploy-Test Demo

ALM Action Plan

Visit the Visual Studio 2010 Product Site Or Bing it! The first step towards Visual Studio 2010 and ALM enlightenment, with: An overview of Visual Studio versions Videos covering Visual Studio and TFS features and benefits that matter to: Developers IT Pros End users/decision-makers Partners Downloads of trial versions of Visual Studio 2010

ALM Action Plan Visit the Visual Studio Developer Centers Or Bing it! Dive deeper into development with: Training: From “getting started” video tutorials and advanced virtual labs to courses offered by Microsoft Learning Knowledge: In the form of documentation, articles and webcasts Community links: Find who’s talking about VSTS on blogs, forums, and social networking sites Code: See other people’s code and learn by example

ALM Action Plan Get Guidance and Training Content These are a good start, and remember: Bing is your friend! Team Development with Team System ALM Assessment Team System Rocks Upgrade Guidance Channel 9

ALM Action Plan Read Some Books In paper or ebook format These publishers produce books on Team System: Addison-Wesley Professional Apress on Twitter) Manning Publications on Twitter) Microsoft Press Sams Publishing Wrox Press

ALM Action Plan Update to Visual Studio 2010 and MSDN and Or Bing it! Visual Studio 2010: The all-in-one work environment for coding, modelling, testing, debugging and deploying Ready to build and debug SharePoint 2010 applications with a click of “New Project…” MSDN: The ultimate developer resource with downloads and documentation, software and support, and Azure compute time too!

ALM Action Plan Go to TechDays It’s our big cross-Canada training conference held in the fall (covering 8 cities this year) Big conference content, but with local speakers and a down-home price of admission (especially if you register early!) Deep dives into Microsoft tools and technology, including ALM scenarios Access to content from the TechDays and TechEd North America conferences Great giveaways An excellent networking opportunity

ALM Action Plan Go to Other Conferences To find them, remember that Bing is your friend! Microsoft Developer Conferences DevTeach PDC MIX Code Camps Local developer conferences held by user groups and local heroes

ALM Action Plan Get to Know the Tech Evangelism Team and A crack team of Developer and IT Pro evangelists who support you We organize events like EnergizeIT, TechDays and more Our blogs: Canadian Developer Connection Canadian IT Pro Connection Canadian IT Manager Connection Canadian IT Architecture Connection Our webcasts: Ignite Your Coding Ignite Your Career Ignite Your Venture We’re here for you!