The Colorful and Gray World of Engineering Management

You are new to testing. You are sitting in front of your computer staring at the software you need to test. What do you do? Let's look at testing from a very basic level and maybe this will help you make progress. If you don't "get it" at this level,...

Picture this visual. You are standing in a field on a foggy day and a rope is dropped in front of you from the sky. You can't see where it is coming from but you hear someone ask you if you want to experience the unknown, be challenged more than ever...

This is what I aim for in my teams - no surprises. That means my team members do their best to not surprise me and I also aim to not surprise them. Surprises are great when it comes to birthdays at home with family and friends. But in corporate life,...

I have a neat story to tell about something that happened last week and how you can apply problem-solving skills to almost anything in life. Actually this example will show what happens when you don't apply these skills properly. Those who know...

Speaking up in meetings seems like such an easy and somewhat insignificant task. But in fact, many people do not say a word while in meetings and never think about the ramifications of this. No matter what profession you are in within the software industry...

I've been the manager for many different teams. Some call themselves Test and some call themselves QA. Personally, I've found it easier to just use those terms interchangeably. But for many, there are two very distinct schools of thought about what a...

Anyone who knows me knows that metrics are very important to me. I mostly focus on QA metrics, but I like seeing metrics for most of the things we do to ship products. For QA metrics, some of the most important ones are around # of test cases, % automated...

In many engineering teams, having tribal knowledge is normal and accepted. This is when information about a product, process, or technology owned by the team is described verbally from person to person, release after release, without writing it down....

Recently, I met with one of the people that I mentor. She was concerned because she found people across the company with more senior titles, jobs, and more responsibility than her, but they didn't have more experience or better skills. Somehow, they were...

Here's an interesting question I ask people just to see how many different and creative answers I get (especially in interviews). Let's say you are on a project with a fixed budget and a fixed due date. Assuming a waterfall software development methodology...

The last few months have been a staffing challenge for me and my team. I lost a quarter of my team in a 3 month time period due to reorgs….and I couldn't replace any of them. Due to the economic climate, things are tight and that includes headcount. Then...

As a team leader or manager, people will look to you to describe the direction the team is heading in the future - the strategy. Here is a surprising definition from www.dictionary.com that makes me wonder how similar managing a group of engineers is...

We recently did a realignment on my team due to a change of priority of projects. This was a good experience as we moved projects between QA leads so that our workload was more evenly balanced. And then we moved people around from projects that were getting...

Are you just dying to get promoted? How about seeing your individual engineering role turn into a lead role? Many people focus on that next step in their career, and with good reason. We all look for ways to grow and challenge ourselves. But many times...

Today I was recognized on another website that focuses specifically on Engineering Management. I'm happy to be listed as one of the top 25 Engineering Management blogs of 2012. Check it out here: www.engineering-management.net/top-engineering-management...

There you are sitting on your death bed. Yep, you had a good life. And although many people have come to visit you and feel sad for you, you aren't sad. You are content. You did absolutely everything you wanted to do and had a ton of happiness along the...

Since Windows7 released today, I think it is a good time to reflect back on my experience in the Windows Client team and working on the different versions of Windows. Vista and Windows7 were done much differently. When Vista shipped and we were making...

Many engineers, especially testers, ask me how they can grow their careers and how I know when they should be promoted. I've learned over the years that there are really three key focus areas that show that an engineer is growing. These are in addition...

As I mentioned in a previous entry, it's review time at Microsoft. I already gave my guidelines on how employees should write their comments. Now it's time for my guidelines on how managers should write their evaluations of their employees. Many guidelines...

As a manager, hiring good people is a necessary skill to build a highly-functional team and continue to be seen as a credible manager. Recruiting can be difficult depending on the time of year or the position you are trying to fill. As the hiring manager...

I was recently asked a question from an engineer on whether she should find a mentor. It seems like many people have mentors so how does one determine if they need one or not? Or does everyone need one and by not having one, are you missing out on something...

Did you know that this is the most depressing time of the year? It's been proven with equations (for all you mathematicians out there). Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Monday_(date) I can feel it at work. Everyone is halfway between stressed...

15 years ago today was my first day at Microsoft. In the last 15 years, a lot has changed. Here is the way things were 15 years ago: There was no IE. There was no Outlook. There was no concept of mobile or digital media. There was no Office, just...

Do you have a game face and do you use it? Do you know what a game face is and how you can apply it to work? The dictionary definition is "the neutral or intense facial expression of a determined and serious sports player". Picture a losing basketball...

Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a land far, far away, there were two teams, umm, I mean villages. They were run by one manager, I mean one powerful king. He didn't have many rules for his villagers, just one, "do whatever it takes to ship". For...