Doing Architecture with Agile Teams

Alan Gawthorpe & I a talk last month on doing architecture with agile teams:

We did the session agile-style: We had cards for our topics, and the 'customers' in the audience prioritised. I think it worked okay, it would probably go smoother doing it a second time. Some of the significant books & articles that went into the slides were:

Agile Methodologies for the Enterprise

* Scott Ambler & Mark Lines - Disciplined Agile Delivery
* Scott's whitepaper on Agile@Scale

What does a technical architecture for agile look like?

* Coplien & Bjørnvig, Lean Architecture for Agile Software Development
* Poppendieck & Poppendieck, Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
* http://alistair.cockburn.us/Walking+skeleton

The further reading list

* George Fairbanks, Just Enough Software Architecture
* The UK government's national audit office report on Agile Governance
* http://www.disciplinedagiledelivery.com/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenUP

Visual Studio 2012 Command Prompt Here

Something I always want with VS projects: The 'Command Line here' menu option within Visual Studio; and the 'Visual Studio Tools Command Line here' option in Windows explorer. So here they are for VS2012.

NB: that the Explorer right-click works when you right click on a folder icon but not, sadly, when you right click on empty space. If anyone has a solution for that I'll be glad to know.

Windows Explorer "VS2012 Command Prompt Here" Right-Click Menu Item

To add a Visual Studio 2012 Command Prompt Here to your Explorer Right-Click menu, save this as a .reg file to your desktop, and then run it:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012\command]
@="cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd \"%1\" & \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\" x86"

If you have 64-bit Windows, you might want:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\Command Line VS2012\command]
@="cmd.exe /k echo on & pushd \"%1\" & \"C:\\Program Files\\Microsoft Visual Studio 11.0\\VC\\vcvarsall.bat\" x64"

Visual Studio 2012 External Tools Command Prompt Here Menu Item

In visual studio choose TOOLS - External Tools. Press Add to add a new command with fields as follows:

Title: Command Line Here
Command: %COMSPEC%
Arguments: /K "%VS110COMNTOOLS%\VsDevCmd"
Initial Directory: $(ItemDir)

i.e.:

Visual Studio External Tools Command Line Here VS2012 Dialog Box

Sorted. You can add shortcut key to via TOOLS - Customize - Keyboard and setting a shortcut key for Tools.ExternalCommand{X} ... but you have to work out by counting what number your {X} is.
Visual Studio Customize Keyboard Tools.ExternalCommandX Dialog Box

WCF on .Net 4.x ReST Service with IIS 7 or 8 = HTTP Error 404.17

So my newly created WCF ReST service (or webHttp service, as MS more accurately like to call it) runs fine in Visual Studio 2012, using IIS Express. But when I switch to IIS proper (in my case, IIS8 on Windows 8) I get:

HTTP Error 404.17 - Not Found
The requested content appears to be script and will not be served by the static file handler.

Most so-far extant posts on how to fix this, refer to how to fix it for .Net 3 on Windows before Win8: Use "%WINDIR%\Microsoft.Net\Framework\v3.5\Windows Communication Foundation\ServiceModelReg.exe" to register or to repair registration of WCF components. (The other gotcha being, having the right AppPool settings for .Net version & for 32 vs. 64 bit).
This doesn't work for Windows 8 / .Net 4.X. Instead you must open the control panel "Turn Windows Features On or Off" and tick the box for Http activation:

Windows Features - Windows 8 - Net45 - WCF - Http Activation Tickbox
Windows Features - Windows 8 - Net45 - WCF - Http Activation

Which should fix the issue after a couple of minutes.

Basic SEO—An Example

A friend of name, a teenage actor, asked me about SEO stuff earlier today. She has a website and was concerned it wasn't rising up the rankings very well.
Using a third party website site doesn't give you a huge amount of control but the basics are the same under any circumstances: You need a page with information on the topic at hand; and you want other websites to link to it. I originally had Rachel's name in the title of this post, but since she's now dominating the rankings for here name, I guessed it was no longer necessary! It does help if you have a name like Rachel Kevern though - shared by only a handful of other people in the world 😉

Rachel Kevern

In 2013 I saw Rachel acting & singing in Les Miserables and also saw her singing last night as part of The Voice. Which was excellent! After that, she got the role of Vi, the Reverend's wife in Footloose, at the Z-arts centre in Manchester. Find her at http://rachelkevernactor.wix.com/rachelkevern.