How We Test Software At Microsoft

This past year has been quite busy for me. Too busy. Besides trying to keep up with my busy teaching schedule, driving some key initiatives and collaborating on others, planning new course development for SDETS, I presented at 11 conferences around the world, wrote a few magazine articles, and developed a new software test automation program at the University of Washington. Somewhere in the midst of all that I co-authored a book with Alan Page and Ken Johnston that is now available to order, and should be on bookstore shelves within a week.

Collectively we have more than 3 decades of experience in various roles and business groups around the company. Coupled with insights and experiences from the many other testers (past and present) at the company the book is filled with great ideas and examples of some of the testing processes and procedures used around the company.

But it is not just another book of how to test software. This book provides a lot of insight into Microsoft, illustrates some of our best practices (and also reveals some of our faux pas’), and answers the question (albeit indirectly) we get all the time; “How do you test software at Microsoft?”