

Q: How is software created at Microsoft? A: Very slowly (from the horse's mouth) - henning
http://blogs.msdn.com/vbteam/archive/2007/07/15/how-do-we-write-software-at-microsoft-a-pm-intern-s-perspective-1.aspx

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joseakle
I guess this is why they have been unable to understand the internet, they
live in an era were software was written by big groups of people and getting
them to communicate meant having meetings.

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xirium
I've been reading a book called Microsoft Secrets. It is a very dull book so
you'll appreciate the summary.

Microsoft works on an industrial division-of-labour principle. It also works
on the assumption that bugs ("defects") are enevitable. Indeed, the quantity
of known bugs can be used to track the progress of a product. A product with
numerous bugs gives a bad reputation and has poor sales. Products with very
few bugs are more expensive to produce and users are reluctant to upgrade to
subsequent versions. Ignoring the economics, there is a engineering approach
to managing emergent complexity.

You'd get most value from this book by comparing it to The Mythical Man Month.
There is a strong correlation with the theory in the Mythical Man Month and
the observed practice in Microsoft Secrets.

I only bought Microsoft Secrets as a gift for a former manager. However, I
subsequently discovered that he was a former Microsoft employee. Sometimes a
gift can be too appropriate.

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cstejerean
Ah, usually before the planning phase there is a pre-planning phase that takes
weeks. During that time the group tries to identify all the people that need
to be in the planning meetings.

I actually worked in a place that developed software this way. The smallest of
projects would take over 8 months. Large projects would take close to 5 years.

Any project that took over 1 year was likely to get canceled. The budget would
usually look different the following year, the business priorities would shift
or the technology stack would be obsolete.

I was in meetings over 90% of the time. Often meetings had to be scheduled
during lunch time since it was the only time everyone was available.

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wallflower
I highly recommend Show Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and
the Next Generation at Microsoft [http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-
Breakneck-Generation-Micr...](http://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-
Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717)

Fun drama like a C++ programmer spending months to get a simple window to
appear on screen (e.g. building the Win32 API). Dave Cutler from DEC throwing
things.

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jimbokun
"In the last few weeks I have literally had a few meetings every single day,
in order to get the spec right, plus I sent dozens of emails per day."

~~~
dreish
"I love seeing a document get bigger and bigger, more detailed and with more
things written inside."

I love how it's sprinkled with Microspeak as he describes this soul-draining
bureaucracy: "cool", "great", "passion", "innovate", "exciting". They're
really passionate about meetings, emails, and bigger and bigger documents over
at Microsoft.

And on being able to start with a blank page for this spec that he's spending
so many hours in meetings and writing emails to put together, rather than
having to fill out a form, he says, "I don’t know about you, but I really love
this kind of freedom!"

~~~
mooneater
Dude, he's an intern, and he's learning. It makes a lot of sense for him to
try and participate in the culture during his short time there. There is
always lots of time for cynicism afterwards.

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lvecsey
Compare that to the shuttle design where lives are on the line and the
software has to just work. The microsoft spec approach is really to just
``wing it''

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xirium
In the space shuttle, almost every bug could kill an entire crew. For
Microsoft, a bug may cause a desktop to crash. Arguably, Microsoft wastes the
most potential because many millions of instances of Microsoft software
repeatedly waste a few minutes of people's lives.

The difference is that Microsoft is able to externalise almost all risk and
accountability. The same principles of "defect management" are applied to
aerospace hardware and Microsoft software. The only difference is the
acceptable threshold for bugs. For the space shuttle, bugs are minimised until
the budget is exhausted. For Microsoft, bugs are minimised until it costs less
to to say "Oh, heck. Just ship it."

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tomjen
One thing you forget: If MS where to remove all the bugs nobody would buy
their software, as it would cost 10-20 times what it cost today.

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food79
The marginal cost of selling software is $.00 pretty much. So MSFT operates on
a what-the-market-can-bear approach, not a costco-style mark-up-
everything-10-percent appraoch.

