VS 2012: Can not show Test Explorer

For quite some time I was working with VS 2012 RC and everything was fine. But all of a sudden I could not open the Test Explorer. I got a MEF error message as shown below:

The main error message was

The composition produces a single composition error. The root cause is provided below. Review the CompositionException.Errors property for more detailed information. 

1) Value cannot be null.
Paramter name: testPlatform

Followed by further error messages. I tried to repair Visual Studio installation, installed different test platform adapters but nothing helped. I found the solution in at Stack Overflow, but very hidden down below, so I repeat it here:

Under C:\Users\Tobias\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\ComponentModelCache delete the Microsoft.VisualStudio.Default.cache file. That does the trick for me!

Thanks GertGregers and happy testing.

A self made agile taskboard for TFS Express

In the early announcements of TFS Express it was stated that it would contain the agile Taskboard, but not the sprint / backlog planning facilities. But neither in the beta release nor in the RC you could see the taskboard.

According to a tweet from Buck Hodges the taskboard will not be included into TFS Express as a tradoff for being free. While this is sad, because the taskboard was great, I understand that it is needed to cut out some features in the free version - and the features left are still a great deal!

But because the taskboard is great, and because I thought it could not be that hard, I started to write my own. Currently it is a WPF application and not a website, because I am more familar with WPF than ASP.NET MVC. And after a few hours I had my first prototype working!

It is not as nice as the one from Microsoft and it misses some of the features - but it is a starting point. Here is what it can do for you:

• Configure your TFS / Team Project / Iteration in a config file (no UI for that)
• Displays BacklogItems as lines and the according tasks in the states "To Do", "In Progress", "Done"
• You can enter the remaining effort in the textbox in the lower right corner (save on LostFocus)
• You can drag from "To Do" -> "In Progress",  "In Progress" -> "Done", "To Do" -> "Done" and "Done" -> "To Do" ("Done" -> "In Progress" is forbidden)
• If you drag to "Done" it sets the effort to 0

Here are the limitations:

• If you enter wrong TFS Url / Team Project / Iteration the app will crash
• All operations are synchronous, so you have a delay at start and on every drag 
• Can not drag from Done to In Progress due to the fact that there must be a rest duration
• No validation errors are shown if an operation fail

If you want to try it, feel free to download. I have not battle tested this a lot, so it comes without any warranty, as is etc. Use it at your own risk.

If you like it, or you have any suggestions, let me know. By the time I will also release the source code.

Happy Daily Scrum-ing...