Ramblings of a Microsoft.com PM

Moving my blog...

Jim Scardelis — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:22:00 GMT

Technical & General topics: http://jimscardelis.blogspot.com/ Wine, Food & Pacific Northwest fun: http://whiningaround.blogspot.com Thank you!...(read more)

Making Microsoft.com a better place for mobile browsers

Jim Scardelis — Wed, 21 May 2008 03:14:51 GMT

Once in awhile, I get to work on something really cool that makes a difference for a bunch of folks. Most of the time, though, the effect is only really seen inside the company by the people that use our tools or processes. Today is one of those days...(read more)

More Art

Jim Scardelis — Wed, 21 May 2008 00:34:37 GMT

Since I last posted about going to the Seattle Art Museum, I did decide to become more involved in the Microsoft Art Collection as an “Art Ambassador”. By doing so, I will play a liaison role between the Collection’s art department and the Microsoft community....(read more)

Art, Dang It!

Jim Scardelis — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 10:34:00 GMT

One of the great things about living in a 'hip' metropolitan area is the plethora of art of all kinds that can be found just by looking around. For example, the city of Redmond has art installed in many interesting places -- even along some of the major...(read more)

Cool software

Jim Scardelis — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 02:00:37 GMT

Like many folks these days, my wife & I have a computer in the kitchen. Occasionally, there are files, like lists of stuff we have, that we need to access from various computers, whether from work, or just from our primary computers in our studies....(read more)

What I’ve been up to…

Jim Scardelis — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 01:37:02 GMT

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...(read more)

Documentation in an agile world ... how much is enough, and how do you decide?

Jim Scardelis — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 02:15:00 GMT

This morning, I was looking through one of the stack of trade magazines that seems to find its way to my mailbox and read a very interesting article on software documentation that I wanted to share with you. In the article, (“ Documentation Strategies...(read more)

Pen name

Jim Scardelis — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 09:04:37 GMT

>After my post the other day referencing my article in TechNet Magazine, a few folks, such as Blake Handler inquired about my old pseudonym that I used to write books & magazine articles in during the late 1990's. (Boy, typing that sure does make...(read more)

My TechNet Magazine article is published!

Jim Scardelis — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 08:57:02 GMT

I wrote an article for TechNet Magazine about Release Management at Microsoft.com. You might find it interesting. One curious factlet: Although I've written books and was a contributing editor for a magazine last century, I used a pen name back then,...(read more)

Previewing the new look & feel of Microsoft.com

Jim Scardelis — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 03:18:00 GMT

One of the projects I'm working on now is the family of systems that will become the new publishing & rendering system for at least the Microsoft.com Home Page. It's a really cool project that's pulled together a lot of the best people at Microsoft.com...(read more)

Changes... (been busy)

Jim Scardelis — Tue, 30 May 2006 08:34:00 GMT

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: 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...(read more)

Development methodologies & microsoft.com development teams

Jim Scardelis — Fri, 14 Apr 2006 20:40:00 GMT

There are a couple of variations on agile development methodologies in use in the groups that develop applications for Microsoft.com. Most groups utilize the old traditional Waterfall approach, which can be summarized as: Initiate the project -- Sell...(read more)

MSCOM Release Checklists..

Jim Scardelis — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 20:27:00 GMT

The MSCOM Ops team just put a good description of Operations interacts with our software development life cycle (SDLC) process up on their blog . It's a good read. Included therein are a couple of versions of the documents that my team uses to track the...(read more)

Agile?

Jim Scardelis — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 05:47:00 GMT

The use of Agile software development methodologies, such as MSF for Agile Development holds a lot of promise. However, 1st generation agile methodologies can be problematic when developing software for deployment in online systems, as they do not always...(read more)

Deployment automation...`

Jim Scardelis — Fri, 24 Mar 2006 03:02:00 GMT

One of the side projects that I'm working on in Microsoft.com is called our "Deployment Automation 1.0" project. The goal is to codify some policies, processes, and standards around how we deploy projects into the operational environment. This is a big project, with people involved from several development teams, operations and management, many of whom have found different ways of doing this -- ranging from hand-written scripts to .msi files developed using a number of tools.

Wish us luck.

Oh, and if you have a favorite setup / deployment tool, I'd love to hear about it in a comment ....