What Snew?

In What I'm doing these days I mentioned all the stuff I was doing beyond being a dev lead. 

I was spending 4 hours a day deciding which bugs we should fix. In Ask Mode you have to go through all this extra work just to fix a bug:

  1. Prepare the fix
  2. Send private bits to QA to verify
  3. Fill out a big form about what's going on with the fix, why it wasn't found sooner, etc.
  4. Present the bug at team "shiproom", which I ran in collaboration with Shaykat & Kartik.

If we approve the bug, then we present the bug again at the Developer Division shiproom. There's a lot of tension, getting up in front of a group of 30 folks to justify the fix for a bug.

Shaykat & I shared this responsibility this time around. In the past Shaykat has done this for all our bugs, but this time I helped out. I enjoyed it so much that I ended up doing it for the majority of our fixes. 

Finally we got to the point where our team doesn't have any more fixes to take. I got all that time back. Woo!

Then it was time to write reviews. That took pretty much all of last week. One thing I did this time was solicit a lot of feedback on my reports. The feedback was really helpful.

Finally that's done, too. My work day has returned to balance.

I'm more or less keeping up with email, setting up the plans for the remainder of the Whidbey product cycle, conducting interviews, reconnecting with my team, thinking about post-Whidbey work, etc.

With the time change & nicer weather, I'd like to spend a bit more time outdoors. I plan to walk home today, instead of taking the bus.

I intend to go sailing a bunch over the next few weeks, when weather permits. Starting this week, CWB rents sailboats on weekdays. That means the best boats will be available, and the lake will be mostly empty.