[VS ALM Rangers] Visual Studio 11 Architecture Tooling Guidance

 

On Thursday October 13, 2011 was made the kick-off meeting of this project’s update as part of our Visual Studio 2011 Readiness initiative. Our motivation and vision of this project is provide a practical guidance for Architecture Tooling for developers based on real world guidance from PG SMEs and VSTS Rangers to help customers successfully adopt the new features.

Talking about history, motivations and whys

We start the architecture tooling guidance November 16, 2009 providing a practical guidance to help you address challenges such as: How the new Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate tools….

  • can help me of way to successfully building a new system?
  • can help me to understand (parts of) the existing system to be able to maintain or extend it?
  • can help me to understand (parts of) the existing system to be able to tell something about its quality?
  • can help me to validate a system architecture?
  • can help me to establish traceability?
  • can help me to create a reusable (repeatable) architecture?

… Our Answer: Practical guidance for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, focused on modeling tools. The First release included common usage scenarios, hands on labs, and lessons learnt in-the-field from the communities.

The actual Core Scenarios for Visual Studio 2010 are…

VS2010ARCGUIDANCECommonScenarios

… Community answer: Great job guys!!! Smile

and other questions and needs as:

  • Visual Studio 2010 ultimate include some new UML designers and others new features as architecture explorer and dependency graphs.. Which is the sequence of use for each scenario? … Our Answer: Don’t worry, we made this guidance thinking of you and your needs, the scenarios include workflows to help you fully work the new features of Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate.
  • How can I extend Visual Studio Ultimate tools?  …Our Answer: Include extensibility HOLs.
  • The guidance and HOL it’s ok but I wish the architecture guidance integrated with Visual Studio IDE     … Our Answer: The Architecture Tooling Guidance, this mean… using feature builder integrate Visual Studio IDE with the guidance, HOL docs and the automation of some VS commands from the HOLs. Smile 
  • I wish that the guidance include some common architecture types   …Our Answer: include project templates into architecture guidance extension.
  • I wish visual support for navigate and understand the guidance … Our Answer: Create videos and publish to play online and offline.
  • Yo hablo español… existe una guía que me muestre cómo utilizar las nuevas herramientas de modelamiento incluidas en Visual Studio Ultimate? … Nuestra respuesta: Visual Studio 2010 – Guía de Arquitectura. The spanish localized guidance.

Now… I would like to understand the changes ( new features, updates, etc) of Dev11 on the Visual Studio ALM architecture tooling…. For answer that let me show you the epics in which we will be working….

The “Epics”

  • Epic: As Alex, the technology consultant, I would like to understand the changes ( new features, updates, etc) of Dev11 on the Visual Studio ALM architecture tooling.
  • Epic: As Garry, the dev lead, I would like practical guidance on how to customize DGML graphs.
  • Epic: As Garry, the dev lead, I would like to link elements to slides, Word, files, diagrams, and the new storyboards.
  • Epic: As Garry, the dev lead, I would like to exchange UML diagrams created with Visual Studio with other vendor tooling.
  • Epic: As Garry, the dev lead, I would like to use the architecture tooling to design my Windows Phone solution.
  • Epic: As Garry, the dev lead, I would like to use DSLs for generate program code, configuration files, and other artifacts.
  • Epic: Update RangersArchitectureGuidance.vsix

Why the last epic in red?? It is currently de-prioritised for an second release of the Visual Studio 11 Readiness, because we have a dependency on Feature Builder, which is not yet available for Visual Studio 11.

What you mean with epics? Who is Alex and Garry?

Question

Epics define the value proposition, elevator pitch and the team collaboration story. In essence it is an intent container for product backlog items and associated tasks.

understood and what about Alex and Garry?

Personas which we have defined and are using so far. 

You can find more about epics, team and personas in Willy’s Cave.

The Deliverables

The planned deliverables for the Release 1 of this update are:

  • Guidance Document
  • HOL Documents
  • HOL package
  • Quick Reference Poster
  • Videos

Questions or Feedback

Please post your questions or feedback using comments of this post.

wait.. Willy and I have a question for you!…

How important is guidance extension to you? Is it acceptable that we have beamed it down the priority list to v2? Your candid feedback will be most appreciated!

ABE

… African Black Eagle, from http://birdsofprey.co.za/

The Team

Jean-Marc Prieur
Product Owner

Francisco Fagas
Project Lead

Larry Guger
Subject Matter Expert (SME)
Larry is a Product Manager on the Visual Studio Ultimate team. He comes from a background in consulting to Enterprise customers helping them develop robust applications using Microsoft technologies and Agile development practices.

Willy-Peter Schaub
Mentor, Support

Brian Blackman
Ruck Master

Gaurav Aggarwal
Contributor

David A. Clark
Contributor

Raul Guerrero Carreon
Contributor

Eric Golpe
Contributor
Eric Golpe is a Senior Consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services. He is a cloud-computing subject matter expert with our Enterprise Strategy Worldwide Windows Azure Team, focusing on implementing large-scale cloud architectures with our Microsoft customers

The Process Ruck…  What is Ruck??…

Question

   Willy already answered.

TOC TOC: Visual Studio Tooling Guidance