Community Server

Tired...

ronpih — Sat, 17 May 2008 09:03:00 GMT

It's been a long week and I'm happy to finally reach the weekend.

Long Time No Write

ronpih — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 07:20:00 GMT

I've always been a sporadic blogger with multiple blogs. Ironic, isn't it? Lately, I've been posting more at my other blog, although I'm far from prolific over there. One problem is that if I have 2 blogs, how will they be different? I haven't really had an answer to that. I guess one way to think about it is my other blog is my work blog and this is my personal blog. Yeah, that's it. Nothing personal to say tonight, just this little bit of musing...

Nerd Test

ronpih — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 20:52:00 GMT

2008

ronpih — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 21:33:00 GMT

2007 was a year of change for me and I'm looking forward to 2008. By far, the biggest change that happened last year was that I lost 97 lbs. I'm still not totally where I want to be but I'm darn close. And actually, if I stayed at this weight I'd be happy.

The key to the success I've had so far is that I was ready and made a commitment to do what it takes to make it happen. All the other good stuff flowed from that. Another key that came after the commitment was finding a program that worked for me. I'm not sure, though, that the program will work for everyone. Being ready and committed were far more important for me than the particular program. One realization that came to me early on in the program is that I was responsible for doing it (not the program).

The big challenge in this area for 2008 will be to maintain the weight loss I've accomplished so far. And the folks from the program have told me already that will be the biggest challenge. One reason I chose this program is that once you reach your goal, the program continues for 6 more months at a minimum and if you backslide or have other problems they work with you to solve them. So, it's with excitement and some trepidation that I look forward to 2008.

Random Notes while reading http://leansoftwareengineering.com - II

ronpih — Sat, 15 Dec 2007 08:17:00 GMT

Is this just another Agile blog?
Hmmm... Deming and Ohno over Ward and Kent? Customers over developers? Sounds different (and interesting).

Release early, release often
Jim McCarthy? Interesting - I referred to the VC++ in the mid-90's in my previous post, which was the time of Jim McCarthy on that team.

OK, based on what's said in this post I get why the earlier post talked about software services and online applications. Lots of new concepts and ideas here: minimum deployable feature set, ideal final result, minimal testable customer value, minimize work in process.

Schedule is orthogonal to workflow
I'm not sure I grok the whole import of this post but one thing that does resonate is the minimalism of Scrum. I've seen multiple instances of people tying practices to Scrum that I didn't get from reading the literature. Most of those efforts could not be called successes. I like that the folks here are not taking the definition as something to be followed like a recipe but are looking at the essence and trying to improve it. Kind of like what they're suggesting with the software engineering process itself they're proposing.

More later...

Random Notes while reading http://leansoftwareengineering.com

ronpih — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 02:49:00 GMT

I'm not at home right now and I'm using a computer that isn't mine so this post contains notes to myself from reading the posts on the Lean Software Engineering blog.

About the authors
I remember Corey Ladas from his posts on the internal Agile Development alias at Microsoft.

What is Lean Software Engineering?
This post posits that packaged or integrated software is from the "old world" and equates small increments and high frequency delivery with software services and online applications. I wonder if there isn't a way to do packaged/integrated software delivery with small increments and high frequency. When I joined the VC++ team, they were operating under what was called the subscription model - releasing quarterly with one major release guaranteed every year. This was back in the mid-90's. That model was abondon when the management that spawned it left the team and VC++ was merged under the larger Visual Studio umbrella. Maybe CTP's are the first step to a more frequent delivery model for large, integrated software products?

"The new model of software development promises to deliver no more and no less than what the customer wants, when the customer wants it." - When I read this line, the first question I have is "What if you have millions of customers?" There may be a lot of different wants there...

There's a nice frame from Corey of inventory accumulating at the beginning, middle, and end of a development process in response to a question in the comments.

I met with Don Reinertsen for a couple of hours today
I agree with their perplexity...

more later....

Microsoft Repositions

ronpih — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 17:58:00 GMT

Interesting

52.2 Manage It!

ronpih — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 08:00:00 GMT

Book #2 is Manage It! by Johanna Rothman. For this one, I wrote an Amazon review.

