We’ve been using the eScrum TFS template on my current project. I’m not thrilled with, but it works for the basics. I’m looking forward to either having or building something better in VS2010. However, for the time being we have to deal with permissions issues when adding a new person to the team. The trickiest bit is knowing to allow the team member write access to the cache folder. Sunil Haste has a good post on the details the eScrum cache error.
I’ve briefly been using the Virtual XP feature of Windows 7 (RC) to support some old development tools required by my current clients outdated technology stack. But I need more memory than the default 256MB. How do you change it? I searched for a while before finding the Windows 7 Forums and then searched there and found this post on Changing the Shutdown Behavior so you can change the memory settings.
Basically, since you only options from the VM’s Start menu is to logoff or disconnect, you need to change the default close settings by running the VM, choosing Tools > Settings… and changing the close behavior to prompt. Then you can shut down your VM, right-click on the VM setting in the Start Menu item for Virtual XP, and change the memory.
There’s only one week left to sign up for the Innovation Games Workshop that my good friend Luke Hohmann is hosting next Tuesday at Improving. The games are great for any marketing product manager, development product manager, project manager, or agile team lead. There’s tons of cool idea packed into this thing, and you get a free IG book!
Next month on June 9th, Microsoft is running a BizSpark event at the Microsoft Technology Center in Dallas. Fellow Improver and MS MVP Caleb Jenkins will be working the technology track. You can read more about it on Christian Thilmani’s blog. I’m considering signing up myself to talk to some investors about my latest idea. But I suppose it’s time to get something up and running for demos. So little time, so many ideas. :)
Zeeshan Hirani will be presenting at the Dallas C# SIG tonight on modeling domains in Entity Framework. Unlike most C#SIG events, tonight we’ll be meeting at Improving starting at 6:00 with pizza provided for everyone who registers on the SIG sight. Hope to see you there!
I’ve read a lot of philosophy books over the years and for nearly the last four years have had one favorite that I keep referring to in conversations with friends and coworkers. That book is A Brief History of Everything by Ken Wilber. Wilber is a great contemporary philosopher who has synthesized tons of ideas from various thought leaders of different fields into one elegant, cohesive, and truly grand unifying theory. It’s not the GUT that physicists are pursuing with String Theory, but a more applicable GUT for everyday life.
One of the key principles that Ken Wilber lays out in his books is the idea of two parallel ladders of social worldviews and personal levels of consciousness. He proposes, and actually describes in much detail, the progression that children and adults go through as they develop mentally through various stages of consciousness. At each stage of development, a person has a certain understanding of how things work which eventually becomes too limited to explain their daily experiences. The individual suffers frustration and pain from the mismatch of its current mental model and perceived workings of the world until a new mental model is discovered, thus going through a transition or “fulcrum” into the new mindset. Parallel to these personal levels of consciousness, society has worldviews that coincide with each level of consciousness. Primitive cultures are made up of many individuals with simple models of the world and have a corresponding world view that supports that model. More advanced societies have worldviews that support more advanced personal levels of consciousness.
One of the coolest aspects of this observation is the fact that a social world view acts like a gravitational force pulling member individuals up through the levels of consciousness until they are on par with the rest of society. For example, we have schools and television shows that teach kids how to think like the rest of us. So, it’s fairly easy for kids to progress through levels of thinking starting with “the world is magic”, to believing everything their parents tell them, to learning the rules of morality and ethics, to (hopefully) learning cause and effect and the scientific method. Now, this gravitational force stays in effect even as individuals try to move beyond what the average person thinks around them, pulling them back and making it hard to reach higher and higher levels of consciousness. On a macro scale, when you’re caught up in a religion, nationalistic culture, or other form of group thinking, your system of thought has defense mechanisms that try to defeat more advanced ways of thinking and drag you back to thinking just like everyone else. Television shows, the people around you, even your family and coworkers will bombard you with statements that you’re wrong or “out there” as you explore new ways of thought – which may ultimately lead to new stages of enlightenment.
I say this observation of gravitational force is cool because it explains some things about the cultures in IT companies like the ones I experience on a regular basis with my consulting work. At Improving we specifically hire the best and smartest people we can find who are often frustrated in the organizations they come from because they are being held back or continuously frustrated by the cultures of their surroundings. We give people a society of equals who accomplish great things through collaboration rather than command-and-control dictatorships, with an opportunity to both teach others you work with and learn from them as you work.
