About - Doctor McKayla

Dr. Michaela Greiler

My passion is to understand how software teams build high-quality software in an efficient and effective way. I love helping teams unlock their full potential in workshops and private 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 700 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.

And in case you wondered, after being called all kind of strange pronunciations of either my first or my last name, I decided to go by Doctor McKayla. Just like the famous Doctor McWheelie.

Research and Development at Microsoft

I work at Microsoft and help many top-class engineering teams to improve their testing, code review and build processes, practices and tools. I worked with teams from Windows, Exchange, Office, and Visual Studio.

"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.

In 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.

"outstanding software engineer"

An original thinker with product focus. A team organiser with an eye for detail. A process architect with deep technical understanding. Michaela seems to be several people rolled into one. Of course she's an outstanding software engineer, innovative researcher, world-class data scientist, and effective communicator: but using those traditional labels is missing the point. What sets Michaela apart is her ability to simultaneously perceive the breadth and depth of the big picture, see the challenges and pinchpoints, and ensure that a team can successfully navigate to the solution. Thoroughly recommended, and an invaluable asset to any organisation.

Mark Bedworth, Ph.D

Artificial Intelligence Expert

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 700 developers. Sign-up to also get my weekly summaries and thoughts on relevant software engineering topics. I also prepare several specials for my subscribers, such as my code review e-book.