52.1 The Dip

ronpih — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 05:10:00 GMT

Last year on my birthday I decided to count the number of books I read during the year. Somewhere in the middle, I lost track. Well last week was my birthday so I figured I'd try it again this year. The first book for this year is a little book from Seth Godin called The Dip.

How do you know when to quit something and when to stick it out? Sometimes you should quit and sometimes you shouldn't. This book lays out a model on how to decide when to do what. This was a quick read and presented a useful model.

2 blogs

ronpih — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 06:15:00 GMT

I used to have more but now I'm down to 2 blog, this one and the one at http://blogs.msdn.com/ronpih. Why 2? Well, this one is on my private web site and the other one is Microsoft provided. I haven't thought too much about what to do with each one until today but I guess the other one will be mostly related to work and this one will be mostly not related to work.

As things are now, it looks like the other one will have more meat. This one will be more sporadic and scattered. I guess I'm saying the other one will be more appealing to most folks than this one. Unless something interesting happens personally. Which may happen. Sometime. In the future. Maybe...

Chrome

ronpih — Sat, 26 May 2007 16:58:00 GMT

This morning I'm listening to an album I haven't listened to in while and I have to admit that right now, it's my favorite album. That album is Chrome and the artist is the group Catherine Wheel. Catherine Wheel was never a mega-super popular band but, for me, their music is the best. Every album is great. And Chrome is so great I just had to mention it today.

MSDN Testing Forum??

ronpih — Thu, 17 May 2007 16:50:00 GMT

(via the Braidy Tester)

This is very cool. I wonder why I didn't hear about it internally?

The Context-Driven School

ronpih — Sun, 13 May 2007 03:21:00 GMT

I guess if I have to identify myself as belonging to some group, it would have to be the Context-Driven School. The ideas behind this group resonate with me because they avoid the dogmatic, the prescribed, the unthinking adherence to a set of predefined rules. The seven basic principles talk to the value of practices in context; there are no best practices. They talk to the value of people working together. They talk to the coopertative exercising of judgement and skill. These principles are valuable to me and, by adhering to them, give value to projects I and my team work on.

Paul Gerrard wails on Jonathan Kohl

ronpih — Sun, 06 May 2007 03:12:00 GMT

(via James Bach's Blog)

Initial (potentially muddy) thoughts on this: After reading Kohl's original post on post-Agile and his FAQ I have to say that I totally agree with what I think he's saying - consider all practices and use what makes sense for you. The term "post-Agile" doesn't resonate with me, however, since it doesn't say what it is. In the first post, he defines post-Agilism as "Process Skepticism". Why not call it that? Well, that term doesn't really say what it is either. You are skeptical of big-P process. I can get behind that idea. I've seen teams crash and burn from blindly following process. But then what? Again, what Kohl writes about this resonates with me but the name he applies to it doesn't seem to define what the result of it is.

Now that Agile is mainstream some are looking for the next thing. But how many "next things" do we have to go through to realize there's no real destination; only a continuing journey. Or maybe what it is is: Consider different ideas and do what makes sense in your situation. What would we call that?

Gerrard seems to be violently agreeing with what I see as the intent behind Kohl's posts. It feels to that there's more context to this than I as someone passing through and reading it know about.

Need to Catch Up

ronpih — Thu, 03 May 2007 07:16:00 GMT

I was just thinking today that I have a lot to learn in my new job. And all stuff that I've ignored for years: SQL, Office, Sharepoint. Gotta roll up the sleeves...

New Home

ronpih — Tue, 01 May 2007 21:39:00 GMT

Well, I've moved buildings and am now unpacking and setting up machines, etc. All quiet on the eastern front...

Which Programming Language Are You?

ronpih — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 21:19:00 GMT

Me (uh-oh...):

Which Programming Language are You?

(via Brian Marick)

It's Saturday

ronpih — Sat, 28 Apr 2007 21:46:00 GMT

...and I'm packing up my office for Monday's move. Before I got started, I thought, "this is a good opportunity to go through all my stuff and throw away/recycle the stuff I know that I'll no longer need/use. But laziness is setting in. Now I'm just thinking, "those boxes over there that I never unpacked: I'll just take them to the new office." Then I don't have to open them, sort through them, etc. Just stick a label on them and they'll come along with me.

