Tara Roth: Not your father’s world of Software Test
- Posted: Dec 31, 2006 at 1:40 PM
- 26,906 Views
- 13 Comments
Office 2007 recently shipped, but that doesn’t mean the development or test teams are sitting around twiddling their thumbs. Meet Tara Roth, director of test for the Office System Suite, as she talks about what her team is working on next, and how even
though it may be a tester’s job to find bugs in the product; to make a great tester sometimes you have to learn to live with the tradeoffs. You mean products ship with bugs? Yep, but only little ones that don't bite...
This is another edition in the WM_IN series, so of course we discuss the issue of how to get more women in technology jobs (and keep them) and why there is such a gender imbalance in the world of IT and software development, generally. Great stuff; just in time for the new year.
Happy new year from all of us at Channel 9!
PS: Can you guess who/what that is in the preview image?
This is another edition in the WM_IN series, so of course we discuss the issue of how to get more women in technology jobs (and keep them) and why there is such a gender imbalance in the world of IT and software development, generally. Great stuff; just in time for the new year.
Happy new year from all of us at Channel 9!
PS: Can you guess who/what that is in the preview image?
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More episodes in this show
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Geeking Out in Barcelona
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Tara Roth: Not your father’s world of Software Test
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Elissa Murphy: From Music to Microsoft
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I think you should do that with all future videos;)
I'm glad Charles brought that up!
Charles, you mentioned in the video that MS has put a lot of effort in testing, so I guess you guys should have a large collection of testing tools that help testing process easier.
As far as I am aware, the only product which is available to developers outside MS is Visual Studio Team Edition for Software Testers, and it focuses only on ASP.NET web apps testing. I have not had a chance to use it but it seems quite insignificant compared to other testing suite such as IBM Rational product lines.
Will there be more tools to be released in the future? I think this could be one area that MS should concentrates on in order to build a better developement environment.
By the way, it is a great video and it helped me understand a lot more about testing. I am looking forward to more videos like this one, especially the technical aspects and tester experiences at MS.
PS: it is amazing how many post-it notes on the wall. Are there anything actually written on those notes
Team System is general testing and is not tied to just ASP apps, it is testing *code. I use it all the time for testing console apps, plain old libraries, and win apps - anything with code. It has many features such as work item tracking, bug tracking, organize tests, manual tests, great reports and queries, and much more. CodePlex uses the server and also surfaces features via their web pages. SourceSafe was Source-Un-Safe, the new product seems great.
We need to see several testimonials telling us that this series designed to educate us about women in technology is useful. Bring on the 12 year old girls with touching stories of Microsoft humanity.
What may be more useful is to interview an expert that has interviewed hundreds of women in technology so that we can get sweeping, broad strokes with more informative power based on statistics and hard research. Surely someone who works for Slate or maybe even MS NBC can relate.
Another option is to interview a woman at Microsoft who is as old as Jim Allchin (and with similar seniority)---but that may be hard to do because of (gasp!) sexism in old Microsoft. An older woman should have some experience seeing women come and go on the campus.
Great to see you posting again, Rasx. It's been a while. Don't hold back now
There's nothing wrong with males of the species discussing issues that directly impact females of the species. We are all in this madness together and the issue of gender imbalance in the software/IT world affects all of us, directly and indirectly.
I'm not certain I understand the rest of your retort.
C
?? I did not follow any of that.
A few months ago I was involved in a major project for an entertainment company in Los Angeles with 30-or-so programmers. Only two were women. From my 20+ years experience in the computer industry, this is typical. A woman programmer is a rare breed.
Like Charles, I often wonder why this is so. The money is good. The job opportunities are there. What gives?
Charles' comment about women needing to see the bigger picture, made a lot of sense to me. I will add that to the list of possibilities.
Luis
I think your post is great and provocative. I address the comment regarding the big picture. I think it’s good to view the sweeping broad strokes of this demographic but would be cautious not forget the intricate stencil work found in the details. I to would love to see more of both on channel 9. Though I question weather or not just interviewing an “expert that has interviewed hundreds of women in technology” will produce the desired result you seek. Take the opening screen shot of this post for an example, the image on the wall. When you look at the big picture it appears to be a blurry face of some one we may or may not recognize. The interesting point of the image is made when taking a closer look at its individual parts. It’s the postum notes that make this image interesting. I appreciate this interview from the point that it digs into what makes up the bigger picture. With the given number of women in technology in contrast to the number of men, makes me wonder also just how crisp the image is when viewed from a far. I would like to see. please see link- http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/WM_IN these help paint the picture.
If i do not fallow what your saying, please feel free to give more clarification. =)
With that said, referencing the picture on the wall, isn’t the problem maybe that the current big picture is a picture of a man?
)
More women buy consumer electronics now days than men.http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/156640_womantech15.html
Why is it more men than women who post on this forum/the technology world- ? I don’t think it’s because there are more men than women in the world. The numbers are almost equal. Is it possible that the 'architecture' (meaning the culture, the devises and just about every thing ells pertaining to technology) has been built by men? I don’t know how attractive a male’s world is to a female. (Well, actually my wife likes to remind me
I am fortunate to work at a place that will quickly hire any female who shows the ability to accomplish the task. It helps make for an environment that doesn’t fall into mono gender rut. Though there are women who work where I do, they are still the manority.Any one able to point out a technology company that’s predominantly female? I think it would be interesting to see how the companys differ.
I use QuickTest Pro, TestDirector and WinRuner for testing duties
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