Another test of “is Microsoft listening?”

April 27, 2006 By

Rod Boothby, a manager with Ernst & Young, has an awesome post about what he wants from a Web Office, among other things. He wants us to make a decent internal enterprise blogging platform. Why? When it's already done. It's called Blogtronix. I got another demo the other night and it's much better than anything I've seen to date. Oh, he already pointed that out in his post.

Wants me to send his paper on the next wave in productivity tools to Ray Ozzie. Oh, that way of convincing teams is SO yesterday! :-)

I'll just lay it out here. I bet Ray gets it within a few hours of my post. Seriously. Ray gets this new world better than almost anyone.

Regarding moving quickly (a point he brings up) I've been talking with teams about this a lot. And I'm noticing a lot of teams that are using the new "Scrum" methodology.

Here's what is going on. Old-style apps, like Excel, are developed using the "Waterfall" style methodology. You know, spec it out, develop it after that, then test it and fix stuff, then beta test it, then ship it. 18 month ship cycles (or four to six years for OS's).

Scrum says "do all that all together in eight week cycles."

The question is, can you move a massive team like the ones that develop Office and Windows to a scrum model where you ship every few months and get feedback on the new stuff that's added, and then turn around and ship again.

Can customers deal with such a model? I don't think so. Why? Deployment. Scrum is great for a model where deploying is just pushing new bits out to a small set of machines. Ala a Web site. But it's not good for when you need people to download bits, and install them.

But, it's fun to watch how the new agile models are getting played with and adopted inside the teams that build Visual Studio, for instance.

It's interesting times to be a software developer, that's for sure.

By the way, I'm in. I want better productivity tools. I can't deal with the flow of RSS feeds and email and phone calls and decisions and info and tasks and all that.

I'm finding I'm having to adopt to the new flow in my life and find ways to deal. I know others are dealing with the same thing (that's why David Allen's book is a best seller five years after he wrote it).

What do you think of Rod's ideas?

Filed Under: 1
  • anon

    Why? When it’s already done.

    Web browsers were already done.
    Media players were already done.
    Message services were already done.
    Search is already done.

    Why indeed, especially if Microsoft must break the law to get its products adopted?

  • anon

    Why? When it’s already done.

    Web browsers were already done.
    Media players were already done.
    Message services were already done.
    Search is already done.

    Why indeed, especially if Microsoft must break the law to get its products adopted?

  • Mujibur

    No offense, but scrum is hardly a new concept. Many large companies have been using it for quite some time.

  • Mujibur

    No offense, but scrum is hardly a new concept. Many large companies have been using it for quite some time.

  • Jake

    You can scrum SaaS.
    I think customers would have a hard time accepting updates to Excel every 2 months.

  • Jake

    You can scrum SaaS.
    I think customers would have a hard time accepting updates to Excel every 2 months.

  • Mike

    Scoble, to follow up on a comment you didn’t respond, I like the latest C9′s Martin Lovell interview much more than the one with Michael Wallent (I had to stop the video ; could not bear it very long). This effectively shows the good side of Microsoft versus the bad side of Microsoft.

  • Mike

    Scoble, to follow up on a comment you didn’t respond, I like the latest C9′s Martin Lovell interview much more than the one with Michael Wallent (I had to stop the video ; could not bear it very long). This effectively shows the good side of Microsoft versus the bad side of Microsoft.

  • http://www.rkuo.com/ Richard Kuo

    Average customers wouldn’t like it, but then again, you wouldn’t scrum releases to the general public. Send the releases to a more contained set of participants that actively volunteer. The very act of releasing forces the product into shape and as long as you get the product out to more than a handful of people, bugs will be found and fixed. Get a bit more rigid near the 18 month mark and you have a product ready to ship.

    We have been doing and continue to do this at SnapStream for years now and it works very well. The product constantly advances…no massive backsliding or exponential explosions of bugs like Vista seems to be experiencing. Can Vista do it? Arguably, you need more of agile development wherever possible, not less.