Now when we go to some client sites, the companies still have less advance world views where top-down authority manifests itself in the form executive or mid-level managers trying to force projects to work out the way they want rather than just however is best. Or, team members are given very narrowly constrained roles to play instead of freeing them to work in the most efficient ways possible. The challenge to us as consultants is to tolerate the inefficiencies and (from our higher perspective) plainly mistaken ways of thinking in these outmoded corporate formations. Of course, there’s opportunity to consult upwards and try to improve the culture and make the organization more agile, but that’s a high-effort activity and usually not in the scope of our specific IT engagements. So, we attempt to satisfy the mental and sociological needs of our team members by providing the healthy culture of our own company with its more advanced world views on social dynamics and agile teamwork. And then there are some clients who you just love to work with, or like the prospective one that Jef Newsom, Chris Tullier, I visited on Friday where you just hit it off and know that they have a similar worldview that’s very compatible. Those opportunities are few and far between, and honestly those companies usually don’t need as much help, but it’s a pleasure working with them when you get to.
The short story is Vote yes for Capitalism on BOTH proposition 1 & 2 on May 9th in the City of Dallas charter vote.
The long story is that the City of Dallas has managed to invert the meaning of the two propositions on May 9th so that you have to Vote yes to defeat their insane ideas to build a city funded convention center. I’ve done research on this topic for quite some time now – since the arguments began – and we have plenty of hotels in the city of Dallas to support large events. And, if we ever don’t, we have plenty of developers with plenty of private capital to build more hotels. We don’t need to use tax payer money to subsidize the grandiose plans of the greedy City Council members.
Here’s the full story on Dallas charter votes: When saying 'yes' really means 'no'.
My buddy Zain at Microsoft is big on virtual worlds and virtual meetings. Along those lines, he told me about this LinkedIn Dot Net User Group (LIDNUG), which I think is a great venue for business networking. Honestly, if you haven’t gotten LinkedIn, where have you been? Anyway, this online user group provides a forum for discussion as well has monthly hosted Live Meetings. The next one is with Brian Harry, Product Unit Manager for Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS), presenting on Visual Studio Team System 2010.
On my current project, several times I’ve had to configure a new machine with SQL Server to support a Visual Studio database project, or change instances (say to install SQL Dev to support Reporting Services instead of using SQL Express).
BTW, whenever doing development, I highly recommend installing SQL Server Developer Edition prior to installing Visual Studio instead of letting Visual Studio install SQL Express.
So, here’s my checklist of things to do when setting up a new instance or changing from one instance to another:
Besides these items I’ve listed, also check out this link for getting Visual Studio Team Build to work in a CI environment with a new instance:
Error: You have insufficient permissions to create the database project
The new Dell Adamo is a beautiful peace of hardware, almost as nice as the Apple MacBook. So far I only see a 13.4” version - nothing bigger to match the MacBook Pro, though the Dell XPS M is a nice competitor. It looks like the Adamo has the same outrageous price as the MacBook – possibly due to the 128GB solid state drive. But hey, plenty of people have paid the Apple premium just to have a slim, pretty, peace of art to work with on a daily basis. I’m sure Dell will sell a lot of these Adamos – especially since it come with 64bit Vista so it’s compatible with all your company’s software.
One thing I hate about the MacBooks that my colleagues have is the requirement for a display adapter. HDMI should be small enough to put on a laptop, but Apple has a proprietary SafeMag plug with various adapters that you have to carry around to use an external monitor or projector. This Dell includes a new standard DisplayPort with similar adapters to connect to older standards. Perhaps new displays will come with DisplayPort cables so you don’t need to carry an adapter. As for Dell, I wish they would show the serious side of the Adamo case (on the right) so we could see the sound ports, 2x Blu-Ray DVD bay, and whatever else is over there.
I’m still very happy with my Inspiron 1720 (x64 dual core, 4GB, recently upgraded 300GB 7000 RPM HD) running Windows 7, but I look forward to seeing the Adamo in the hands of a long-haired Asian chick in an evening dress.
