It’s been a long time since I last blogged, mostly because late last Spring, I transitioned out of the Release Management role in Microsoft.com (now part of the Microsoft.com Operations Team) into a Program Management role in one of the software development groups that I used to work with as the RM on their projects.

This was an interesting transition to make – on the one hand, my title in the address book didn’t really change, since Microsoft generally views Release Management as a specialized type of program management anyway. The key difference, I think, lies in the scope of the things that I do now –  by being part of the actual product development team, I’m better able to take an active role in application design (i.e., let my inner techie out more often). My commitments look a lot more like the kind of goals that I had when I started at Microsoft last century (oh yeah, I celebrated 10 years here last November) – which was really a lot about doing the right thing for customers & partners than could be expressed in a more narrowly defined role like the RM role was.

So, I’m having fun. I still get to work with and define processes to some extent, and I’ve been working with stakeholders and partner teams a lot more than before. I even shipped a feature last December that is gradually getting adopted on www.microsoft.com.

I plan on blogging a bit more often as I get more into my new projects, so stay tuned.