Category Archives: MS Press

TFS free Book – Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online

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We’re happy to announce the release of our newest free ebook, Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online (ISBN 9781509300648), by Brian Blackman, Gordon Beeming, Michael Fourie, and Willy-Peter Schaub.

With this ebook, the ALM Rangers share their best practices in managing solution requirements and shipping solutions in an agile environment, an environment where transparency, simplicity, and trust prevail. The ebook is for Agile development teams and their Scrum Masters who want to explore and learn from the authors’ “dogfooding” experiences and their continuous adaptation of software requirements management. Product Owners and other stakeholders will also find value in this ebook by learning how they can support their Agile development teams and by gaining an understanding of the constraints of open-source community projects.

Download all formats (PDF, Mobi and ePub) at the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

Below you’ll find the ebook’s Foreword and a few helpful sections from its Introduction:

Foreword

The ALM Rangers are a special group for several reasons. Not only are they innovative and focused on the real world, providing value-added solutions for the Visual Studio developer community, but they live and work in all four corners of the globe. The ALM Rangers are a volunteer organization. Talk about dedication! When we were offered the opportunity to write a foreword for this book, we knew we’d be part of something special.

The ALM Rangers don’t pontificate that they’ve found the one true way. This is practical advice and examples for producing great software by those who’ve done it and–most importantly–are still innovating and coding. Readers will find that they have virtual coworkers who share their experiences with honesty and humor, revealing learnings and what has worked for them. This doesn’t mean that this book lacks prescriptive guidance. The Rangers have embraced Visual Studio Online as their one and only home. They are evolving with the product, embracing open source software in GitHub to learn how successful OSS projects are run there and what the community values most. They’ve created an ecosystem that identifies the “low hanging fruit” and tracks it from idea to solution, and they never fail to recognize the Rangers and the ALM VPs who dedicate their personal time and passion to their OSS projects.

The extensive guidance shared here is not an end-to-end plan for everyone, although it could be used as a definitive guide for some teams. One of the many assets of this book is its organization into practical walkthroughs of typical ALM Ranger projects from idea to solution, presented as an easy to consume reference. Other bonuses are an appendix to quick-start your own project and reference checklists to keep you on track.

Among the authors, this book was called the “v1 dawn edition.” True to their core value of “learn from and share all experiences,” the ALM Rangers are always mindful that producing great software means continuous refinements from new learnings and feedback and that there will be more versions of this book. But first we invite you to immerse yourself in Managing Agile Open-Source Software Projects with Microsoft Visual Studio Online.

In the true spirit of Agile, ongoing innovation,

Sam Guckenheimer
Clemri Steyn

Introduction
This book assumes that you have at least a minimal understanding of Agile, Lean, and Scrum development concepts and are familiar with Team Foundation Server (TFS) and Visual Studio Online (VSO). To go beyond this book and expand your knowledge of Agile practices or Visual Studio technologies, MSDN and other Microsoft Press books offer both complete introductions and comprehensive information.

This book might not be for you if …
This book might not be for you if you are looking for an in-depth discussion focused on the process, development, or architecture of software requirements, tooling, or practices.

Similarly, if you are looking for source code or guidance on ALM, DevOps, or proven and official frameworks such as Agile, Scrum and Kanban, this book will not be fully relevant, and we recommend that you consider these publications instead:

Effective Unit Testing with Microsoft Fakes now free for VS premium & Ebook

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An initiative of ALM Rangers was  to create some value-add guidance on Microsoft Fakes for the ALM community. Last week, was shipped the eBook – Better Unit Testing with Microsoft Fakes.

When an ALM Rangers project gets signoff it needs to pass a final hurdle before getting the green-light to proceed. This involves presenting the project’s Vision, Epics, Delivery Artifacts, Milestones etc… and then hoping that fellow ALM Rangers will offer to join the project.

That was delivered as the ALM Rangers first eBook and on a subject that just got a whole broader audience now that Microsoft Fakes will be included in Visual Studio Premium with Update 2.

All Info’s from Update 2 , has Brian Harry pointed out here

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bharry/archive/2013/01/30/announcing-visual-studio-2012-update-2-vs2012-2.aspx.

Other resources on Fakes you find also here, some of the in German language

Book can be downloaded from download the guide and see what Microsoft Fakes is all about.

What you will find in V1 is shortly briefing here :

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: A Brief Theory of Unit Testing

  • Software testing

  • The fine line between good and flawed unit testing

Chapter 2: Introducing Microsoft Fakes

  • Stubs
  • Shims
  • Choosing between a stub and a shim

Chapter 3: Migrating to Microsoft Fakes

  • Migrating from Moles to Microsoft Fakes
  • Migrating from commercial and open source frameworks

Chapter 4: Miscellaneous Topics

  • Targeting Microsoft .NET Framework 4
  • Adopting Microsoft Fakes in a team
  • You can’t Fake everything!
  • Verbose logging
  • Working with strong named assemblies
  • Optimizing the generation of Fakes
  • Looking under the covers
  • Refactoring code under test
  • Removing Fakes from a project
  • Using Fakes with Team Foundation Version Control
  • Using Microsoft Fakes with ASP.NET MVC

Chapter 5: Advanced Techniques

  • Dealing with Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) service boundaries
  • Dealing with non-deterministic calculations
  • Gathering use-case and other analytical information
  • Analyzing internal state
  • Avoiding duplication of testing structures

Chapter 6: Hands-on Lab

  • Exercise 1: Using Stubs to isolate database access (20 – 30 min)
  • Exercise 2: Using Shims to isolate from file system and date (20 – 30 min)
  • Exercise 3: Using Microsoft Fakes with SharePoint (20 – 30 min)
  • Exercise 4: Bringing a complex codebase under test (20 – 30 min)

In Conclusion

Appendix

Free MS Press Books

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I found a list with free ebooks from Microsoft Press, that you may find useful too. Many of them are quite technical, so they won’t be for everybody. I bet there are some people around you that would appreciate this list:

imagePersonally, I haven’t read them all – but I have read the Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions book – mainly to make sure that I can keep up with some of my more technical colleagues and customers, and to understand what the true potential can be in different scenarios.