Reflections
Nicholas Skaggs
nicholas.skaggs at canonical.com
Tue Mar 15 19:19:28 UTC 2016
The joys of Spring (or Fall for our friends in the Southern Hemisphere)
are now upon us. The change of seasons spurs us to implement our own
changes, to start anew. It's a time to reflect on the past, appreciate
it, and then do a little Spring cleaning.
As I write this to you, I'm doing my own reflecting. It's been quite a
journey we've undertaken within the QA community. It's not always been
easy, but I think we are poised for even greater success with Xenial
than Trusty and Precise LTS's. We have continued ramping up our quality
efforts to test new platforms, such as the phone and IOT devices, while
also implementing automated testing via things like autopkgtest and
autopilot. Nevertheless, the desktop images have continued to release
like clockwork. We're testing more things, more often, while still
managing to raise our quality bar.
I want to thank all of the volunteers who've helped make each of those
releases a reality. Oftentimes quality can be a background job, with
thank you's going unsaid, while complaints are easy to find. Truly, it's
been wonderful learning and hacking on quality efforts with you. So
thank you!
So if this post sounds a bit like a farewell, that's because it is. At
least in a way. Moving forward, I'll be transitioning to working on a
new challenge. Don't worry, I'm keeping my QA hat on, and staying firmly
within the realm of ubuntu! However, the time has come to try my hand at
a different side of ubuntu. That's right, it's time to head to the last
frontier, juju!
I'll be working on improving the quality story for juju, but I believe
juju has real opportunities to enable the testing story within ubuntu
too. I'm looking forward to the new challenges, and sharing best
practices. We're all working on ubuntu at it's heart, no matter our focus.
Moving forward, I'll still be around in my usual haunts. You'll still be
able to poke me on IRC, or send me a mail, and I'm certainly still going
to be watching what happens within quality with interest. That said, you
are much more likely to find me discussing juju, servers and charms in
#juju.
As with anything, please feel free to contact me directly if you have
any concerns or questions. I plan to wind down my involvement during the
next few weeks. I'll be handing off any lingering project roles, and
stepping down gracefully. Ubuntu 'Y' will begin anew, with fresh
challenges and fresh opportunities. I know there are folks waiting to
tackle them!
---
This post was a copy of what's on my blog[1]. Please feel free to ask
any questions or voice any concerns you like. I'll be around through the
end of Xenial, but less and less until release. I will make sure I'm
transitioning any on-going projects or work, but don't hesitate it you
have something you need specifically from me before I go.
Again, it's been a pleasure working with all of you! I'll miss you all
and wish you all well in the future. It truly is hard to go.
Here's to a great Xenial release!
Nicholas
1. http://www.theorangenotebook.com/2016/03/reflections.html
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