The Sams Report EP 96: Broken Dreams and Prototype Devices

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• michaelmartinez

  07 July, 2017 - 11:01 am

  <p>I believe at this point that Microsoft is back to its headcount pre-Nokia. It inflated to 125,000 and now its back to roughly 100,000.</p>

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• SleepingPelican

  07 July, 2017 - 11:52 am

  <p>During the Sinofsky era they only showed features that were mostly done and everyone complained that they didn't show us the features early enough to allow feedback. Now they are showing us features early which allows feedback and you complain they are showing things too early… that they shouldn't show it until it is in working form. I think we all agree it would be best that they show only what they think can make it into the next release but complex software is hard to reliably forecast timeline wise. Microsoft is trying to move fast (after many complaints that they move too slowly) and with agile development, sometimes things don't make it into the expected release. One of the advantages of the "two releases a year" methodology is that something that slips is only delayed by 6 months. Moving to one release a year would not prevent things from not making a release.</p><p>The bottom line is that the only way to guarantee a feature makes it into a given release is to play it safe and slow and Microsoft doesn't have the luxury to do that anymore. I am bummed that features are getting bounced from these releases but I applaud their open and more aggressive development process.</p>

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