Be honest with iteration time

Closing the iteration, on time, is one of key success for software project plan. Assume we have X features planned for iteration Y. At the end of iteration X, the project manager/team leader and process engineer [and customer in some cases] are supposed to review the iteration. Usually they evaluate the features and mark them as finished or not. If some of the features are still under development, never, ever extend the iteration duration. Drop the remaining features and close the iteration.

Instead of extending the duration, close it, and do the following things:

• Investigate why the features are not finished
• Work on improving the time estimate
• Monitor the time estimation in different iteration
• Most of the time, it's not developers' fault if they have not finished on time, it's because of bad estimation

It happens a lot the estimates at the begriming of the iterations are wrong. The key point at the end of iteration is dropping the remaining features and closing the iteration on time instead of extending the time of iteration.

SharePoint 2007, Wooooow

I got a chance to have a look to MS SharePoint 2007 Beta 2. Thanks to SharePoint team to the big improvement of user interface.
For me, it was a huge difference.
Different types of web sites, having more user interface to make web master's life easier and easier ways to share data among sub sites, are the most visible features.

Check here for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Evaluation Guide.
Check here for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007

You have to track your build, otherwise ...

Daily build is one of the most important success key in software development lifecycle. Daily build gives you opportunity to see the progress of development. Besides that it gives better view to developers to see the bugs and fix them before the end of construction phase.
Some of the daily builds will be shipped out, either they are certified builds or prescheduled/official builds.
When we use “shipping out” terms we have to have the ability of tracking the build.

.Net Assembly files have version that can be maintained for each build. You need just to maintain the AssemblyVersion attribute in assemblyinfo.* file.

[assembly: AssemblyVersion("A.B.CCCC.DDDD")]

You can find the definition for different parts of version number at here

But what happens to build process? We can’t open the file every time, modify the version and close it.
We need a command line application. Thanks to Matt Griffith for the reliable Console Application. Download it and enjoy.

Rational Method Composer and RUP7

IBM Rational announced a new tool under IBM Process Tool category for modeling the process.
The new tool is called Rational Method Composer (RMC) and can be used to model any kind of process. RMC can be used as a content management.

According to Rational guys, the new version of RUP (RUP7) is created with RMC. You can download the trial version of RUP7 at here

Peter Haumer has a two part article about RMC. Part One , Part Two

SharePoint Blogs

While I was searching for more sharepoint web parts on the net, I found SharePoint Blogs
These guys have good blogs about Sharepoint. Read and enjoy!