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SelenaDelesie

Hello!

I can not believe that it is already September 13! The year has really flown by, and sadly, this really is the first chance I have had since March to get back to browsing the AYE site (amongst other things).

I am still working at Research In Motion (aka. BlackBerry) in Software Testing. Last year when I attended AYE I was managing a team of test designers for upwards of 8 different projects simultaneously. Within a couple of months, I had made enough improvements and trained enough people to successfully move this work (and the resources) out into each of the different project teams.

This year, I was a project lead for our latest handheld release (BlackBerry Pearl) through until start of September. This project was incredibly busy (start to finish was Jan to Sep), as it was filled with a ton of new technology for our company, which meant a lot of new types of things to learn how to test. Another challenge (amongst many others) included completing the project successfully when my job required 2 of me to get all the work done. Somehow, I (and the project) made it through to the end pretty well. Right now I am working on closing my portion of the project out with some Lessons Learned activities, and wrapping up a few other details.

Some of you may recall that I was also getting married this year. The big day was May 21, and despite that the weather was rainy and cold, everything was wonderful! I am still surprised that I managed to plan every last detail (incl. designing, printing, and constructing all the stationary) so successfully, concurrently with work. I felt like I had a couple of full time jobs, on top of life at home with my then-fiance and our 2.5 year old. It was all worth it come the big day and our 2 weeks off (we spent 10 days in Europe on a Mediterranean cruise - it was amazing!). :) I will have to get a website up with photos sometime soon, and provide a link to it.

That is my year in a nutshell. I already have a number of things lined up for the next few months. Thankfully, they include a number of changes so life should be more settled for a while.

I am really happy to have been able to keep in touch with some of you over the past year; and I am REALLY looking forward to the conference this year! I hope to see a lot of familiar faces, and looking forward to meeting some new ones.

See you soon! - Selena 2006.09.13

Update for 2006: I just received approval from my company to attend the conference again this year! I think I am looking forward to my second one more than the first. :)

-- Selena 2006.03.30

• Make a report about your experience in management terms, that is, money. What was it worth to the company to have you at AYE. For suggestions on how to make such a report when it's "so subjective," see my Quality Software Management, Volume 2.
• Don't just try to convince them to send you. Propose to take some key members of your team (3 of them plus you would qualify you for a team discount), showing again, in management terms, the projected payoff for the company. This makes it clear that you're not just doing something selfish (not that it's bad to be selfish), and that you believe in the returns so much that you're willing to risk having your managers hear from others about the value of AYE to the company.
• Emphasize the synergistic effect of having several members of a team together. I don't remember if you were in my organizational mapping session, but if you were, you saw what could happen for a team getting a fresh look at themselves in a new way.

- JerryWeinberg 2006.01.30

- Selena 2006.01.27