Tuesday, July 6, 2010
July Meeting Recap: Modernizing Legacy Applications with Mark Juras
Thank you to Mark and Great Migrations for leading the discussion on how to deal with legacy applications as well as sponsoring pizza for the group.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
July Meeting Announcement: Modernizing Legacy Applications
Date/Time:
Thursday July 1st, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
Agenda:
Adapting to technology is an ongoing challenge for all businesses, and arguably the most challenging type of technology change is switching to a different development platform. The platform sets the rules and makes your systems possible; it is major component of developer capability and it binds IT communities together. However, during the course of a system's lifespan, its original platform will be displaced by next generation tools and technologies. Usually, the platform changes happen gradually and with an appropriate measure of backward compatibility. IT organizations can adapt through standard maintenance activities. Sometimes, however, the changes are more radical and disruptive and the effects threaten to crumble the foundations of your IT organization.
Today, the entire Microsoft Windows development ecosystem is in the midst of a huge platform migration – from Visual Basic (VB) to .NET. Through the 1990s, VB grew in popularity because it offered a quantum leap in the ease of graphical client-server and distributed application development. In 2000, there were an estimated 3 million IT professionals developing systems with VB and approximately 30 billion lines of VB code running in production systems. Through the 1990s, Visual Basic upgrades had been fairly painless and inexpensive because Microsoft made new versions of VB backward compatible. But things changed with the introduction of Microsoft's new flagship development platform – the .NET platform. An upgrade from VB to .NET brings with it a radical shift in terms of architecture, design, deployment, features, and tools.
Confronted with declining vendor and community support and major migration challenges, many organizations are looking for a strategy to move massive business systems and development teams to .NET. They want to minimize disruption and costs and leverage the momentum of the platform change to move their capabilities forward. As system architecture manager for a financial services firm, I faced this challenge. We wanted to move a huge (1.2M LOC) application portfolio from VB to re-engineered .NET and we had to do it without impacting our ongoing commitments to serve the business. After extensive research and analysis of options we discovered a smarter way of modernizing large systems and completed our migration ahead on schedule and under budget. Subsequently, I started a company to refine this solution and offer it to the VB community.
This discussion will present the VB to .NET migration problem and our unique solution. We will finish with a discussion of the challenges of making a business case for migration and the role of legacy code and system analysis and reengineering translation tools.
Biography:
Mark Juras is founder of Great Migrations LLC, a technology solutions provider that develops industrial-strength software re-engineering tools and provides software migration services. Mark has been an IT professional since 1985. Before forming Great Migrations, Mark was an independent software products vendor/developer, a technical consultant and trainer, and a system architecture manager for a financial services firm. Mark's full bio is here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/markjuras
Sponsors:
Great Migrations (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.
Thursday July 1st, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
Agenda:
Adapting to technology is an ongoing challenge for all businesses, and arguably the most challenging type of technology change is switching to a different development platform. The platform sets the rules and makes your systems possible; it is major component of developer capability and it binds IT communities together. However, during the course of a system's lifespan, its original platform will be displaced by next generation tools and technologies. Usually, the platform changes happen gradually and with an appropriate measure of backward compatibility. IT organizations can adapt through standard maintenance activities. Sometimes, however, the changes are more radical and disruptive and the effects threaten to crumble the foundations of your IT organization.
Today, the entire Microsoft Windows development ecosystem is in the midst of a huge platform migration – from Visual Basic (VB) to .NET. Through the 1990s, VB grew in popularity because it offered a quantum leap in the ease of graphical client-server and distributed application development. In 2000, there were an estimated 3 million IT professionals developing systems with VB and approximately 30 billion lines of VB code running in production systems. Through the 1990s, Visual Basic upgrades had been fairly painless and inexpensive because Microsoft made new versions of VB backward compatible. But things changed with the introduction of Microsoft's new flagship development platform – the .NET platform. An upgrade from VB to .NET brings with it a radical shift in terms of architecture, design, deployment, features, and tools.
