The restart

Been a while.. Lots of infuriating events, too, except I found it more pleasing to take some time (and weekends) off, rather than foam over the keyboard in the middle of the night. And besides, there were the NBA playoffs (what a disappointment that was), the World Cup (what a disappointment that was), the Tour de France (what a disappointment that appeared to be, before it rocked completely, then to again reach new depths of disappointment)...

So then, a brief recap of my hot issues:
- the missing technology debacle, or how are things done at MS
Our group delivered a new, public API. Beneficiaries express concerns that a few key functions are missing. We cost these, sum (3 days) and triple (2 weeks) the estimates and wait patiently for the executive decision. After about two months, a dev in another group finds a GM in a third group who will pony up a dev to do the work. It then turns into a contractor situation, whereby MS is to pay almost a full year worth of L59 wages to some long distance commuting contractor, who will copy our sample code, add param checking and give it back to us 2 weeks later for check-in. At this point, we're 3 months away from the inital meeting, and we've left ridiculous well behind. (Incidentally, had MS offered someone on the team a cool $20k extra if this work were done, I'm quite sure there would have been positive - even enthusiastic response.) External partner is furious for the delays, the GM is nowhere in sight and executive decisions come from the GM of the group next door. The final decision is to punt, not accept it even if it magically showed up on the doorstep. The customer is livid (or disgusted, couldn't tell from their choice of invectives) and we've managed to burn off 5 months of calendar time, maybe 20 hrs of meetings and break partners. I feel so proud, serious skill is required to pull something like this off.

- Prince Handsome rides his stallion in to save Windows; he brings with him a cohort of very skilled "inefficiency fighters". Msrs Valentine and Jones have been shunned from the future leadership of HMSW (His Majesty Ship Wreck) Windows. Mr Sinofsky is to assume command and he is to restore efficiency, predictability and accountability in the proud tradition of the Office Suite at his earliest convenience. Though bloated with features, of late, I liken Office to slightly more than the Windows Accessories than to the whole of Windows itself (I mean, there's Notepad, the pretty picture viewer.. and address book to act as Excel...) Still, higher powers deemed the intervention of Office luminaries as necessary. Clearly, an org an order of magnitude larger than Office, with a code base larger by several orders more, did not contain individuals capable or worthy of Doing The Right Thing. That is not to discount Mr Sinofsky's capabilities, of course, but the move seemed like an unplanned, hastily announced damage control measure. All would have ended well here, but the logical consequences are still unfolding. More Office luminaries are being instituted (promoted?) in elevated positions over all of Windows, to bring forward and implement The Office Way of Doing The Right Thing. (Picture this, the head PM of Notepad becomes the next VP of buildings 1 through 50. When I am King, I, too, promise to all my friends ministerships. First come, first served. You need to prove we were friends. Rainchecks may apply, inquire at the front desk.)
The vision is coming together quickly, as the senior level meeting on Friday sent the seniors back to their buildings with clouded, pensive gazes. Hours ago, the Pretty Picture Player document was sent out for all to see and marvel at the crispness of the new face of WinClient. It looks remarkably similar to the current schema, it's peppered with caustic (and well deserved) comments of failure to execute and it's prefaced by the announcement that new people will spearhead the old divisions. Oh, yes, by the way, we've got this new guy coming in to lead all of UX and he's, you guessed, of Office extraction.
It's too early to tell whether this is a bona fide effort to righten the wrongs, but I really can't help noticing the heavy aftertaste of nepotism. Behind the new slogans, enthusiastically blogged, I fear I hear the cries of joy of those stricken by lottery winning tickets.

- the exile of the once-wonderVPs. Ahh yes. I remember the heralding of Mr Jones as the brightest star in the constellation of MS VPs not 3 years ago. Mr Amir M., too, had a vision and fought considerable hours on AVSForum defending it. (Much like a hobby.) Both are now exiled to more elusive areas, though both more potent than the severely punished Mr Poole. In full-throttle Vista effort, key dev and test resources (heh, funny how adjective change their meaning so dramatically in context: key dev meant knowledge and execution; key test meant warm bodies) were pulled and redirected to a now seemingly defunct project concerned with the next generation of video disc players. Amir was certainly a charismatic leader, but it was decisions like these that led to his transplanting. More senior level leaders should have the passion for their area that Amir exhibited, because worse than bad execution is bad execution and nefarious indifference. Chris Jones seems to have been punished quite severely, actually: "hmm, VP of Windows Client.. Lead of all PMs in Live.. hmm.. tough one.."

- how is test really viewed. Recently, an episode featured yours truly in a debate over meaning of particular tests with a 3rd party entity. Now, the context is that normally, I feel appreciated, recognized as a good resource/reference for my field of activity. One dev manager decried, a while ago, the unfeasability of an experiment that would reverse roles (dev, test), so that everyone can see it's the same old bloody job, irrespective of the discipline. That helped, too. But in this particular incident, although being right and having standards to lean on, I found myself facing a common front of devs, PMs and 3rd party devs. Not a single punctuation sign of support was there to use, much less a word. The presumption was clearly that of "tester, hence not really knowledgeable". Had I been a dev, I'm quite certain the exchange would have unfolded differently. Every time an acquaintance of mine jumps the fence to the dev side, I increase the ref count on the main difference, as they portray it: people listen to testers politely, but simply listen to devs.

- how many approvals does it take to check in a one-line change? Why, 4, of course. One to check in the lower branch, one to approve it for Kit A, one for Uber Kit B (which includes A) and lastly, one for RIing (manually) the change from the useless staging branch to the live one. It's a rigorous process, that takes quite a few emails, a day and lots of patience. Without these approvals, my customer would not have my fix. In addition to being incompetent enough to make the coding mistake, I've only realized it very late in the game. I have an entire list of Vista heroes to thank for their help - I wish you were so lucky as to join me.

Cheers,
Drei