VSTS2010 as a modeling tool

Earlier this week I had the opportunity to take the VSTS beta out for a test drive as a modeling tool. My task was to suggest and describe possible scenarios of usage for an external vendor. Luckily I had a virtual environment with vsts2010 beta at hand (I never leave home without it :) ) So I took vsts out for a spin as my modeling tool.

Communicating at an abstract level
The task was really to communicate, at a high abstraction level, complex scenarios and interactions between the user, part of our system and part of the vendor's system. After thinking about it for a while I decided to try a sequence diagrams to illustrate the interactions. So I started creating a new sequence diagram. Doing so was quite easy and in a couple of minutes I had my first sequence ready. But drawing a sequence diagram is only usefull if you can publish it. In order to do so I simply copied and pasted the diagram into my word document.

VSTS2010 as a basic UML drawing tool
As a drawing tool for basic UML illustration I must say VSTS2010 looks really good. Of course there are always things you miss or wish for, especially in a version one beta. My biggest issue was that I wasn’t able to change the icon for the objects in the head of the lifeline. The first overall impression is that it is easy to work with and have a good feeling as a drawing tool.

VSTS2010 as a requirements modeling tool
As it felt good as a drawing tool I got curious if it could be used more as a modeling tool in a project. One of the first things in a project is in most cases modeling requirements in some way.

In VSTS2010 modeling requirements is mainly done by creating use case diagrams. Once again it is fast and easy to create a use case diagram and populate it with actors, use case and systems boundaries. In VSTS2010 you can create (or link to ) a user story work item (or any other work item). This gives you a direct link from the high level model to the detailed requirements documentation. Another feature in VSTS2010 is that you can add artifacts to your use case diagram and link them to either work items or files in general. My colleague Clemens Reijnen wrote a post on this Enrich VSTA 2010 Use case diagram with SketchFlow Screens

Summary and reflections
I have many times over the years reflected over the lack of a good tools, or perhaps good enough tools, for UML modeling. Either you had a graphic library like Visio or a highly specialized tool for design with a steep learning curve, like Rational Rose/XDE. I hope and it feels like the VSTS2010 UML modeling tools could finally fill that gap and provide something in between Visio and the specialized tools. Let’s hope Microsoft package this so it can widely spread and used from all vsts editions.
Speaking about filling holes, I’m also impressed with the way it’s possible to tie together requirements modeling, specification and even test, out of the box in vsts2010.

In the next post I will take a look if and how the UML modeling tools in VSTS2010 can be used for analyzing and designing a system.