About the Author

Ron Patton lives in the Seattle area with his wife, Valerie. His software test experience is wide and varied, from mission-critical systems to painting programs for kids. Ron graduated from Penn State in 1984 with a B.S. degree in computer science. He began his career at Texas Instruments as a quality assurance engineer, testing embedded systems and user interface software for industrial automation equipment. In 1992 he joined Microsoft as a software test lead in the Systems Group for Multimedia Viewer, the authoring tool and multimedia display engine used by Encarta, Cinemania, and Bookshelf. He moved on to become the software test manager of the Kids Product Unit, shipping CD-ROM titles such as Creative Writer, Fine Artist, 3D Movie Maker, and the Magic School Bus series. Before he left Microsoft, he was the software test manager of the Hardware Group, responsible for the software shipped with the mouse, keyboard, gaming, telephony, and ActiMates product lines. He currently is a freelance project management and software quality consultant.

Ron's most memorable project was ActiMates Barney, for which he test managed both the hardware and software efforts. "Microsoft actually paid my team and me to shake, bake, freeze, thaw, pull, drop, tumble, dunk, and shock dozens of prototype Barney dolls until we reduced them to piles of electronic rubble and purple fuzz," he recalls. "You can't get much more test satisfaction than that."

If you have comments or suggestions for this book, or if you find a bug in it that you want to report, you can send Ron an email at [e-mail].