Web Application Development with Microsoft Technologies

I have been involved in Software Development industry for more than 6 years now, and right now I am living a very challenging stage of my career.

During the last few years I had the chance to lead several teams of talented developers, which gave me invaluable experiences and a lot of exposure to software development processes.

 I have worked in a CMMI level 5 corporation for 3 years, and I remember being tired of following processes and completing documents with almost no tangible value for our projects but for the organization itself.

After attending to my PMP course last year, I understood that traditional development processes can be customized depending on the projects needs, and also learnt about the added value of performing some of the activities specified in the PM-Book (guide for project management in general).

Since working at UruIT Global IT Services, I have been trying to adapt the best of a traditional processes to our agile style of development. Why we need to be agile ? Because our customers expect deliveries soon, and because we are focused in using latest tools and technologies in our solutions, usually increasing risks.

However, I think that defining a procedure for identifying and monitoring risks, performing final revisions and a few quality assurance activities, estimating and monitoring costs, schedule or purchases, are helping us to have more profitable projects and satisfied customers every month.

This could be related to our customer profiles and team structure, but PMI suggested procedures are being adapted to our real needs with good results. I hope this PMP certification can help me to adapt more and more process to our organization, always with the goal of improving team productivity and customer satisfaction.

As a side note:

At the beginning, I was mentioning a challenging period in my career, and this is to the fact that I am developing other skills rather than development.

During the last year I have been working in Sales and Delivery Management, trying to reach more and more customers interested in our nearshore development services, and trying to deliver on time and with the desired quality.

This PMP certification is part of this process. I don’t have much time available during the week and weekends due to the overhead caused by my various job assignments, and I can spend some time reading blogs and news about emerging Microsoft technologies because it is part of my sales function, but I have almost no time for piloting them, except when meeting with our teams and architects.

This blog will then turn more to a personal blog, focused in best development practices, software entrepreneurs and live experiences, but also a few technology sharing.I consider myself as a lucky guy but also work committed and very entrepeneur, allowing me to reach the point where I am now, leading a company to a global vision, and helping talented individuals to reach their dreams.

I hope you get inspired from my stories from now onwards.

Cheers,
Marcelo     

Last week we started a new ASP.NET MVC project here at UruIT.

This new framework for ASP.NET is quite cool. It eliminates the page life cycle, postbacks and viewstate. It divides the architecture in View, Model and Controller.

We have been using MbUnit to test the code. Having these well defined tiers really improves unit testing. We can have an object mock instead of rendering the actual page (View) for testing the Controller and be sure that all the methods are working properly, even before we finish the coding phase.

However the framework is still in Preview (2) and there are lot of changes with each release. The community around MVC is increasing every day but there is still poor documentation for some of the features. For instance, we found several issues when trying to add File Upload functionality to our MVC web site.

Last week Microsoft released the source code for the actual build of this new framework. This will definetely help to understand what is going on behind the scenes.

If you would like to learn more about ASP.NET MVC I can recommend Scott Hanselman videos available at http://www.asp.net/learn/3.5-extensions-videos/default.aspx. Scott Guthrie also published some tutorials (a bit out of date and some lines are not working with latest Preview 2 version but it worth a read) at his blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/02/12/asp-net-mvc-framework-road-map-update.aspx

In order to test this MVC Framework you need VS 2008 and the MVC Preview 2 installed in your computer.

Soon I will be posting more about our experiences with MVC.

Have fun

Microsoft is investing a lot of effort and money in their new service oriented model, named S+S (Software + Services). But, what is S+S ?

From MS site: “It is the next generation of SOA and Web-based applications spanning “on premise” software and “in the cloud” services”, an approach Microsoft calls Software + Services.

Some time ago, SaaS architecture discovered a new way of delivering the software: hosting it and providing it as a service, trying to catch the long tail of consumers, using the web as the distribution channel.

SaaS also introduced several questions and issues about data and application domain ownership, SLAs, and required particular characteristics for the product in order to be suitable for this deliver method. This led also into issues for the given ISV to find a reliable hosting provider for selling their product to the mass of consumers while reducing the costs.

S+S is no more than a hibryd architecture trying to have the best of various worlds.

Basically we are talking about connecting a on-premise or on-PC software package (running in the client computer, PDA or other devices) with an ISB (Internet Service Bus - which is no more than a integration hub containing a set of well defined URIs, connecting points, providing unified access to services within the “cloud” (Internet) ) + services connected to this ISBs.

This model will then allow third party providers to join the cloud of services and the clients to have a custom (composite) version of their software installed in their devices while consuming many of these services integrated within the ISB (which actually works as an ESB and as an ecosystem for various services providers). VMs are a perfect match for assembling this user needs in an isolated space and having the web (cloud) as the environment for running the applications.

 So how is Microsoft supporting all these new trends? The set of technologies with the code name “OSLO” is the answer:

 All new versions for these well known existing products will be shipped during the current year. The target is to simplify the design, development and deployment of solutions based in this new architecture named S+S.

For more information about OSLO and how it will enable you to support your S+S and SaaS architectures you can visit http://www.microsoft.com/soa/products/oslo.aspx

It’s been almost one month since my last post. That’s a lot ! I would like my blog to be updated frequently, but sometimes, the focus must be somewhere else. I hope to be able to post in a more regular manner and include not only news but also more tips and tutorials. But everything times time, and at this point, I don’t have a lot.

However, let me tell you the reasons why I have been so busy. Last month has been exciting for me. Our company is growing faster. So do I.  :D

We have some new projects, some new challenges. These includes ASP.NET developments, Sharepoint ones, RIAs , SEO and more. I am helping with some new proposals, so I hope 2008 is even better.  

What do we do ? We specialize in doing .NET Development from Uruguay. We have clients around the world, mainly Europe and U.S.

 Our prices are competitive, as well as the quality of our work and the professionals working with me. English skills and timezone is also a plus. That is probably the reason why I see a good future for UruIT.

So this has been an exciting year for me. Even when I am tired, I am happy. I hope you are happy too.

I’ll be posting some pics of summer time in Uruguay, weather is getting nice, so I am planning to take some rest during January.

I wish you a Merry Christmas and a truly Happy New Year !