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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