Checking in on the new gig

Today was my 14th (business) day on the communicator team. I’m into sort of a groove and having a good time. My job today is so drastically different than what I was doing just a few months ago that I thought I’d share a few things so everyone would know what I’m up to.

I’ve managed to initiate a few cool projects and get myself injected into a few more. One thing I really love about this team is the amount of trust my manager and teammates have in me and my ideas. Last week, for example, I was pointing out some perceived flaws in one of our processes – along with my ideas of how the processes should work.Thinking out loud, I said, “it would be cool to do a case study and gather some data on this.” I already have the details and participants lined up and should have the study done in the next week or so. It’s really exciting to see things more so fast.

Another principal sdet on the team and I are starting a program that will enable testers on the team to step away from the bulk of their day jobs for up to 4 weeks. This will enable testers to work on projects they may not get a chance to otherwise – and, of course, some work gets done that wouldn’t get done otherwise.

I’m also giving a series of brown bag talks on various testing topics. You all know that I’m a fan of the five orders of ignorance and this is a great opportunity for me to help people learn what they don’t know. I’m also heavily involved in the interviews for new team members – it’s fun to interview people for testing positions (in EE, I interviewed people to be teachers and advocates for test).

And finally, as a big proponent of test code quality, I’m unleashing a boatload of static analysis tools on the test tree. This is a nice project because it gives me a chance to do a cursory review of all of the test code in the tree – the end result will be higher quality tests and tools – tests and tools that can be trusted to provide accurate results. The topic of static analysis is worth another post someday – but I’ll wait until I’m done with this little project first.

I think that covers it – so far so good!