Three items were the focus of my attention today. Well, rather 2, and the 3rd I just saw over on daily tech and it got me very excited.

MSF for CMMI

I have been reviewing the process guidance for MSF for CMMI version 4.2 which ships with TFS 2008. I plan on using this process as the foundation on my next software development project. While out of the box it is a bit of an overkill for my team, project and company, I prefer to start with more (process) and remove what I don't need. I also feel that CMMI is a great compromise between management, who is used too, and wants a more traditional software development approach, and the developers, such as my self who are advocating a more agile process.

The great thing about MSF for CMMI is that it is written around agile concepts, yet still has processes in place for oversight. The process guidance, is written in HTML, making it very easy to edit and customize it after the project is created to meet your needs. There is a way to edit the template so that it generates the new project to meet your needs, but I figure this way is easier for the first go around.

My plan is to make changes to the HTML as needed, and then create a new template. In addition to tracking my changes, you can use a tool like WinMerge to compare your modified document library with a default one. You can access a document library via windows explorer by going to the document library and choosing open in explorer from the actions menu. This creates a UNC path in the form of \\SharepointServer\Sites\SiteName\Process Guidance, which you can supply to WinMerge.

I have spent some time going over the default tasks that are created with a new CMMI based project to see what workstreams and activities they relate to, and I think I have a pretty good handle on the first two tracks. I plan on documenting this in a future post.

Requirements

Oil and Water, Superman and Kryponite, Me and Requirements. I am having some difficulties in creating a formal software requirements specification, using this book as a guide. It's not the books fault (although I wish it hand an end to end case study of a project), but rather a differing of opinion on some of the definitions (which that end to end case study might help with).

• Where is the line between Use Cases and Functional Requirements? Use cases look a lot like test plans to some people, and have a tendency to add test plan like information to them, which I feel is incorrect.
• Where is the line between systems and users in the use cases?
• How much detail is the right amount of detail?

Similar to my quest to gain a better understanding in the use of TFS and the MSF for CMMI, I'm going to have to put some time into researching (primarily looking for examples) software requirements. In addition to the book, which we now have 6 copies of at work, I found this website with some additional templates, as well as fairly detailed article on writing requirements from the perspective of a technical writer. There appear to be some good articles over at wikipedia as well, such as Requirements Analysis and Use Cases, and Use Case Diagrams. Someone today asked the question about how do all the use cases get related, and I believe the answer is the use case diagram (at least one use for a use case diagram), as illustrated in the example on Wikipedia.

I hope to be able to report back with some answers to my questions sometime in the future.

NVidia Application Processor

Daily Tech had an article on the NVidia APX 2500 application processor which is designed to add hi-def capabilities to mobile devices. The article states that NVidia has been working with Microsoft, so once can assume (as does the author of the article), that this is destined for a Windows Mobile application.

I've really been giving my HTC Mogul a work out and have always wanted a all in one device (video, mp3, phone, PDA, etc), so I am very excited about this. Since I have a bias against Apple, I am not a fan of the iPhone, although I can appreciate and respect what it is. This gives me some hope that my next Windows Mobile phone will be a force to be rekon with.

In addition to smart phones, I can also see this making it's way to other embedded systems, especially something like a mall kiosk. This brings me to the second reason that I am excited, and that is, my current software project is all about embedded systems running Windows CE. I have some future customer requirements that could take advantage of the functionality provided by this chip.