Commitments - "This is what I plan to do the next year and how you will know whether I am doing it" - are a vital part of the career development process here at Microsoft. Annual reviews and promotions are largely based on one's execution against one's commitments as well. Theoretically some or all of a person's commitments are aligned with their manager's commitments, which are in turn aligned with their manager's commitments, and so on all the way up the line to Steve Ballmer. I have never done that. My commitments reflect what I am interested in doing. That my commitments generally more-or-less align with my group's goals is in some respects an accident. Several of us senior testers post our commitments on an internal website so that other testers can see all of the things we do. It occurred to me that people outside of Microsoft might find this interesting too. Forthwith: my commitments for the next year. 1. Establish Test Automation On Macintosh Execution Plan: Define the Semantic Read More...

Because the Silverlight 2 RC that was released is aimed primarily at developers wishing to update their projects to the final version of Silverlight 2 due out sometime this year, we didn’t provide an update to Deep Zoom Composer because most everyone...( read more ) Read More...

In Expression Blend 2, when you choose to edit a code file or insert an event handler for an event, by default, Visual Studio will be launched. If you have multiple versions of Visual Studio (VS) installed, though, you may find that a different version...( read more ) Read More...

Do you know the unique value you add to your team? I used to think I did, until a series of unfortunate events showed me that I did not. That set me off on a splurge of introspection regarding what I do and why I do it. Now I believe I really do understand the unique value I add to my team. Here is how I reached this point, and how you can reach it yourself if you are not already there. Some time back I realized I was unhappy with my job. I was not enjoying it anymore, except for a very few parts. I always intend my job to be play, and I never see any reason to continue in one which has become work, so I started looking for a new job. After searching awhile I found a job which I felt fit the bill and I moved. After a while, though, I realized I was unhappy with my job. I was not enjoying it, except for a very few parts. I had not been there for long, and I wondered what had gone wrong. Had I not understood what I was getting into? Had the job changed under me? Had I changed under the job? Read More...

I was reading Keith Braithwaite's website recently in preparation for asking him Five Questions . One paper in particular caught my eye, wherein Keith describes several case studies where formally specifying a part of a system was difficult or impossible, whereas listing out a bunch of examples of how the feature should work was straightforward. I like this idea, which I've dubbed Example-Based Testing. While some developers argue that their unit tests are the specification, I have seen few unit tests which I can translate into a useful model of a system as easily as I can translate even the most mediocre specification. I am intrigued by the idea of specifying a system by a bunch of examples rather than a bunch of "The system shall" statements. Keith Stobie , who has been intriguing me with his success in using model-based testing to test Windows' protocols, recently told me that his team was doing automated testing. I was a bit bemused at this, because automated testing is rather a Big Read More...

My one, lifelong hobby is reading. My house is full of bookcases and my floors are covered with books that don't fit. I read a lot of non-fiction: history, science, philosophy. I always tell people I haven't read sci-fi since my early 20s, which really means I only read 2 or 3 sci-fi novels a month. Typical geek reading really. One of my biggest challenges with travelling is choosing what books to take. I like to travel light, and I've gone on trips where half the weight of my luggage was books...and of course, none of them taste good on the trip so I have to buy other ones. In February, I bought a Kindle to take on the airplane, but (much to my surprise) started reading it on the bus and now prefer Kindle books for reading in bed. The weight is perfect. I've loaded my Kindle with classic "Big" books that I can dip into when I want to. For example, Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" at 700 pages; all 3 volumes of Stephenson's "System of the World" trilogy, each about 600 pages; "War Read More...

I ended up being quoted a few times in this recent article about modern web app technologies. I’ll provide a bit more context here. …Microsoft sees things differently, believing that programmers are best off ditching HTML and JavaScript as soon as Web applications start getting rich. "It's amazing what people have done with HTML, which was never intended to do rich Internet applications. And Flash was originally created for lightweight animation--literally for Mickey Mouse on the Web," said Brad Becker, who as group product manager for rich client platforms at Microsoft helps oversee Silverlight. "But these technologies were designed for something else, and people are really hacking them to do more” Each of these technologies had an original purpose that it was intended to fulfill and I believe all of them are good at doing what they were intended to do. This point is something I hope people really think about. It reminds me of the fact that I once sawed a branch off a tree Read More...

I have another Tester Spotlight posted! Pop over to Tester Center - via Channel 9 - to see my interview with Ivo Manolov , Test Manager for the Windows Presentation Foundation team. Read More...