George E. Mitchell

Transitioned and expanded a team from four test developers to seven network development engineers, including training the former test developers in their new roles, and mentoring the team members to the point that the two top performers in the organization were on my team. As a result, the company's review of the Microsoft Communications Protocol Program, which was one of the major tasks for which the company was created, and which had been greatly expanded in scope but still on a previously set, absolute deadline, came in on time. Without my work, the project might not have been completed. Read More

Acted as liaison with Microsoft on software and Microsoft Communications Protocol Program (MCPP) documentation and software issues; leading my team in understanding in detail hundreds of complex, proprietary network protocols and then taking personal responsibility to ensure those protocols performed as specified; documenting and defending issues to the joint triage team; enabling improved compliance with the legal requirements of the Microsoft antitrust consent decree; and allowing third-party software an improved environment for competition by lowering barriers to entry for developing network server products. Read More

Shipped my teams' data center backend components to two very different customers while the rest of the division was shipping to only one, and did so on the single-customer schedule without sacrificing quality and without any downtime issues being discovered in production after release, thus enabling two separate revenue streams for my components instead of just one.

Improved alignment of tester incentives with product outcomes by crafting metrics to evaluate tester productivity that was based on “quality over quantity.” Read More

Identified an opportunity to provide testing services to a larger portion of the company, successfully sold the need to the company directors, and doubled the size of the test organization. As a result, the organization found more issues and documented them more completely, resulting in a higher-quality product that was useful to more customers.

Managed a six-member test team supporting development, integration, and performance testing of the Knowledge Worker Services platform, an online service for collaboration between knowledge workers which today has evolved into the Office 365 service.

Successfully participated in Microsoft Provisioning Framework product development by leading two teams responsible for testing across multiple diverse customer deployment and usage scenarios, ensuring product’s suitability for deployment into scalable, high-availability data center systems.

Implemented and maintained a private cloud of 40 VMWare virtual servers running both Windows and Linux operating systems, thereby reducing installation and configuration time for test scenarios by over 80%, saving each tester and developer 200-500 hours per year. Read More

Performed network integration testing and maintained an emulated data center and Internet network environment, which enabled full-deployment testing and greatly contributed to shipping Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) versions 1.0 and 2.0, a suite of interoperating Internet services providing a “turnkey” solution for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to provide Membership, Personalization, Content Replication, Internet News, Internet Mail, Address Book, and Internet Chat services to their end users. Read More

Selected by senior leadership and traveled to the Netherlands to support a data center customer's migration from Microsoft Commercial Internet System (MCIS) 1.0 to 2.0; while there, solved several membership database performance problems they encountered and acted as technical liaison to US feature teams on email and server cluster issues. As a result, the customer continued using the Microsoft solution instead of choosing a competing product. Read More

Developed a tool in Java on Linux to allow customers to test and troubleshoot network configuration and server availability for NTP synchronization on VMWare's LogInsight deployments.

Assisted in development and implementation of an Android UI in C# using the Xamarin toolset for a mobile bill management application being ported from iPhone.

Developed a SQL query tool in C# as part of an application to populate an OLAP cube to validate data integrity for production billing database. The team effort identified $1 billion in uncollected revenues.

Developed from scratch and executed a user-focused test plan for the Windows OEM Preinstallation Kit to ensure user documentation and functionality supported requirements to accommodate third-party applications and user defaults. As a result of my testing, a significant user group, which would otherwise have been ignored, was ensured the ability to configure new Windows machines according to the needs of their customers, Microsoft was able to better comply with this requirement of the consent decree, and six hundred million Windows 7 users were given the ability to use straight out of the box their choice of applications, whether those applications were developed by Microsoft or by its competitors. Read More

Consulted with a local private school to migrate from their existing Web and email hosting services to cheaper services with better customer support; performed the data migration, tested the new functionality, and provided transitional support to the school staff. As a result, the school’s annual hosting costs were reduced by 50%.

Performed feature, integration, and network interoperability testing of Windows NT networking features, contributing to shipping Windows NT 3.5 and enabling interoperability between Windows NT and Windows For Workgroups, Windows 95, Microsoft LAN Manager, and Novell Netware systems. Read More

Performed feature and application integration testing, and supported the test and development teams in configuring and troubleshooting network environments, which greatly contributed to shipping Microsoft PlayerNet 1.0, a generalized network connectivity service that allowed computer gamers to find each other, connect, chat, and play games across the Internet.

Maintained the network environment and performed feature testing which contributed to shipping the Windows NT Remote Initial Program Load (RIPL) feature, enabling diskless workstations to boot and load Windows across the network instead of from local storage.

Supported external partners with documentation, detailed feedback, and issue reports to ensure correct implementation of legally-defined standards by Microsoft and utilization of Windows middleware defaults features by third party developers, and to ensure that Windows users had the ability to install the Web browser, email client, and/or media player of their choice, with the full assurance that every time they clicked on a link or content file, their default application would be launched according to the choices they made. Read More

Led team of five testers and test developers performing feature, network integration, and performance testing; reviewed feature specifications, designed test plans including definition of automation requirements, and personally tested network communications between servers, which greatly contributed to shipping the Microsoft HTML Mail Interface (HMI) service, a scalable, three-tier Internet service allowing Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to offer their users access to email over the World Wide Web. Read More

Performed feature, integration, and network interoperability testing of Windows NT Remote Access Server (RAS), and configured and maintained a set of third-party Remote Access clients and servers, contributing to shipping Microsoft Windows NT 3.5 and 3.51, and ensuring that various Microsoft and third-party dialup clients could connect to and communicate with the Windows NT Remote Access Server, and also that the Windows NT Remote Access client could connect to and communicate with the various Microsoft and third-party dialup servers. Read More