Toronto VS ALM User Group kick off meeting April 12th

The first Toronto VS ALM User Group kick off meeting is being held on April 12th @6:30pm sign up at TALMUG to get the details and register.

The User Group is for all roles within the Application Life Management team. Topics presented will vary from generic ALM practices to ALM with Visual Studio. If your involved in product management, a stakeholder, a business analysis or product owner, a developer or a tester this User Group is for you.

The goal of the first meeting will be to:

  • Define the group’s mission
  • Select an appropriate name
  • Document the roles of the executive
  • Recruit volunteers
  • Funding
  • Discuss how to reach out for sponsors
  • Discuss meeting locations
  • Discuss ideas for the first few meeting topics

Come out on April 12th and help us to kick-off this new user group code named TALMUG.

Testa Smile

Microsoft - Search Work Items for TFS 2010

Check out the add-in tool that allows you to do searches for work items and it can be downloaded free. If your still using VS2008 or VS2005 there is a version of this tool available for them too.

Search Work Items for TFS2010 

Examples of work item searches with this tool:

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Blog on how to use click here.

Enjoy Testa Smile

 

Basics of Securing Applications – Steve Syfuhs talks about security

Objectsharp’s Steve Syfuhs the Canadian Developer Security MVP is being interviewed by Jonathan Rozenblit a Microsoft evangelist on the basics of securing applications.

Click here to follow.

Part 1: Development Security Basics (This Post)

Part 2: Vulnerability Deep Dive (Coming Thursday, June 2, 2011)

Part 3: Secure Design and Analysis in Visual Studio 2010 (Coming Thursday, June 9, 2011)

Part 4: Architectural Considerations for Developing Secure Applications (Coming Thursday, June 16, 2011)

Part 5: Incident Response Management with Team Foundation Server (Coming Thursday, June 23, 2011)

 

Testa

Migration to Microsoft TFS 2010 from Quality Center with Scrat

Quality Center has been the popular kid on the block over the years. Since Microsoft Test Manager came out in April 2010 it has and is giving QC a run for it’s money. Many companies are wanting to convert over to Microsoft TFS 2010 from Quality Center but are not sure how and do not want to lose existing artefacts.

SELA a Microsoft Gold Partner have created Scrat that will let you migrate full HP Quality Center projects into TFS2010 in days. Requirements, Bugs, Test Cases, Attachments and Links between items plus their interrelationship links can all be migrated to TFS 2010. Scrat is completely configurable to migrate what you want and need.

I personally have met a number of test teams that are converting to TFS2010 here are some comments being made about TFS2010 and Test Manger:

    • the collaboration between teams is outstanding
    • there is one place that stores all the project artefacts and anyone on the team can see them, how organized and commutative is that.
    • love the alerts, people know about bugs as soon as I save them
    • bug information automatically added would take me hours to put together
    • snap shot capability during test execution, no more folders full of screen prints
    • the test steps are added to the bug for me what a time saver
    • Test Impact – (normally it is the facial expression, such emotion, then demo it for people!)
    • now that I don’t have to manually note my steps during Exploratory testing, I can do a lot more testing and concentrate 100% on what I am doing

Note: the above are not direct quotes they are however truly what I am hearing testers saying.

Check out Scrat and if you need help give us a call.

Testa Smile

 

Microsoft Test Manager– What is my test state at the Test Plan level?

Check out the Visual Studio Team Test blog on using Excel reports with MTM to identify test state at a test plan level. This is a step by step on how to create the report in excel using information on your test state from Test Manager.

Testa

Microsoft Unlimited Load Testing Announcement

Microsoft announces unlimited Load Testing for Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN Subscribers.

Read up about this huge deal and download today the VS2010 Load Test Feature Pack then start your load testing.

If you need help call Object Sharp we can help you with your Load Testing.

1-877-SO-SHARP

Testa

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Testing Tools Your Teams Want–Microsoft Visual Studio & MTM

Microsoft has launched a new web site Testing Tools Your Teams Want

There are concept video’s covering testing topics.

White Papers on Performance and Stress Testing, Effective & Efficient Testing, Integrated Lab Management

Research and Evidence speaks for itself.

If you want to find out about Microsoft Testing tools this is the place.

Testa

Microsoft Test Manager (MTM) – action recordings

MTM 2010 has opened up the world of manual testing with data-driven and fast forward capabilities. Plus, they have taken extra steps to ensure your successful here is an example of one.

Your are opening an application from a short cut on your desktop. Test Manager will capture and store the path to where you have placed the application executable and the path based on the %USERPROFILE%. In my example it looks like this:

 Launch '%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Projects\Calculator\Calculator\bin\Debug\Calculator.exe'

In this example if I remove the executable from my desktop and pin it to my start menu the test will execute successfully. If I then remove it from my start menu and pin it to my task bar the test again executes successfully. In addition the test actions is opening the executable not following the human interaction of double-clicking. This makes your test even less subset able to failure. Note that these types of failures are not application issues and therefore we’d really like to not have to deal with them.

Thanks to Microsoft there is less chance of this slowing our testing down due to setup issues.

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Microsoft Test Manager, Coded UI (CUIT), Web Performance & Load, Bugs, using TFS2010 – 3 day course in Toronto 10% off

If you have never been to Toronto here is your chance plus while here you can learn about Microsoft Test Manager, Coded UI testing, Web & Load testing, the new Bug, Fast Forwarded Manual Testing, and all you need to know about TFS2010 the communicator. Here is your chance. Check out our 3 day course offering being held March 9th to 11th and get 10% off.

Contact: trainging@newhorizon.ca 

Tell them Testa send you …

Microsoft Test Manager–Preview a step during runtime

Have you every been in a situation where you have had to execute a test that you did not create or you were not involved in the project at the being. You could use a walk through or in the least more information on what this test is about, how each step will interact with the application, it might be a bug your retesting. It could even be an exploratory test that someone had not created a true test case with steps. Test Manager during run time has a handy feature that lets you preview a step or steps.

See how and examples:

Select a step – any step within the test click on the Play dropdown arrow and select Preview

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Here is an example of selecting a shared step for preview.

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Here is an example of a step with multiple lines (see blog: Microsoft Test Manager–test case multi steps tool) and a parameter.

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Last an example of a exploratory test case – you got to like this one.

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