Comments on PRACTICAL QA: HOW THEY TEST SOFTWARE AT MICROSOFT

Having worked 12+ years at Microsoft in testing, a...

2009-04-25T01:09:00.000-04:00

Having worked 12+ years at Microsoft in testing, and having recruited, mentored and trained for many of those years, I can say that the hiring process, especially for test, is generally accurate. Of many, many hires I was involved in, I only know of a few who didn't work out.

It has to do with the interview process. The MS interview approach is actually pretty good at figuring out in a few interviews who'll be successful or not. And yes, MS interns and college hires contribute at a high level, pretty much right out of the gate. The 'secret' is to just give people a lot of responsibility and let them roll with it, supporting them with a strong lead and a good mentor.

Less than two years into my career, I was the release lead for German Mac Office 98. It involved a lot of work, an emergency trip to Ireland, and a whole bunch of pride to release product which never had a recall.

John O.
http://thoughtsonqa.blogspot.com

William, the info about McAfee is really interesti...

2009-04-20T09:51:00.000-04:00

William, the info about McAfee is really interesting - probably a book unto itself. I know I've never worked for a company with daily prod releases; the find/triage/fix/retest cycle must be extremely challenging!

I think the entire realm of security and security testing has become almost a separate field..

- Linda

I never give false compliments, Alan, and How We T...

2009-04-20T09:41:00.000-04:00

I never give false compliments, Alan, and How We Test... was worth both my time and my money. I think you picked just the right mixture of overview, technical information, and personal tidbits. Good Stuff...

- Linda

For the same reasons that you mention, this is a b...

2009-04-18T05:26:00.000-04:00

For the same reasons that you mention, this is a book that on the face of it, I would not have attempted to read in a million years. Yet based on what you've said this in now somehwere near the top of my must read books.

I was lucky enough to work for Mcafee on their Anti Virus engine for 5 years in the QA departement. This environement is similar to the microsoft domain in that the product has to run on millions and millioins of computers all over the globe. Yet the one difference is that they have to release code every single day! Each day new AV data signature files have to go out to millions of PC's. Each day these AV data updates have to be QA'd. I know of no other software products that have to be tested ready for a release every day. Now that definately does produce add a new dimension to testing.

William Echlin
www.SoftwareTesting.net/blog

Thanks for reading the book Linda - we're all fans...

2009-04-18T01:18:00.000-04:00

Thanks for reading the book Linda - we're all fans of you and appreciate you taking the time to read the book and write about it. Personally, I'm quite flattered about you stealing some information from the model-based testing chapter. As I discussed in this post, that chapter was the hardest for me to write, but ended up being my favorite.

Your questions are all good - so good, that I can't possibly answer them here, but those are things that Bj or I can probably address in our own blog posts at some time.

Thanks again for the attention!