New kid on the blogk
So I'm the newest Microsoftee alternately enlightening you, scaring you, and boring you to tears with the gory details of my daily life at Microsoft. I am a Test Technical Lead, which means I set the technical direction of my team: how do we automate our testing, what our test automation infrastructure looks like, and how do we plan, prioritize, schedule, and build that infrastructure. This of course is pretty much inseparable from similar questions for the tests themselves, which means close cooperation with the other leads as we figure out how to build out the infrastructure and complete all our testing while still meeting our deadlines.
Mentoring my team is another big part of my job; my ultimate goal is to raise their skills to the point that my function is redundant. I also spend quite a bit of time interfacing with other teams across Microsoft, both sharing tools and techniques we are using with those teams and learning the same from them. This networking is particularly important in my quest to get as much of our automation stack as possible from elsewhere so that my team can focus on building those parts that are unique to us (where "unique" means "specific to our product and/or invented by us").
As if that weren't enough, I have my share of features to test as well. Some days I wish this wasn't so, but on balance I am happy it is. Having my own feature to test keeps me in tune with what my team is doing -- if some tool or process is hard to use, I feel the pain just like they do. More importantly, though, having an area to automate ensures I get to do at least *some* coding each week! <g/>
By now you're probably wondering which product I am working on. I can't tell you. Really. We aren't even telling people under NDA yet. I wish I could. It's brand new, 100% C# and Avalon, and it's gonna knock your socks off.
Since I can't talk about my product, I'll use other apps in my examples, especially Visio. Why Visio? Two reasons: first, I was a tester there for five years or so, so I have some experience with it. Second, there are some vague similarities between it and my current product. (More than "they are both Windows apps", but only a little.)
So that's me. I'll be talking about all sorts of things, but generally they will have some remote connection to testing. If I'm feeling especially creative, you'll be treated to another of my songs. (Or, depending on your point of view, threatened with murderous intent by a hacked-up weapon.) You have been warned.
*** Comments, questions, feedback? Contact me at michhu at microsoft dot com.