Confronted with declining vendor and community support and major migration challenges, many organizations are looking for a strategy to move massive business systems and development teams to .NET. They want to minimize disruption and costs and leverage the momentum of the platform change to move their capabilities forward. As system architecture manager for a financial services firm, I faced this challenge. We wanted to move a huge (1.2M LOC) application portfolio from VB to re-engineered .NET and we had to do it without impacting our ongoing commitments to serve the business. After extensive research and analysis of options we discovered a smarter way of modernizing large systems and completed our migration ahead on schedule and under budget. Subsequently, I started a company to refine this solution and offer it to the VB community.
This discussion will present the VB to .NET migration problem and our unique solution. We will finish with a discussion of the challenges of making a business case for migration and the role of legacy code and system analysis and reengineering translation tools.
Biography:
Mark Juras is founder of Great Migrations LLC, a technology solutions provider that develops industrial-strength software re-engineering tools and provides software migration services. Mark has been an IT professional since 1985. Before forming Great Migrations, Mark was an independent software products vendor/developer, a technical consultant and trainer, and a system architecture manager for a financial services firm. Mark's full bio is here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/markjuras
Sponsors:
Great Migrations (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Scrum for TFS 2010 at Path to Agility
Thanks to all who attended Alexei's and my Scrum for TFS 2010 Thursday at the Path to Agility conference. Please contact us if you have follow-up questions. We posted the deck here.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Public Sector User Group
Excuse the late notice but if you're in the public sector, leverage TFS and work in the central Ohio region, check out the PS TFS User Group Tuesday April 13th (yes, that's today) at 3PM at the William Green Building downtown. Contact Shawn Wilkoff (shawn dot wilkoff at bwc.state.oh.us) for more information.
We hope to do a few joint meetings between PS and COALMG later this year.
We hope to do a few joint meetings between PS and COALMG later this year.
Monday, March 22, 2010
ATTN: Meeting Date Change | Cameron Skinner Unveils VS 2010 Architecture Tools: Wednesday April 28th
Date/Time (ATTENTION--DATE CHANGE):
Wednesday April 28th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
PLEASE REGISTER FOR THE EVENT, SO WE CAN HAVE AN ACCURATE COUNT OF PEEPS FOR FOOD: http://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=9416
Agenda:
Have you ever had to work with a legacy codebase? Designing new functionality on existing applications can be daunting. There are always differences between the original design and the current implementation. The new Architecture tools within Visual Studio 2010 help you to understand the application you have, design new functionality you need, and validate that your design and your implementation do not deviate. Join us for a look at the new code visualization, UML, and architectural validation tools which allow you to model domain-specific problem domains and maintain proper control and visibility of your software systems.
Biography:
Cameron Skinner joined Microsoft in 2005 and is currently a product unit manager on the Visual Studio team. He is responsible for overseeing the Visualization and Architecture capabilities found in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Skinner was the CTO and chief architect of application development tools for Embarcadero Technologies. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO for Advanced Software Technologies. In his limited spare time, Mr. Skinner enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, Crossfit, and playing his acoustic bass. Find out what Cameron is doing by following him on Twitter and his blog.
Sponsors:
COALMG
CONDG
Microsoft
Wednesday April 28th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
PLEASE REGISTER FOR THE EVENT, SO WE CAN HAVE AN ACCURATE COUNT OF PEEPS FOR FOOD: http://www.usergroupsupportservices.com/UGEventView.ugss?EventID=9416
Agenda:
Have you ever had to work with a legacy codebase? Designing new functionality on existing applications can be daunting. There are always differences between the original design and the current implementation. The new Architecture tools within Visual Studio 2010 help you to understand the application you have, design new functionality you need, and validate that your design and your implementation do not deviate. Join us for a look at the new code visualization, UML, and architectural validation tools which allow you to model domain-specific problem domains and maintain proper control and visibility of your software systems.