  • http://www.rkuo.com Richard Kuo

    Average customers wouldn’t like it, but then again, you wouldn’t scrum releases to the general public. Send the releases to a more contained set of participants that actively volunteer. The very act of releasing forces the product into shape and as long as you get the product out to more than a handful of people, bugs will be found and fixed. Get a bit more rigid near the 18 month mark and you have a product ready to ship.

    We have been doing and continue to do this at SnapStream for years now and it works very well. The product constantly advances…no massive backsliding or exponential explosions of bugs like Vista seems to be experiencing. Can Vista do it? Arguably, you need more of agile development wherever possible, not less.

  • Joe Pinegar

    I read the paper, and I can see the potential in his presentation. I work in Pharmaceuticals, and in my experience management.doesn’t.get.it period.

    In an industry where profitability goes from feast to famine with an expiring patent, business processes do not need to be optimal until waaay too late for it to matter. I’ve seen massive IT projects stall because the business process being automated was never re-evaluated.

    I suspect that the type of innovation Rod is talking about makes sense in a consulting company that is forced to remain competitive every day. I doubt that mainline banks will implement similar developments without serious competitive pressures.

    I’d love to see some of these chnges make it into mainstream industries where there could be a lot of productivity gains. If the industry is already profitable, though, I expect that they’ll opt for a more comfortable rate of adoption of new technology.

  • Joe Pinegar

    I read the paper, and I can see the potential in his presentation. I work in Pharmaceuticals, and in my experience management.doesn’t.get.it period.

    In an industry where profitability goes from feast to famine with an expiring patent, business processes do not need to be optimal until waaay too late for it to matter. I’ve seen massive IT projects stall because the business process being automated was never re-evaluated.

    I suspect that the type of innovation Rod is talking about makes sense in a consulting company that is forced to remain competitive every day. I doubt that mainline banks will implement similar developments without serious competitive pressures.

    I’d love to see some of these chnges make it into mainstream industries where there could be a lot of productivity gains. If the industry is already profitable, though, I expect that they’ll opt for a more comfortable rate of adoption of new technology.

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  • http://rickmahn.com Rick Mahn

    Robert, I believe that the scrum method will work for OS releases. Vista is/will be in a postion to set the groundwork for this going into the future. My original comment to this post grew into an article I’ll post later today - there are numerous reasons to move Windows to scrum development.

    The ‘Web 2.0′ is setting the stage, and changing the mindset of users already. Being able to test-drive services like GMail, Writely, Box.net and so on will give the user the perspective they need for MS to leverage for their products. Many users will be very happy to get a version of Word or Excel online.

    At any rate, the possibilities of applying scrum methods to Windows and Office outweigh the negatives. More later.

  • http://www.rickmahn.com/ Rick Mahn

    Robert, I believe that the scrum method will work for OS releases. Vista is/will be in a postion to set the groundwork for this going into the future. My original comment to this post grew into an article I’ll post later today - there are numerous reasons to move Windows to scrum development.

    The ‘Web 2.0′ is setting the stage, and changing the mindset of users already. Being able to test-drive services like GMail, Writely, Box.net and so on will give the user the perspective they need for MS to leverage for their products. Many users will be very happy to get a version of Word or Excel online.

    At any rate, the possibilities of applying scrum methods to Windows and Office outweigh the negatives. More later.

  • http://www.dahowlett.com dahowlett

    Whrere are the operational management bloggers - given that Robert’s gone all enterprisey in this one? Great stuff whatever others might think.

  • http://www.accmanpro.com Dennis Howlett

    Whrere are the operational management bloggers - given that Robert’s gone all enterprisey in this one? Great stuff whatever others might think.

  • solomonrex

    Since you brought up Blogging software, can I find out finally why you’re not on an MS site? Why is this blog on WordPress if your products are so good? I don’t get it.

  • solomonrex

    Since you brought up Blogging software, can I find out finally why you’re not on an MS site? Why is this blog on WordPress if your products are so good? I don’t get it.

  • Carlos

    How about the next release of SharePoint for an internal enterprise blogging platform?

  • Carlos

    How about the next release of SharePoint for an internal enterprise blogging platform?

