What a year it\u2019s been so far. I\u2019ve been away from blogging, and I\u2019m not quite sure if I\u2019m back yet, but I expect so\u2026and here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n
The project I\u2019m working on at Microsoft is no longer a secret. I\u2019ve never blogged a lot about product specifics, but since a big chunk of my work for the last year has been way off my normal path (linux, java, etc.), I just didn\u2019t find a lot to share (not necessarily because I wanted to help keep the project under wraps, but because pushing through n00b questions on tools and language constructs probably isn\u2019t very exciting for my typical audience).<\/p>\n
There\u2019s also been a lot of change \u2013 net little change in what I do day to day. For the last several years, my role (which many wouldn\u2019t call testing) has been to figure out what\u2019s not getting done, and make sure it gets done. With Xbox (and Lync before that), that meant helping the test team \u2013 either by coaching or mentoring, or developing strategy, or building tools, or asking questions about the product, or whatever needed to be done \u2013 by myself, or through others. <\/p>\n
That (figuring out what needs to get done) is exactly what I do for my current team. But on this team, those holes and gaps have been mostly about improving our builds, CI, testing, and other parts of our systems that make our build->measure->learn loop more efficient and effective. I help with testing too, but in different ways than in the past. <\/p>\n
I\u2019m going to give a keynote at STAR Canada next month where I\u2019ll talk a bit about what I do, and how it\u2019s changed over the last few years. I\u2019ll also try to dispel the silly myths \/ bad interpretations that MS doesn\u2019t do testing anymore. As I develop that talk, I expect I\u2019ll come up with some good blog fodder to share and to help develop ideas. Crap \u2013 now that I think about it, I should have that talk a lot further along than it is right now. I better put some time on that right now.<\/p>\n