Biography:
Cameron Skinner joined Microsoft in 2005 and is currently a product unit manager on the Visual Studio team. He is responsible for overseeing the Visualization and Architecture capabilities found in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate. Prior to Microsoft, Mr. Skinner was the CTO and chief architect of application development tools for Embarcadero Technologies. Earlier in his career, he served as CTO for Advanced Software Technologies. In his limited spare time, Mr. Skinner enjoys spending time with his wife and three children, Crossfit, and playing his acoustic bass. Find out what Cameron is doing by following him on Twitter and his blog.
Sponsors:
COALMG
CONDG
Microsoft
Friday, March 5, 2010
March Meeting Recap: Agile with TFS 2010 with Jeff Hunsaker
Thank you for coming and participating in probably one of the most engaging and interactive sessions we've had at COALMG. You made it great! Thanks to Aaron Bjork who created the original slide deck and to our sponsors last night: Cardinal Solutions and Microsoft.
Keep an eye on the blog for announcements on our next meeting. Likely, we'll switch to a date the week of April 26th for a special visitor from Redmond.
I've posted the slide deck here and you can review Aaron's Scrum presentation page here.
Keep an eye on the blog for announcements on our next meeting. Likely, we'll switch to a date the week of April 26th for a special visitor from Redmond.
I've posted the slide deck here and you can review Aaron's Scrum presentation page here.
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
March Meeting Announcement: Agile with TFS 2010
Date/Time:
Thursday March 4th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
Agenda:
Interested in agile software techniques? Of course you are. TFS 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 add a whole lot of agile goodness. We'll attempt a start-to-finish project leveraging some of the latest agile features such as: Excel Planning sheets, branching, collaboration, continuous integration and testing. Get ready for the upcoming 2010 release as COALMG continues our TFS 2010 launch series.
Biography:
Jeff Hunsaker is the Microsoft Solutions Practice Manager for Cardinal Solutions Group in their Columbus, Ohio office. He is a VS.Net ALM Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), a certified Scrum Master and co-founder of the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group (COALMG www.coalmg.org). Jeff assists clients architecting and developing custom .Net applications, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure/Online Services and Microsoft Business Intelligence (MSBI) solutions. Jeff also enjoys optimizing the development process to produce an enjoyable and effective result for developers and the rest of the team. A frequent presenter at client and regional events, Jeff gets passionate about efficient, resourceful, and elegant technology solutions, agile development techniques and providing value for clients quickly and regularly. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys his family (two boys, wife Lisa), reading, and writing. You can keep up with Jeff by visiting his blog (www.JeffreyHunsaker.com) or on Twitter at @jeffhunsaker.
Sponsors:
Cardinal Solutions (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.
Thursday March 4th, 6PM, Polaris Microsoft Office (4th Floor)
Agenda:
Interested in agile software techniques? Of course you are. TFS 2010 and Visual Studio 2010 add a whole lot of agile goodness. We'll attempt a start-to-finish project leveraging some of the latest agile features such as: Excel Planning sheets, branching, collaboration, continuous integration and testing. Get ready for the upcoming 2010 release as COALMG continues our TFS 2010 launch series.
Biography:
Jeff Hunsaker is the Microsoft Solutions Practice Manager for Cardinal Solutions Group in their Columbus, Ohio office. He is a VS.Net ALM Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP), a certified Scrum Master and co-founder of the Central Ohio Application Lifecycle Management Group (COALMG www.coalmg.org). Jeff assists clients architecting and developing custom .Net applications, Team Foundation Server (TFS), Azure/Online Services and Microsoft Business Intelligence (MSBI) solutions. Jeff also enjoys optimizing the development process to produce an enjoyable and effective result for developers and the rest of the team. A frequent presenter at client and regional events, Jeff gets passionate about efficient, resourceful, and elegant technology solutions, agile development techniques and providing value for clients quickly and regularly. In his spare time, Jeff enjoys his family (two boys, wife Lisa), reading, and writing. You can keep up with Jeff by visiting his blog (www.JeffreyHunsaker.com) or on Twitter at @jeffhunsaker.
Sponsors:
Cardinal Solutions (along with our gracious host, Microsoft) will sponsor this month's meeting with pizza and drinks.
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