  • http://www.moogle1.com/ Mike Bijon

    SharePoint was great four years ago, but it’s fallen way behind. While it’s probably better than most existing blogging platforms for corporate use - and already has 80% of what Rod is designing in to the Client/People/Practice/Project system he’s describing - the 20% that’s lacking are the integration and communication features that make blogs and Outlook so much more flexible than having to combine and admin (and payy $$$ for) Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal, Project Server, etc.

    Speaking of SharePoint (and Scoble hosting his blog on WordPress), it’s time for some major revisions Mr. Ozzie. Unfortunately the SharePoint Team Services version is too crippled and requires too much manual “connection” to create inter-team workspaces. Meanwhile the Portal version seems to put off a lot of people/my clients with a high price and the need for deep SharePoint skills to make it work “right”.

    What’s my ideal product once I get done complaining? If 37Signals’ BaseCamp gets better document management (versioning, in-doc searching, and notifications to users about the content of updates) and an email Inbox I’ll be able to drop use/payment for of a whole stack of MS products (including Project, Outlook, SharePoint, and some custom WebDAV stuff that makes them sort-of work together).

  • http://www.moogle1.com Mike Bijon

    SharePoint was great four years ago, but it’s fallen way behind. While it’s probably better than most existing blogging platforms for corporate use - and already has 80% of what Rod is designing in to the Client/People/Practice/Project system he’s describing - the 20% that’s lacking are the integration and communication features that make blogs and Outlook so much more flexible than having to combine and admin (and payy $$$ for) Microsoft’s SharePoint Portal, Project Server, etc.

    Speaking of SharePoint (and Scoble hosting his blog on WordPress), it’s time for some major revisions Mr. Ozzie. Unfortunately the SharePoint Team Services version is too crippled and requires too much manual “connection” to create inter-team workspaces. Meanwhile the Portal version seems to put off a lot of people/my clients with a high price and the need for deep SharePoint skills to make it work “right”.

    What’s my ideal product once I get done complaining? If 37Signals’ BaseCamp gets better document management (versioning, in-doc searching, and notifications to users about the content of updates) and an email Inbox I’ll be able to drop use/payment for of a whole stack of MS products (including Project, Outlook, SharePoint, and some custom WebDAV stuff that makes them sort-of work together).

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    Solomonex: do you have something that you’d rather me be on? I like WordPress better than anything else. Convince me that I’m not on the best blogging platform.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    Solomonex: do you have something that you’d rather me be on? I like WordPress better than anything else. Convince me that I’m not on the best blogging platform.

  • http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/kevdaly/ Kevin Daly

    The waterfall approach doesn’t just relate to when you ship, but how you go about design and how you manage risk…in my opinion it fails miserably in all these areas, because it relies on the pretence that much more can be known at the beginning of the process than is ever the case. This is why I often describe my preference for iterative approaches as being for “telling only little lies that become smaller as the project progresses, as opposed to telling a huge whopper up front that only gets worse”.

  • http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/kevdaly/ Kevin Daly

    The waterfall approach doesn’t just relate to when you ship, but how you go about design and how you manage risk…in my opinion it fails miserably in all these areas, because it relies on the pretence that much more can be known at the beginning of the process than is ever the case. This is why I often describe my preference for iterative approaches as being for “telling only little lies that become smaller as the project progresses, as opposed to telling a huge whopper up front that only gets worse”.

  • solomonrex

    I don’t understand why you’re not on spaces.msn.com or an official ms blog, such as, say, the PowerShell team. I don’t want to debate that wordpress is the best, because I don’t really know what’s out there. Clearly, spaces lets you post articles and have people comment on them. So I’m not sure what the big crucial feature of wordpress is, that’s all. It’s not obvious to me.

  • solomonrex

    I don’t understand why you’re not on spaces.msn.com or an official ms blog, such as, say, the PowerShell team. I don’t want to debate that wordpress is the best, because I don’t really know what’s out there. Clearly, spaces lets you post articles and have people comment on them. So I’m not sure what the big crucial feature of wordpress is, that’s all. It’s not obvious to me.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    solomonrex: spaces.msn.com isn’t standards based and doesn’t have features, like tagging, and comment spam filtering, that I need.

    As to being on a Microsoft blog? It’s my personal blog. Not appropriate for a Microsoft blog platform.

