Norwegian Brass Band Championships – live

Right now you can follow the Norwegian Championships in Brass Band live on nrk.no. Here is the link: http://www1.nrk.no/nett-tv/distrikt/hordaland/verdi/89482. Here is the order of play. My tip for the whole thing is: 1- Eikanger Bjorsvik (Go Patrik!) – Draw 3 2 – Stavanger – Draw 9 3 – Manger – Draw 1 (I missed that) Dark horse - Oslo Brass Band
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Sprint Planner Helper – Session 3

As I reviewed my work from yesterday I quickly realized that I bit off much to much. I only need to implement the model for the first product backlog item which is: As Product Owner I can create a product backlog so that the team knows what is left before the product is done.  Each product backlog item requires at least an ID, description, priority.  Optional are story points (how big is this compared to other) and the possibility to upload a  document with additional business rules So - true to the XP guidelines to not do more than is absolutely minimum to solve the task at hand, I backtracked and removed a lot of the code I wrote yesterday. I want to see where the TDD and Extreme OOP takes me. I start each session by reviewing those rules in order to really get them to stick. Man -...
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Save some space - limit the number of old test results

Found an option that really saves some space for TDD:ers in Visual Studio. The test results folder can be limited to a certain number of test runs. That would really have helped me at my latest project where my Test Result folder was several Gb. Go Tools->Options->Test tools->Test execution. When you first exceed that number you’ll be warned that folders will be deleted - thank you very much!
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Sprint Planner Helper – Session 2

OK - if you want to do DDD then you better start out with the Domain Model. So today I created a Class Diagram for my domain. I also try to follow the Extreme OOP rules and TDD (whooa - my head will explode) and use them to guide me through the process. OK - that was quite exciting. I am not done yet - but I got a first domain-model up and running and started to mass produce unit tests. I had some trouble with converting back to C# after two year in the VB.NET swamp (Me/this for example) but that will soon be over. Also the support in the studio is sooo much better for C#. I love it - this is what Visual Studio was made for. **[UPDATED] **I moved the snippet for creating test methods to a post of it’s own. You’ll find it here.
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First day of parental leave - I love it!

OK - my first parental leave day is well on the way. You should try this - it’s great! I thought that I would upload some photos of Albert as the time progress to see how he is developed. Here is one from a few days back. Right now he’ll walk if I hold his hands, and he talks a lot with two words: Pappa and Albert.
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Sprint Planner Helper – Session 1

I started off very pure and true to the noble principles of TDD and Extreme OOP. Actually I did decided on a few naming conventions first, the name of the product is Sprint Planner Helper and it will reside in the namespace Marcusoft.SprintPlannerHelper. I also created four projects like this (idea stolen from ASP.NET MVC Storefront): Marcusoft.SprintPlannerHelper.Models - my domain model Marcusoft.SprintPlannerHelper.Service - any services need for the model, such as database access and so on. Marcusoft.SprintPlannerHelper.Web - the ASP.NET MVC Web Application. Marcusoft.SprintPlannerHelper.Test - the unit test of the application. Then I removed all the Class1.cs from all the projects that default them to me. At this point I realized that I was missing Visual Studio 2008 Power Commands and Resharper at the computer I was using. Had to download them - you can live without them. The 1 h /day is burning up fast in the beginning. Finally...
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Sprint Planner Helper - administration

OK - in order to be able to work with this at all I thought I first should do some administrative stuff for the project. So I have setup a CodePlex-project where I will keep my sources. You’ll find it at: http://www.codeplex.com/sprintplannerhelper/. You can apply for getting part of the project there in order to get hold of the sources as I move along. During the setup-process of that I learned that the Team Explorer Client that is used to connect to a TFS Server is actually free (!). You can download it from here. I also decided to keep it quite freeware-ish. I will not use any products that cost money. In order for any other to “reproduce” the project on their computers. OK - the project will soon be up - kind of. I have just created the solution and added my product backlog. Next thing on the...
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What to do now - Sprint Planner Helper Initialization

I’m free!!! So what do I do now. I have been talking to my colleagues that now that don’t have to do boring work with them ;) I need another project in order to stay in touch with the IT-business. Here is the reasons for me doing this at all: Have fun! - the second it’s boring or takes to much time I’ll end it. Promise To learn about DDD, TDD and ASP.NET MVC. These three things has attracted a lot of my interest I would like to try them out out. Oh yeah - it will be in C#! No more VB.NET for me - thank you very much. Cannot take to much time (max 1 hour a day) - as stated earlier. I am not working! Document my progress here on the blog. This idea is a complete rip off from a lot of different places, but I...
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Clean code - the pragmatic approach

As I wrote in the previous post I am right now reading Clean Code by Robert “Uncle Bob” Martin. It is great! But having 200 hundred pages book that contains rules about how to code will pretty soon get hard. Especially if you try to adopt it in a team. A while back we discussed an essay by Jeff Bay called Object Calisthenics a lot in the Microsoft community at Avega. This is a very pragmatic approach with 9 rules that states how to code. Here is a pdf-version of the rules. What I found was that many of the rules that Uncle Bob is talking about in Clean Code will be followed automatically if you adhere to the rules in Object Calisthenics. I’ll try it out sometimes - but it looks like a quite bitter pill to swallow when you look at the list… Brrr
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Last day - new chapter

I have come to a fork in the road of my life (that almost sound like a poem :)). Today is the last day on the assignment where I have, as ever, learned a lot. This time I have picked up SOA, WCF, TFS, AOP and build scripts - and of course SCRUM. The Scrum part of this was almost a religious experience.  I am a different and better consultant after learning SCRUM. I won’t ever go back. The future hold six months together with Albert and Elin. I will be “daddy-free” (direct translation of “pappaledig” for all you Swedish readers). This is a truly amazing thing that we have in Sweden where you actually get money from the government to be home with your kids. Amazing! Elin is working nights right now which means that she has a lot of free time during days. This means that we can...
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