About - Dr. McKayla

Dr. Michaela Greiler

For over 15 years, I’ve helped software teams build high-quality software in an efficient and effective way. My mission is to lead teams to unlock their full potential during company workshops and team coaching sessions.

I share my findings through articles on my blog or in scientific journals, in publications such as freecodecamp and at conferences.

I also run a weekly newsletter that more than 2500 people enjoy. In this newsletter, I share my thoughts on relevant software engineering topics and help you stay up-to-date.

I’m also the host of the software engineering unlocked podcast. Here, I interview experienced developers, product managers and CTOs about how they build software.

Research and Development at Microsoft

At Microsoft, I worked with all major top-class engineering teams, such as Office, Visual Studio and Windows to improve their testing, code review and build processes, practices and tools.

"innovative and solid"

Michaela is a great example to show how beneficial innovation can be for software companies. Her ability to apply research findings to industry settings is impressive. I follow her work at Microsoft and her research with joy now for several years. Her research is innovative and solid. And she sure knows how to present research findings and complex concepts in a digestible way. She gave two keynotes for conferences I organized and each one of them was informative, dynamic and entertaining at the same time. She is on the top of my go-to list for outstanding speakers and I sure invite her for the next conferences and training I organize.

Ana Paiva Assistant Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Porto

Ways to work with me

Assessments & Workshops

Through in-depth assessments, I help teams identify bottlenecks and friction in their processes and tools. I then, work with teams to overcome those and to unlock their full potential.

With workshops, I help teams stay up-to-date on proven software engineering best practices especially code reviews and design patterns. I work closely with the organizations to ensure the workshops are highly valuable and tailored towards their engineering team.

Public speaking

I love to share my experience through talks. In technical talks, I share

how software teams can understand and resolve bottlenecks in their software development life cycle,
how to (not) measure productivity,
how teams get the most out of code reviews, and
how teams can make data-driven improvements to their software engineering processes and tools.

Awards & Patents

Google's Techmaker Award

In 2012, I won the Googles AnitaBorg scholarship for my work on dynamic and static analysis of highly-dynamic systems.

Patent for "Selecting Tests for Execution on a Software Product"

This patent is a result from my work with the Windows team on safely removing tests from test suites for faster test execution.

Best Paper Award

I won the best paper award for my work on Understanding plug-in test suites from an integration perspective at the working conference on reverse engineering.

Education

In 2013, I obtained my PhD in software engineering for my research at Delft University of Technology.

My research focuses on analyzing complex software systems and software processes. I also hold a Masters and a Bachelors degree in Computer Science.

Scientific Publications

To date, I published over 17 articles in highly prestigious peer-reviewed journals such as IEEE, ACM, Springer or the Journal of Empirical Software Engineering (EMSE). I also presented my work at highly ranked conferences such as the International Conference on Software Engineering.

Sign-up to my Newsletter

My newsletter is valued by more than 3000 developers. Sign-up to get summaries and thoughts on relevant software engineering topicsm especially on code reviews. I also prepare several specials for my subscribers, such as my code review e-book.

Updated on February 6th, 2025