I remember reading it during one of my Microsoft internships and thinking "Wow, this was definitely a pathological case. My team executes way better than this." However, I was on a small, isolated team. I've recently realized that at Microsoft, the better the team performs, the more demand for their skills, the more strategic their efforts, the more people stick their fingers in the pie, and the worse the end result becomes.
So yeah, this was a pathological case, but only in the respect that it is such an un-strategic feature. Typically, a feature would have to be far higher profile for it to be so severely botched.
Microsoft's failings are of leadership and focus. I don't work in Windows, but following Windows 7 closely, it seems like Sinofsky is doing a great job empowering the right decision makers. Often, the right decision maker is the one closest to the implementation. Some teams get it, others are learning it, and still others may never get it.
I remember reading it during one of my Microsoft internships and thinking "Wow, this was definitely a pathological case. My team executes way better than this." However, I was on a small, isolated team. I've recently realized that at Microsoft, the better the team performs, the more demand for their skills, the more strategic their efforts, the more people stick their fingers in the pie, and the worse the end result becomes.
So yeah, this was a pathological case, but only in the respect that it is such an un-strategic feature. Typically, a feature would have to be far higher profile for it to be so severely botched.
Microsoft's failings are of leadership and focus. I don't work in Windows, but following Windows 7 closely, it seems like Sinofsky is doing a great job empowering the right decision makers. Often, the right decision maker is the one closest to the implementation. Some teams get it, others are learning it, and still others may never get it.