OK - one of the new technologies that we are using in my really fun project is the Conchango Scrum template for TFS. This has already cause me to scream out loud so I will most certainly get back to it.

Let me get a couple of thing right first:

• I don’t think this is a good way of doing SCRUM. You miss a lot of the great interaction within the team when you need to do this kind of reporting.
• I think that the Conchango template is as good as it probably will get when you are forced to use tools like this. I do hope that it might even get slightly better…

So - now that my personal thoughts about this is out of the way - here is the problem I’ve encountered:

I have initiated a lot of Product Backlog...

I for the first time in my life downloaded a little tool, loved it and payed for it.

The name of the tool (and site is): All To MP3 Converter

This tool lets you convert different music formats from and to each other. This is as easy as to right click a file and choose convert. There is also a nice little GUI that does the same thing but lets you decide more details.

It opened up about 100 WMA-files that I could listen to since I am using RockBox on my H320 IRiver

Albert (or Abbe for short) is growing and in equal parts impressing and driving us mad.

This morning we’ve got the first ever laugh (a very short burst of hehe) which was very rewarding. We’re not quite sure on what we did to make him laugh but he has been in a excellent mood all weekend, so we’ll keep trying sounds and sights and see if the laugh can be lured out of him again.

Above are some recent photos. I haven’t been able to catch a smile yet - but I am looking… watch this space

Steven Mead has premiered a new work for euphonium and symphony orchestra that seems to become a classic.

You can read about it here and also download it (1, 2 and 3 movements) and hear some contemporary euphonium playing at its best. I am humbled and will stay in my “neighborhood” (Salvation Army music, Brass Band) for quite some time. It would be great fun to try something a bit easier with symphony orchestra…

Thank you Steven - very, very good indeed.

OK - this last two weeks has been intense. I’ve started a new project at my customer and it is wild; I am Scrum master (nothing new there;) it’s the only way to fly) in a pilot project to create a true SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) at my customer (a big Swedish insurance company).

I am very humbled by the magnitude of the project and where this can take us… At the same time it is so fun; we get to set stuff about the technology (SOA, WCF, Visual Studio 2008, TDD - the works) that I didn’t dream of just a few months back. Also it is great to see the true use of SCRUM - it is rocking, as it of course would.

But it has come to my attention that readers of the blog are missing some personal comments on non-IT stuff. This is...

OK - this is a question that keeps coming back to me. Again and again.

When you add a solution to Source Control in Team Foundation Server (TFS) for the first time there are several ways with their respectively pros and cons. This is how I do it:

1. ith Source Control - create a folder hierarchy that is applicable for your project. Say for example [ProjectName][SolutionName][Branch]. For example $\SakDotNet\BrevMallar\Main
2. Now open the solution in Visual Studio
3. Right-click the solution and choose Add Solution to Source control… (Note! If you don’t see that choice in the menu see below)
4. Source Control and Add file(s) for any additional files that not is included in the solution (or was missed by the way…)

Well - the simplest case is easy enough but if something goes wrong (as it just now did for me) there are some troubles...

One of the most annoying thing with VB.NET is when it tries to help you with syntax highlighting, when using snippets.

You know; you type “property” hit TAB and then the property is created for you. The things that you needs to “fill out” is highlighted with some scary green color (see picture above).

In Visual Studio:

• After the snippet is filled out position the cursor after end property
• Hit ENTER
• The green coloring is gone

If anyone know how to do this in Visual Studio 2005 I would love to know. I’ll buy you a cup of coffee at Länsförsäkringar, level 4. I promise

The previous post about CLS-compliant classes is right in a way but the real answer lies in that when you create a test project with Visual Studio, the created Assembly is marked as CLS-compliant.

This is done in the AssemblyInfo.vb (or .cs depending on your choice). I am not quite sure on why this is done but can imagine that it has to do with that the test project wants to be open for calls on all lot of different classes and components.

However in our case we only had to remove the CLSCompliant(true) from the AssemblyInfo.vb-file and everything was back to normal.

OK - here is a strange one…

[UPDATE ON THIS POST - SEE https://www.marcusoft.net/2008/03/real-answere-type-typename-is-not-cls.html]

We are using dependency injection to be able to inject mocked version of classes that the class we’re testing is using…. (oh, my god - requires another blog-post I think… I’ll get back).

So the first thing we did was to extract interfaces for all the methods the implementation is using. So far so good.

But when I mocked the implement ion of the interface we got a quite strange warning:

Type ‘KodBenamning’ is not CLS-compliant.

Apparently this occurs when a type is referenced by an interface (as parameter or return type) AND the type is not marked with CLSCompliant(true) which, by the way is NOT default, of course…. So - the solution is to mark all your classes used by interface with CLSCompliant(true) and it will work…

Ooh - so nice. And so easy now when I know how to do it…

When you get large solutions and there are loads and loads of files in the Solution Explorer you’ll sometimes (often, in my case) get confused on where you are…

I organize my projects in Solution Folders but still get quite hard to follow, especially when you are the co-driver…

But it turns out to be easy to solve. There is a setting in the Options-dialog of the Studio (both 2005 and 2008, luckily) that is called Track Active item in Solution Explorer. When this is checked the file you currently is watching is found and highlighted the Solution Explorer which greatly reduces confusion on where you are.

The setting is found under Tools->Options->Project and Solutions->General->Track Active item in Solution Explorer