In this blog we’ll look at how the Exia Process can help with project planning. I’m using the current Beta version of the Exia Process which is available for download from our web site at www.exia.net.

By the way, we’re trying to design the Exia Process to be as fast and easy to use as possible. If you’re reluctant to try it because you think the installation is long and complex, please give it a try. There’s no database installation (all data is stored in Team Foundation Server), and we use click-once technology to install. So the installation is very fast and painless. If you have the .NET Framework 4 on your machine, you can install the Exia Process in about a minute. If you don’t have the .NET Framework 4, then it will get installed automatically as part of installation. Even then, the install is very quick and painless.

Getting Back to Basics

Team Foundation Server and Visual Studio are powerful tools. But have you ever wondered where to add basic project information like vision, mission, objectives and milestones? You can’t. In fact, you can’t even access the project description outside the SharePoint site.

We think it’s really important in a project to have an easily accessible area which expresses these important aspects of the project, so that at the very least, people know what they’re building and why. We also think it’s important that the place where this information is entered and the place where people go to read it looks nice. That way people will take pride in writing it, and will look at it often. This information should become sort of the Project Charter.

So we made sure that the Exia Process has a place for essential project information.

Capturing Project Information

Fire up the Exia Process and click Ctrl-G to bring up the Guidance. Click on the Elements dropdown and click the Base Process check box to make sure the process is in its simplest form. Optionally, double-click the Guidance window top bar if you like to make the window maximize inside the Exia Process. (By the way, you can double-click again to restore it. And while we’re on the topic, you can drag the top bar while it’s maximized to resize it while the bottom right stays pinned, so that way it’s easy to tuck into the corner.)

Now click the Start element. The help for the Start element appears on the right. A description is displayed, followed by a list of the tasks that you need to do to start a project.

Click the task, Capture the Vision.

Pop-up help appears, guiding you through how capture the vision.

Follow the instructions to bring up the Project Properties.

Now we can edit the project properties. As you can see in the screen shot, I’m editing the properties for the Exia Process. We’ve tried to capture the essence of the project in solid, simple and easily understandable terms.

Results

The Exia Process development team is virtual and works in several different offices. We find that it’s very important to have a single central place to capture the essence of the project. It keeps everyone pulling in the same direction. It might seem trivial to some people because it’s just text, and simple text at that. But I think that’s the whole point. If you don’t have something simple, easy to understand and concrete that people can gravitate around, how are you going to ever inspire a team? On the other hand, if you do take the time to capture the essence of a project in a few compelling words, then it’s amazing how people will gravitate around the vision.

Technical Details

For the technically curious, you might be wondering where these project properties are stored, since Team Foundation Server doesn’t support project properties. They’re stored in the generic property section of the TFS 2010 metadata store, and grouped with a moniker which is the TFS project name.