  • http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/ Robert Scoble

    solomonrex: spaces.msn.com isn’t standards based and doesn’t have features, like tagging, and comment spam filtering, that I need.

    As to being on a Microsoft blog? It’s my personal blog. Not appropriate for a Microsoft blog platform.

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  • http://oclcyc.wordpress.com/ Jope

    Scrum will simply be ignored by companies, and corporations will anyway make you stay on a traditional, multi-year-between-releases development method because of deployment, as you mentioned, but also becasue of user-support and internal apps support.

    Effectively, you would need to keep two development systems running.

    We tend to forget that the gap between releases for corporate SW was requested by big corps over and over. They want their stuff tested before shipment, and they want reasonable delays between releases.

    And I dare say that was also the reason for the Windows ME disaster: it was necer intended for the enterprise, and thus was not properly tested and probably crammed in between other development cycles.

    Scrum may work for smaller apps, or for ‘nice to haves’, but never (not yet, at least) for apps that you want big enterprises to develop, especially OSs. I believe this is in fact one of the reasons many companies are still not comfortable with Linux.

    Unless you call Scrum ‘bug-fixing’, slap it a minor version number and call it ‘patch-realase’, that is.. That might work… ;)

  • http://oclcyc.wordpress.com/ Jope

    Scrum will simply be ignored by companies, and corporations will anyway make you stay on a traditional, multi-year-between-releases development method because of deployment, as you mentioned, but also becasue of user-support and internal apps support.

    Effectively, you would need to keep two development systems running.

    We tend to forget that the gap between releases for corporate SW was requested by big corps over and over. They want their stuff tested before shipment, and they want reasonable delays between releases.

    And I dare say that was also the reason for the Windows ME disaster: it was necer intended for the enterprise, and thus was not properly tested and probably crammed in between other development cycles.

    Scrum may work for smaller apps, or for ‘nice to haves’, but never (not yet, at least) for apps that you want big enterprises to develop, especially OSs. I believe this is in fact one of the reasons many companies are still not comfortable with Linux.

    Unless you call Scrum ‘bug-fixing’, slap it a minor version number and call it ‘patch-realase’, that is.. That might work… ;)

  • BlueNexus

    You do not deal with the “common” public much do you? I am not referring to large company type offices. I mean the most common everyday small office or even home user type. I’ve been working with computers, OS’s, networks and such for about 25 years. During this time I’ve seen the majority of people be hesitant to upgrade every 1 or 2 years, let alone every 2 months. I agree with Richard Kuo in his post of average users won’t like it and volunteer’s are like to be the best bet. I’m not speaking from opinion here. I am speaking from nearly everyday experience. Or 25 years of it. That doesn’t make me a king, I know. But is surely doesn’t make me wrong either. There’s an age old saying I am sure you’ve heard many times. “People are afraid of change.” So what’s going to happen if it occurs every 2 months?

  • http://private BlueNexus

    You do not deal with the “common” public much do you? I am not referring to large company type offices. I mean the most common everyday small office or even home user type. I’ve been working with computers, OS’s, networks and such for about 25 years. During this time I’ve seen the majority of people be hesitant to upgrade every 1 or 2 years, let alone every 2 months. I agree with Richard Kuo in his post of average users won’t like it and volunteer’s are like to be the best bet. I’m not speaking from opinion here. I am speaking from nearly everyday experience. Or 25 years of it. That doesn’t make me a king, I know. But is surely doesn’t make me wrong either. There’s an age old saying I am sure you’ve heard many times. “People are afraid of change.” So what’s going to happen if it occurs every 2 months?

  • solomonrex

    Ok, one last post here: I thought this blog WAS your job? I have no evidence that you do anything but PR here and on Channel 9. Am I wrong? And I’m really not being obtuse. Your title is technical Evangelist, so I’m confused if the blog isn’t your primary outlet for evangelizing, since this is what you do most of your life, right?

  • solomonrex

    Ok, one last post here: I thought this blog WAS your job? I have no evidence that you do anything but PR here and on Channel 9. Am I wrong? And I’m really not being obtuse. Your title is technical Evangelist, so I’m confused if the blog isn’t your primary outlet for evangelizing, since this is what you do most of your life, right?