The Curious Engineer

All blogs / Testing / QA

notes and rants

learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/alanpa

My new blog is at http://www.angryweasel.com/blog

Testing / QAEngineering management / careersEssays / personalMicrosoft blogsMSDN archive

’05’10’15’20’25
Posts
286 from 18 Jun 2004 to 2 Nov 2009
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archived, read-only
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2009 77

  1. My blog is dead – long live my blog
  2. PNSQC Slides
  3. I’m overflowing
  4. HWTSAM in China
  5. One last virtualization post
  6. My STAR talk
  7. Plane Thoughts and Plain Books
  8. 7 Influential Books
  9. Niche Professions
  10. Fun with Code and TestApi
  11. Who Owns Quality?
  12. Looking for the “L” word
  13. Flashback
  14. Organizing my Life
  15. Good Test Writing
  16. Improvement through practice
  17. Learning and Thinking
  18. Planning the next 10 months
  19. Look past the bug
  20. Meeting Types
  21. More stuff that bugs me
  22. Patterns on the MSPress blog
  23. Growing your career as a tester
  24. HWTSAM Video Podcast – Chapter 3
  25. Careful with that hammer
  26. Give ‘em what they want
  27. Working on the Duc
  28. What's the REAL question?
  29. Another HWTSAM Video Podcast
  30. Papers, Presentations and People
  31. Cat Herding Tips
  32. Earn it or Demand it?
  33. More HWTSAM reviews
  34. Interruptable?
  35. Productivity
  36. Quality isn’t always free
  37. Want to say something nice?
  38. Another review of HWTSAM
  39. PNSQC 2009
  40. Odds and Ends
  41. Words and Status (and rants!)
  42. Metrics common sense
  43. STAR East metrics presentation
  44. iTWire review of HWTSAM
  45. STAR epilogue
  46. Twinkle Twinkle, on my way to STAR
  47. Playing the room
  48. Forgetting my job
  49. And then there were three
  50. AL (adaptive leadership)
  51. Practical QA reviews HWTSAM
  52. Perception vs. Reality
  53. Metrics Mayhem
  54. The HWTSAM bug list (so far)
  55. April Fools Aftermath
  56. The road show is over
  57. Worst Practices
  58. My March Road show
  59. Connecting with the community
  60. Terms and other things we can’t agree on
  61. Deep Secrets of Software Metrics
  62. HWTSAM on the Microsoft Press blog
  63. Inside HWTSAM – the video Podcasts
  64. Boulderdash review of HWTSAM
  65. Blog Break
  66. Another HWTSAM Review
  67. Coming up for air
  68. It's nice to be liked
  69. The Programmer Tester
  70. The role of the SME and the SDET
  71. My Three Ts
  72. Good Times, Bad Times …
  73. My Box is Round
  74. Bugs, bugs, and books
  75. Putting together HWTSAM
  76. My 2009 advice for programmers (on making - or keeping - testers happy)
  77. My pragmatic thoughts for the New Year

2008 71

  1. Joe Strazzere on HWTSAM
  2. I Love Bugs
  3. We’re number 1
  4. My New Addiction
  5. The Pitch
  6. TestApi - A library of Test APIs
  7. My yearly trip to Boston
  8. An Interview with me
  9. Schools and Rules
  10. An inverse to Parkinson’s Law?
  11. Some Trip Statistics
  12. A Special Company
  13. Travel Notes - part 2
  14. A letter to installation programs
  15. Travel Notes
  16. Travel time again
  17. Computer Music and Testing?
  18. Jamming on Testing
  19. Nostalgia
  20. More on Finding the Answer
  21. Finding the Answer
  22. Why computer science knowledge helps testers: Example #1
  23. A layer below the GUI
  24. GUI schmooey
  25. Random Notes
  26. Creating a Culture of Quality
  27. The value of Manual testing (or…The value of Automated testing)
  28. Staying organized
  29. Oh, Give me a Home...
  30. Value and Trust
  31. Reasonable Career Paths for Testers
  32. A place for testers
  33. Schedules
  34. Microsoft - Our Testers go to 11!
  35. Insights from the Test Test
  36. The Test Test
  37. Is it that hard?
  38. Testing Problems (with pairs)
  39. JW on Testing
  40. Am I a robot?
  41. Fear of Measurement followup
  42. Another perspective on the experience
  43. Waterfall, waterfall
  44. Fear of Measurement
  45. "Experience" and the non-expert
  46. “Experience Quality” and the senior tester
  47. Quality and the Experience
  48. Help Microsoft User Research
  49. Testing: Functionality vs. Experience
  50. Test to Developer ratios - you're probably doing it wrong
  51. Apparently, I have a double
  52. James Whittaker on software testing
  53. What is a test architect?
  54. Does GQM Work?
  55. Testing and Quality
  56. What is Quality?
  57. Test automation?
  58. Managing Relationships
  59. Plane notes
  60. Technical Debt
  61. Future Test notes
  62. Big Companies
  63. Off to New York
  64. Source control for testers - What Changed?
  65. The power of the cloud
  66. What are Universities for?
  67. Testers are like...
  68. preparing presentations
  69. scripted?
  70. ZMB (zero mail bounce)
  71. overload

