Hey everyone,
I'm taking on a multi step endeavor to try some "theories" of automatic release management/QA/UAT utilizing DNN (sorta). I say theroies because it's a bit scattered right now, but I do have a grand vision, I just don't know how to fully explain it.
I have started a codeplex project for it, http://www.codeplex.com/yakshaver . I will be developing a system to work similar to the DNN release tracker (with a few changes based on wild ideas) in conjunction with TFS/CodePlex.
What am I looking for? Anyone that wants to help of course, but if anyone has some WPF (or for that matter *wants* some) and/or Windows Control hosting experience then sign on up.
My goal is to provide a system that will allow:
1) Testing Exposure - Get *anyone* to test your software/modules and provide useful information without having to do a lot of work. Reduce the # of steps it takes to record a bug/request a feature/file a complaint/whatever. I think with WPF and of course any # of communiations structures we can build a user control that allows this to be done. Well, I know we can.
2) Sandboxing / Multiple QA environments - in promotion of Agile, allow QA to publish builds at their leisure and make it as automated as possible. Also provide tools for validating that the envirnment was proper established.
3) Provide valuable information to a more powerful management system - I'm not going to rewrite TFS or CodePlex. They can perform metrics on work items, change sets, etc, this will help dump more data in there for more accurate results.
4) Help Desk / Knowledge Base - Really don't know a lot about either of these, but think it would be awesome to take lessons learned or bug resolution/work arounds and publish it to something more common.
This is a very high level view, a short example of what I would like to accomplish, I have a lot more detail available and will continue to do so. I would like to use a real DNN module (perhaps a core module) and move it to codeplex (not necessarily *officially*, but something to give value, Like MAnnouncments or something to that effect). Accomplish everything from automated release publishing, to validation of entrance and exit criteria (automate tasks that we can, like validating a package, a tool that could be used by *many* dnn developers). I'll keep it short on here, but hopefully some of you see where I'm going.
Sorry for my rant. If your interested drop me a line. I think it will be a fun project, and maybe we could build something really useful to the developer community.