Fifteen

The 2023 Readers Guide to How We Test Software at Microsoft

Almost exactly fifteen years ago, I wrapped up the final words on How We Test Software at Microsoft. The final chapter I wrote was the chapter on Model Based Testing (more on that later), but it was a long path to get there.

Freakin’ Ken

For a few years of my career, I worked in a central group at Microsoft that created and delivered training and did a chunk of work and consulting with leadership teams across the company. On some forgotten morning in 2007(ish), my manager, Ken (who was one of the better managers I had at Microsoft) poked his head into our team room and said, “You should write a book about testing at Microsoft”. The notion was that I, along with Ken and my colleagues had a pretty good idea of how testing worked across the company, and that the book would cover a lot of things that we were teaching already. Furthermore, Ken said that I could write the book as part of my job (i.e. he’d lower my obligations in order to give me time to write), and that he and BJ could also w…