Programming Windows: Jim Allchin Interview (Premium)

On a cold morning in January 2006, I met with Microsoft co-president Jim Allchin, who was then directly responsible for Windows Vista and Longhorn Server. Allchin is a soft-spoken, intelligent man with decades of industry experience, the last 15 years of which were spent at Microsoft. I've run into Mr. Allchin at various events throughout the years, but the last time I sat down with him for a one-on-one meeting was in August 2001, when we discussed the then-upcoming release of Windows XP. With Windows Vista on track for a late 2006 release, Allchin hit the road to meet with members of the technical press. Here's what we discussed.
Timeline
Since switching to a Community Technical Preview (CTP) release model for Windows Vista in late summer 2005, Microsoft has really begun rethinking its Windows development strategy. In the past, the development of various Windows versions was denoted by major milestones like Beta 1, Beta 2, and Release Candidate 1 (RC1). Now, the company is shipping many more CTP builds to various testers, and it’s getting more and better feedback. Allchin thinks this will result in a better product.

Looking over the recent development history, Microsoft refers to the December 2005 Windows Vista CTP as the Enterprise CTP, because it went out to hundreds of its Technology Adoption Program (TAP) partners, typically large companies that get on-site support and work closely with the software giant to test products in real-world situations. The next Vista CTP, due just after mid-February, will be the first "feature-complete" public release of Vista. In Q2 2005, as Allchin told me (April 12, 2006, according to my sources), Microsoft will ship a public release of Windows Vista as part of its Customer Preview Program (CPP). This will essentially be the April 2005 CTP, but the company will also refer to this release as Beta 2.

"Beta 2 is really the culmination of the three previous CTPs," Allchin told me. "It's really just a different approach for developing the product. We think about Windows Vista only in terms of CTPs. But you can think of it as Beta 2, or the final Beta 2, or even as RC0. We think the quality is going to be good enough there that we won't even have to do an RC0 release. And then the next CTP will be RC1."

I asked Mr. Allchin if he thought whether other groups at Microsoft would pick up on the CTP approach and drop the major milestone schedule. "I don't know," he said. "Certainly, we're going to do it with this product, and we're getting a lot of good feedback. We'll have to see. Many of the things we think of as platforms are doing CTPs as well. But you still have to designate a CTP for a particular purpose, which is what the beta [releases] were for. The difference is that, instead of having a beta and then huge amounts of dead time, and then another huge drop, you have more constant updates. And we think that will speed up the development process."

"Everyone needs to understand that this is a ...