When I thought that I realized that's the way it is with all deferred debt. Product bugs, crufty code, etc. And if we give in to the natural tendency we end up dragging along a big pile of stuff that hampers our ability to be agile. And it's so easy. Especially for someone lazy like me.

So will I give in? I don't know yet. It's lunch time. I'll put off the decision until after lunch.

Debugging Setup Test Automation

ronpih — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 07:00:00 GMT

I spent about 3 hours today with a couple of other guys trying to figure out what was messing things up with our test automation. There were no visible problems that we could see but after setup was done a bunch of files were missing from the computer. We're not sure we totally solved the problem but one thing we did find was an example of the things that could go wrong with UI test automation.

The component that we use to set up our program drives the UI of our setup program. The setup program itself installs a bunch of components, each one of which is provided by a different product or technology team. In order to determine whether setup is done it looks for the words "Finish Page" in the caption of the setup program's top-level window. Well, what we saw tonight just before heading home was that one of the component in the middle of setup did something to change the top-level windows caption to something that contained "Finish Page" but the setup wasn't done yet. The setup driver component then clicked on the 2nd component on the setup program's page. Instead of "OK," that button at the time the driver saw "Finish Page" in the caption was the "Cancel" button. This brought up an unexpected confirmation dialog and things went rapidly downhill from there.

Ugh. There must be a better way...

Jeff Atwood on .NET Rocks!

ronpih — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 06:43:00 GMT

I'm currently listening to the most recent .NET Rocks! show. Jeff Atwood's blog is Coding Horror. I'm about 1/2 way through and he's talking about making a commitment to blog every so often. Kind of like what I'm trying to (but not succeeding very well) do here.

Hmmm... this sounds like a Twitter post...

Almost Sleeping

ronpih — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 08:10:00 GMT

I'm almost ready for sleeping but I'm waiting for a couple of DotNetRocks shows to finish downloading. DotNetRocks is one of my favorite "internet audio talk shows". I'm trying to get to that point where I have all the shows downloaded. I"ve been working backwards and I'm up (down) to show #65. (As of now they have 230 shows.)

My Exit Email

ronpih — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 07:10:00 GMT

I sent this email out today. It's announcing broadly my new job:

ronpih OOF 5/1/2007 - ???

After 12 1/2 years of living the Visual C++ world, I've decided to check out a new neighborhood. As of May 1st, I'll be moving over to building 34, helping a new incubation team build and ship a product that will change the world in the business intelligence space.

Leaving VC was a hard decision for me. I love the product and the people that build this essential tool for Microsoft and the world. I'm also very supportive of the new direction for the team that has been developing in the last few months. But this is a career opportunity for me of the type that doesn't come around very frequently and I have to give it a try. I also have thought recently that it would be good for me to try something that takes me out of my comfort zone.

Thanks to the VC++ team members (past and present) that helped me develop the skills and experience that put me in a position to take advantage of this new opportunity. I truly appreciate it.

Transition

ronpih — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 07:07:00 GMT

At work, I am in full-blown transition mode now. Spending some time tying up loose ends on the old job and opportunistically ramping up on my new job. It turns out that I have 2 test positions to hire for right away (reviewing job descriptions my boss is writing this evening... er... tomorrow morning...) and I haven't even started yet. Sounds like I'll be hitting the ground running. Feeling excited, though.

My Oldest Blog

ronpih — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 07:55:00 GMT

Yow. I was just doing some random web searches and it looks like my first entries in my Radio Userland weblog are still out there. Here's the first post.

I haven't been posting there for a while but it's interesting that I've been blogging in one form or another for more than 5 years.

Here's a rant I wrote back in August 2002 railing against incorrect use of Sleep() in tests and against capture/playback test automation. I guess I was pissed off.

I wonder what this post was about...

A couple of posts from 2004 on a test automation framework I'd like to see...

The story of my getting hired by Microsoft...

Moving

ronpih — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 22:50:00 GMT

This week, after a lot of thought and consideration, I decided to accept a job offer in a different division of the company. For the past 10 years I've worked in the Visual C++ group of the Developer Division. My new job will be in the analysis part of the SQL Server group. I'll be the first tester on a team working on an incubation project. This will be a new experience for me and, although I love my current job, I'm looking forward to trying something new, getting out of my comfort zone, and having to learn about some totally different technology than what I'm currently working on.