dev \ efor blog

The Road Ahead for dev \ efor

Posted January 12th, 2009 by Ersan

Hello,

It has been a while since i blogged for dev \ efor… As you well know, we are working hard to release enterprise edition of dev \ efor and there is not much left to go.. We are hoping to start “beta programme” at the end of February for dev\efor enterprise edition. This beta programme will allow you to gain early access for enterprise edition which will bring stunning features. If you want to join beta programme, don’t forget to add your e-mail address to our mailing list so that you will be notified to get into the beta programme of dev \ efor enterprise.

Now, Let’s get into detail of what we are up to…

Enterprise edition is based on Visual Studio + Team Foundation Server. What you’ll have is:

• Code Metric reports for Team Projects : As you know, TFS does not provide Code Metrics stored in Team Foundation Warehouse out-of-box. (I know about CodeChurn btw.)What we will give you is Trend of Code Metrics for team projects. These metrics will be automaticly measured after a successful team build, metrics are stored in TFS warehouse and reported to those who have access to team reports. After you install dev \ efor enterprise, you will have these reports based on RDL. You will be able to answer questions like you do now, but for team wide projects in TFS.
• Effort Metric reports for Team Projects: As you know, we measure Active Time, an effort metric that is collected inside VS, this metric shows us how much actual time spent while developers work on VS. at enterprise edition, we will provide two other Effort Metrics called: Relative Time and Flow Time.Relative Time is an effort metric, means: a developer starts to track time for a particular work item. Simply, a developer clicks which work item he/she is working on now from dev \ efor client (community edition + new features for TFS ) and de-clicks when he/she is finished.

  The difference between start-to-end for a particular workitem is called relative time. It is relative because it shows us time spent for a particular work, but not actual work. We see actual work at Active Time as you know.

  Flow Time is an effort metric, means: a developer works in a timeframe without being interrupted. As being a developer, we all know that sometimes we work flowless and best time to work on our personal projects and most productive works comes out at midnights. That is because no one disturbs us, no phonecalls, no interruptions, no meetings, nothing. And those are the times when we give out our best work. Doesn’t it ?

  So we measure it too. As i mentioned before, Flow time measures how much flow work has done for a particular workitem.

  Therefore, one of the valuable report you will see at TFS reports look like similar to this:

  
  Relative Time > Active Time > Flow Time

  Here, we see that for Workitem 12, our team spent 8 hours relative time, team spent 2 active hours in front of VS and half of this 2 hour of active work was flowless.

  For workitem 13, we see 11 hours of relative work. Therefore, team spent 4 active hours in front of VS and half of this 4 hour active work was flowless..

Well, we hope you get some clue on what we are going to present you :).

Btw, Why we build dev \ efor ? Because we believe measuring these metrics without adding extra workflows to your development process is extremely valuable. TFS adds great value to development teams, we add an extra value to TFS and VS for those who cares about software engineering. You can’t control what you can’t measure as Thomas McCabe said, so, these values matter for project managers, dev leads and involved stakeholders of software projects.

I’ll keep blogging on upcoming news..

Cheers !