Archive for the ‘Tools & Tips’ Category
Have you ever wanted to export your unit test results from Visual Studio or your TFS Build? Sometimes you may need to provide evidence of your unit testing position to a project stakeholder. This may be for an internal review or as part of a gateway check in a waterfall project. Alternatively you may just [...]
Filed under: .Net, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: Team Foundation Server, TFS, Tips, Tools, Tools & Tips, Visual Studio
I’m pleased to announce the release of version 1.4.0 of my Windows Live Writer (WLW) Source Code Highlighter plugin for WordPress.com hosted blogs. For those not aware of this plugin it enables you to quickly insert a source code snippet into your hosted blog posts using the built in WordPress.com source code short codes. For [...]
Filed under: Live Writer, Tools & Tips | 2 Comments
Tags: Live Writer, Tools
In previous posts I covered an introduction to Kanban and a review of a trial Kanban project. In this, my third in a series of Kanban posts, I’ll cover physical versus software Kanban boards. For some this is an almost religious debate, and many would not question their decision for one other another. Whilst the [...]
Filed under: Methodology, Tools & Tips | 2 Comments
Tags: Kanban, Methodology
An Introduction to Kanban
Recently I introduced Kanban to an inflight development project with the objective of trialling this technique with a hope to raising productivity by overcoming various communication and process issues. In this three part series I’ll cover my real world experiences and the results felt by the project/team. This first part offers an introduction to Kanban, [...]
Filed under: IT Observations, Methodology, Tools & Tips | 4 Comments
Tags: Agile, Kanban, Management, Methodology
We have made huge advances over recent years in the tools available to the development team, including the more proactive and investigative tools (profiling tools, code analysis, performance analysis, debugging etc). However demanding project timelines mean that we have increasingly less time to investigate, trial and use these tools. Compounding the problem is that unfortunately [...]
Filed under: IT Observations, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: Agile, DevTeam, IT Industry
Sometimes, despite Visual Studio being an excellent IDE, you want to go the No VS route and hack your code in notepad. Perhaps you just want to make a quick change and its not worth firing up the full VS experience. Maybe you are only checking the code as a background time-filler in between other [...]
Filed under: .Net, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: Tools, Tools & Tips, Visual Studio
I’m a big fan of SlickRun and if you’ve not used it I recommend you download it and give it a try. I find it an invaluable tool not only for launching apps but also web sites, collections of applications and directories etc. It’s the simplicity of SlickRun that makes it so powerful. Sure there [...]
Filed under: PowerShell, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: PowerShell, Tools, Tools & Tips
This week my Team Toolbar Office add-in for Team Explorer disappeared preventing me from uploading any new Work items to Team Foundation Server. After some searching in Excel (and MS Project) I accepted it wasn’t just hiding and turned to Google for help. Luckily I found this helpful post on the Team Foundation Server Team’s [...]
Filed under: Team Foundation Server, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: Team Foundation Server, TFS, Tips, Tools & Tips
Android Remote Desktop Client
I find that I am increasingly relying on the computing power of my Android smartphone (a HTC Desire) and finding novel ways of using it to make my IT life easier. Sometimes I just want to connect to my PC that is in another room, or more often for me it’s my headless Windows Home [...]
Filed under: Geek Tech, Home Server, PowerShell, Tools & Tips, Windows | 1 Comment
Tags: Android, Home Server, PowerShell, Tools, Tools & Tips, WHS
Software KVMs
Recently I have acquired an additional desktop machine on my desk and quickly saw the potential to expand the amount of screen real estate at my disposal (you can never have enough screens). So imagine I have a laptop physically connected to two screens and a desktop PC, with one screen connected, on the same [...]
Filed under: Geek Tech, Tools & Tips | Leave a Comment
Tags: Tools, Tools & Tips, Windows