2007 42

  1. Vacation, all I ever wanted?
  2. Some down time
  3. More Whiteboard Videos
  4. Newsflash: misuse of quality metrics
  5. Oracles are hard...
  6. Software quality at 10,000 feet
  7. Pass, Fail...and other
  8. Mixed Emotions
  9. To cleanup or not to cleanup
  10. Goodbye Fargo
  11. Do I know *anything* about testing?
  12. At long last...
  13. Time for travel
  14. Thinking and testing
  15. Rewards
  16. Priorities - part 3
  17. Critical, harsh, and other things people call me
  18. The best book on software testing
  19. Staying sharp
  20. Test Talks
  21. About me
  22. Mentoring testers
  23. A day in the life
  24. Duplicate bugs
  25. Two words
  26. I keep forgetting...
  27. Pair Leadership?
  28. Can one person be two things?
  29. Equivalence class partitioning
  30. Teaching and talking and traveling
  31. Ill structured arguments #1: It only works if it works
  32. Bug prevention in five minutes
  33. Presentation tips
  34. Yet another place to discuss software testing
  35. PSQT conference report
  36. Road trip time
  37. More on senior testers
  38. Careers for testers
  39. Test Guesstimation
  40. Effective?
  41. Dre
  42. Presenting...

2006 52

  1. SDETs at Microsoft
  2. The happy path should always pass
  3. About Certifications
  4. Thoughts from the week
  5. Where do they get this stuff?
  6. Blogging from the east coast
  7. Baseball and software
  8. Debugging 100A
  9. Five questions with me
  10. My Blogroll
  11. Building better software with the NM model
  12. Testing for correctness?
  13. Debugging 100
  14. Kaner's five year plan
  15. The pitfalls of multitasking
  16. My blogroll
  17. I'm tired of finding bugs
  18. Functional testing on a budget?
  19. The pain of the loss of a hard drive
  20. Live Writer
  21. Another test pattern template
  22. Alan’s stupid powershell tricks #1
  23. Patterns for Test
  24. Pens and Microphones
  25. A shell only a geek could love
  26. Catch up...catsup...ketchup...?
  27. Test case design using patterns
  28. Designing Tests
  29. More on testing for testers
  30. Unit Testing and Testers
  31. “Big names” in software testing (ummm… I mean consulting)?
  32. What do you use code coverage for?
  33. Yet another bookshelf post (part 1)
  34. Yet another bookshelf post (prequel)
  35. Another metrics post
  36. The post that will never happen
  37. Psqt
  38. Pictures of jack girls in synthesis
  39. Back again
  40. Measuring Quality
  41. Spaces after sentences
  42. More on PSQT
  43. QA vs. Testing - Part 4: Let's wrap this up.
  44. Interlude: Random bits
  45. QA vs. Testing - Part 3: What is the role of Quality Assurance?
  46. Part 3 coming up...
  47. QA vs. Testing - Part 2: What is the role of testing?
  48. OK - here goes...my rant on QA vs. Testing - Part One: Who Cares?
  49. PSQT Conference, here I come...or maybe not
  50. This is not an excuse
  51. I feel guilty
  52. Two months off

2005 38

  1. Proposal Time
  2. Metrics that Matter
  3. What is a tester?
  4. Everything and Nothing
  5. Cruising around
  6. What do senior testers need to know?
  7. Ack! What happened to my blog?
  8. Feeling Nostalgic - Life as a contractor (part 2)
  9. StarWest
  10. Feeling Nostalgic - The Beginning
  11. Feeling Nostalgic - Prelude
  12. More on EE
  13. What's the deal with Ruby?
  14. news of the world
  15. Be careful what you wish for
  16. 10 years at Microsoft
  17. How did I get here - changing jobs at Microsoft
  18. A slight change in direction
  19. Boiled Frogs
  20. Tracer Bullets
  21. Now Tasting…
  22. Don’t Live With Broken Windows
  23. Update
  24. The Pragmatic Tester
  25. The Role of Test
  26. Tracking Requirements
  27. Curly brace positioning redux.
  28. Quick survey on curly brace positioning
  29. Auto Post
  30. How many tests are enough?
  31. EDC Topic suggestions?
  32. The Changing Role of Test
  33. Self Diagnosing Software
  34. Testing Windows CE (part 2)
  35. Testing Windows CE (part 1)
  36. Meetings and Efficiency
  37. I hate resolutions
  38. Happy New Year

2004 6

  1. Test Fest 04
  2. A few random notes...
  3. Tux Function Table Explanations
  4. EDC Follow up
  5. EDC Decks
  6. I'm not a blogger