Kim and Matt's Wedding

My older son got married recently.

Matt and Kim at Nubble Light, Maine

My older son Matt got married a few weeks ago.  It was one of the happiest weekends of my life.

Matt and his new bride Kim love the beach and the ocean, so they wanted a site with both for their wedding.  They chose York Beach, Maine and were married outdoors.  It was wonderful.

From the rehearsal dinner, to the wedding and reception, and the ending brunch - everything was spectacular.  Matt and Kim wanted a more casual event, spent a lot of time in the preparations, and it all worked out exactly as planned.

With an entire weekend filled with great times for friends and family, outstanding weather, lots of terrific food, lots of dancing, and lots of joy, it was a great way for two wonderful people to start their new life together.

We have two great sons, and now we have a beautiful daughter.  My wife and I are very lucky people.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

Kayaking on Nutting Lake, Billerica

Nutting Lake, Billerica

A few weeks ago we were able to kayak in a new location - Nutting Lake in Billerica. It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning.  The lake was calm, and just a few folks were out fishing or paddling their canoes.

Nutting Lake is split in two by a road, and unfortunately the water level was too high to fit under the bridge between the two halves.  Still, the half we did get on was really nice.  Perhaps we'll go back and put in on the other side.

When I was growing up, Nutting Lake was shallow, weed-choked, and somewhat polluted.  Thankfully, the character of the area has changed dramatically.  Town sewage cured the pollution problem, the lake was dredged, and people fish and swim here.  Very nice!

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

Annoying Office Issues

shhh!

My office shares a common wall with a small conference room.

Until recently, this wasn't a big problem, as the conference room was used only sparingly and often by me.  But lately, we've had a flurry of hiring activity that left us with lots more people, and contractors permanently occupying one of our other conference rooms.  And so there are many more meetings next door, and unfortunately, many which involve conference calls - some of which are very loud.

The worst part of it is that when these offices were constructed, they apparently neglected to insulate the walls between the offices, so I can hear pretty much everything that is said in a loud voice.

I've spoken with the people in charge of office maintenance, asking that they put up some sort of sound insulation, but they indicate that "there's nothing we can do".  Translated, that means that they don't consider it worth spending money to fix the problem.  Oh well.

Although I try not to listen, I've already overheard a few embarrassing phone calls. And the conference calls with customers can be particularly annoying.

So I printed the picture above and posted it on the conference room wall.  Perhaps that will help.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.

Five Years

Today marks my five-year anniversary at my current company.

It's hard for me to believe that I've been here five years already. Yet when I look back at all we've accomplished, it sometimes seems like more:

• When I started, there was no real Quality Assurance Team.  Whatever small bit of testing occurred was being performed by Product Management folks in their spare time.  Since then, we've created a terrific team in the US, augmented by some good contractors, and a small team in India as well.
• Bugs were not being tracked in any central system.  There were a few emails floating around, and an occasional spreadsheet, but no place where people could go to find the status of bugs.  Now, we use Bugzilla, and people have grown tired of me asking "Do we have a bug report for that?"
• Lots of people have come and gone over the past five years.  Initially, the biggest change was the prior CTO being replaced by my boss.  Since then, many other folks have left.
• We've changed a significant portion of the infrastructure behind most of our applications.  It's far more scalable and sustainable now.
• We've formalized many of our development and testing processes, and created the necessary processes where none existed before.
• We've gone from fighting fires every day, to a much more stable, dependable set of systems.  Where before many of our systems needed manual, hands-on attention every day, they now run in a much more automated fashion.
• Our product lines have changed over time.  We have weeded out some products that were single-customer, poorly funded products.  We've created some new products, and retired others.
• And last year, the company was purchased by a much larger corporation.  We're still adjusting to that change.

Lots of work, lots of changes, lots more to come.  All in all, a good five years.

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This article originally appeared in my blog: All Things Quality

	My name is Joe Strazzere and I'm currently a Director of Quality Assurance. I like to lead, to test, and occasionally to write about leading and testing. Find me at http://strazzere.blogspot.com/.