I opened this blog half a year ago. But my product release cycles didn't give me chance to start writing on this blog till now. The earlier release started from last November and shipped in late this April; the later release started from March, before the earlier one shipped. It was crazy, indeed.
My work life in Microsoft as a test lead (was SDET, aka software development engineer in test) is exciting and interesting. I believe I would be regretful if today I didn't start writing something and share with others. I hope I can "write something worth reading" (Benjamin Franklin).
I'd love to start with answering the question "What made you choose a career in Test?". That's the question that I was asked when being intereviewed by a Microsoft internal newsletter last year. I told them,
What made you choose a career in Test?
I like the responsibility and the challenges! Test is an unsung hero in Microsoft products - like a defender in a soccer game, it’s our role to save the day when a mistake is made. Other teams often take the plaudits but it’s up to us to make sure the product is 100% ready for launch. If we make mistakes, the whole team loses out!
What do you find challenging about your role?
Working as a tester presents unique challenges. While a developer can be certain that all project requirements have been implemented, a tester can never be sure they’ve found all the bugs. Theoretically we never know whether we’ve done enough testing; part of the challenge of working in Test is making a call on whether the product is good to go. Because of that all testers require great maturity, self-confidence and professionalism. It’s an extremely challenging role and I love that!
That's what Professional Pessimist means. We testers are pessimist. We look at the dark side of the life. We pointed out the risks, the chance of failure, the hidden cost, the flip side of a design, etc., while developers believe their code is bug free and program managers are making market, partners and executives feel excited by the future. We testers are the one who speak something unpopular. But we are professional. We don't panic, we don't make subjective groundless statement, our highest priority is still to help the company make money (in a sustainable and cost-effective way). We use data and facts. We make the right compromise and tradeoff between quality and shipping something.
I used to have a technical blog at http://blog.joycode.com/mvm, which started about five years ago. But I felt I'd better move to MSDN Blog, because here it's more stable, more accessible from worldwide, higher rank in search engine results, though the owner of http://blog.joycode.com, Hongchao Wang, who is a Microsoft employee too, is still my good friend.
I will be mainly writing this blog in English. I am Chinese, I was born in Shanghai. I have travelled to many countries around the world (including many times in the states), but never lived aboard for more than a couple months. My personal blog is at http://home.wangjianshuo.com/mvm/, mainly in Chinese.
