I've been kind of slow posting since a number of things have been in flux back at the office. Over the last few weeks:

1. We had a re-org in the Microsoft.com space. Some of the chips haven't finished falling yet, I think, but essentially my team moved out from the development group it had been in for several years into a new group led by Todd Weeks. This new group, which has three pillars -- Portals, which is a relatively large development organization, will be working on software for the next version of microsoft.com, whatever that is. The second pillar is the old Microsoft.com Operations Group, and the third is a sort of Central Services group under the Business Manager, which contains service management, release management, the lab team and some other stuff. Our responsibilities remain the same (although the scope is expanding), only now we're centrally placed where we hopefully can be even more effective.
2. Microsoft IT has redefined and expanded our internal software development process (SDLC) in some interesting ways which affect the release checklists etc. that I've mentioned in previous entries. In addition, it's become part of a larger overall process that focuses not only on delivering value, but also on whether or not we should be solving a need with software -- or whether changing a process would take care of it. This has a lot of interesting and exciting implications, most immediately, the fact that our checklists etc. need to be updated.
3. Related to the above is the fact that I've become the Microsoft.com "SME" (subject matter expert) for SDLC. This means that part of my commitments will be to work with the right people to make the necessary changes in our processes, policies and documentation, (such as those checklists) to align them with the "new" SDLC. I also get to be trained on it, and then provide training to the people on Microsoft.com teams that need it. Oh, and especially pick up the work where we're figuring out how (and if) we can get SCRUM aligned with the required SDLC elements.
4. In my Deployment Automation project, the Development team took the lead on figuring out which tools were going to be our standard for creating .msi files and deploying them. We've settled on using the  tools built-in to Visual Studio 2005 to build the .msi files and an internal tool for deploying them to the various environments.

All in all, it's been a pretty busy few weeks, although there was a bit of fun in it, as I got to go to San Francisco for a couple of days to attend a Leadership Conference for one of the organizations that I'm a member of. These are usually pretty cool, since I meet all kinds of interesting people, learn some good stuff, and, on the side, have an opportunity to talk to folks who are Microsoft customers. I also got to pop over to Ellensburg for one day last week for a Board of Directors meeting for one of the charities that I serve as a Board Member for. This charity operates two clinics that provide free speech therapy to kids that need it, and funds several non-clinic programs in other places in the State. I'm on the Board of the Seattle Clinic as well -- well, actually, I guess I'm an officer of both the State and local programs now, since I was elected Secretary at last week's meeting.