Enterprise Architect Visual Studio (VSTS) Integration

Model and gather requirements in Enterprise ArchitectIntegrate EA with Visual Studio / TFS

Theresa RuhnkeTeam LeaderMicrosoft Technology CentreStatistics Canada

Be able to answer these questions

What features, use cases, fixes are included with every application release?

Is the work we are planning the highest priority?

Does that bug apply to more than one use case?

When was that approved?Is that object reusable for this other use case?and so on...

Trace and share work, from start to finish

Use these 3 tools together to be able to answer those questions on any given day. Key: Get buy in from your team

EA

VSTFS

Team Buy In

Topic Overview

Use Case modelling approach Requirements Generating a test suite Integrating with Team foundation server Customizations & Add-in TFS Query Research possibilities

Use Cases with Structured Scenarios

Model your Use Cases, gather requirements Build a quick Use Case diagram

Linking Requirements

Categories of requirements (business, functional, supplementary, custom)

Linking capability (matrix view, model view)

Structured Specification Its a more formal version of the “User

story” Describes the flow of a Use case in a

step-by-step fashion Explores alternate and exception paths Tip: Helpful tool to manage the scope of

the Use Case Let’s look at the structured scenario for

“Display Account Balance”

Why create an Activity Diagram?

Facilitate discussion between subject matter experts and system analysts

Can be used to generate test cases that cover ◦ Basic path◦ Alternative path◦ Exception path

So simple and fast to generate

Use your activity diagram to generate your test suite Test cases can be as detailed as needed by your

work unit quality assurance needs Freedom to customize the test suite apart from

the UC Tip: if the UC goes through a major revision, your

Test suite will also have to be revisited. My project approach:◦ Emphasis was on testing each alternate path◦ Organize and group the individual test cases under a

parent test suite. One test suite per Use case.

Create a test suite from the Activity Diagram Open your UC to the structured scenario

tab and choose external test case. Change the stereotype to test suite Import the steps using the activity

diagram Generate more test cases. Generally, we

created one test case per path.

Example of test suite

In the “Display account balance” UC example, there were 4 paths we chose to test in the activity diagram.

Summary

• Model• Structured

Scenarios

Use Case Generate Activity

Diagram Test CasesTest Suite

Use Case & Test workflow

Useful tools for tracking, organizing, monitoring and planning work for software development Team Foundation Server Jira Etc.

Let’s integrate them with our EA repository

Query the EA repository

The EA repository can be queried by a knowledgeable t-SQL programmer

Tip: <control> + <space> Blog tutorial: Harvesting the power of EA’s SQL

searches

EA custom add-in – with V9.3 of EA

The user forums are a great resource

A question posted here was answered by a fellow EA developer that night

Tutorial: Create your first C# Enterprise Architect addin in 10 minutes

The complete Enterprise Architect C# add-in template Testing and debugging your Enterprise Architect C# Add-In Tutorial: Deploy your Enterprise Architect C# add-in with an MSI

package

Our add-in

We created an add-in that would export test cases from the “approved” package within our EA repository, including the steps

We then imported the test cases into our Team Foundation Server project

Test Cases with steps

EArepository

Worksheet with test

cases

MS Excel

Test CasesWith steps

TFS

Team Foundation Server Create customized Work Item Types My team created the following Use Case workflow

In the beginning, when we were learning each stage took longer. Each stage shortened as we gained experience

Tip : don’t go overboard!

Linking TFS work items

Organize your work Know what is in every deployment Powerful linking, traceability of work to

requirements

Use Case Test CaseBug/

EnhancementBuild

Example Link a Test Case to a Use Case Link a Bug to a Test Case

Traceability report

Parent/child – power of linking

Team Buy In – Lessons learned

This solution works well if everyone on the team participates

Do demos early on to make sure everyone is comfortable

Reports are only valid if the team uses the tool to report their updates

Tip: Keep your tracking as light as possible – the bare minimum needed for communication and planning

Version control of EA with TFS

Version control settings, viewing the history of an element.

vs. built in baseline Best practice: force a comment, make

sure its descriptive

Research possibilities Change the add-in so that the source

package isn’t hardcoded

Make an add-in that exports Use cases to the TFS user story to see how they align

Install MDG plug-in, which allows to browse EA repository from within Visual Studio

Experiment with more custom templates

Big Thank You to my Team Thank you to my teammates, who contributed

many pieces of this research: Jen MacDonald, Li Wang, Eric Chowns, Martin Brière Marc Bryar, Stephanie Lansbergen, Steeve Mallet, Harold Craswell, James Mullins, and all of the Cygnus section

Demo

EA TFS

Statcan EA User Group

Interested in creating an EA User group here at statcan?

E-mail : Theresa.Ruhnke@statcan.gc.ca

Questions

TFS portal created as a reference material for this demo

http://f6stctfs1/sites/EA_TFS_Demo/Dashboards/ProjectDashboard_wss.aspx (available to statcan employees only as it is on an internal nework)