March 18, 2010 at 11:38 am
IMO organizing an MVP summit to get feedback would not be too productive. SQLS teams are moving at a rapid clip, lately with daily scrums and continuous discussion. It looks that a better way would be to offer a bunch of MVPs as external members of discussion aliases. They would get and could reply to any mail that goes around.
If we have any volunteers, I could propose that. Volunteers would have to be ready to sign pretty hefty NDAs at the level of Microsoft FTEs.
March 18, 2010 at 1:38 pm
I am reminded of a (possibly apocryphal) quote from Henry Ford: "If I had asked people what they wanted they would have said a faster horse."
I am continually surprised at what people do manually on their computer because they don't know what is possible.
Customer input is very valuable with regard to usability and feature requests, but the customer may not know they are missing a feature until you provide it for them.
So, I would say that we need to be more proactive about providing solutions that the customer may not know they need. But we also need to be more responsive to usability concerns.
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JimFive
March 18, 2010 at 1:41 pm
I'd say it's more bureaucracy. They're so large, and they're not one person. No one decides on SQL Server, it's a lot of little teams that try to balance what they think is interesting/cool/useful with feedback, with what sales/marketing thinks is needed to combat Oracle. As a result we tend to get a compromise, which like some laws, is just a mess.
Over the last three months I have been working with a software company in China on a joint project. This company makes fantastic software, so elegant and easy-to-use that I have opened their help file 1 time in about 90 days use of it, and yet the software itself is very complex - but the artistry and clear thinking that went into the interface makes it so simple to use. This company did this because they know, to sell software you must have users who can actually use software.
Contrast that to Microsoft's bureaucracy, a focus completely away from users and as you correctly point out, much more focused on maintaining market share, and users who use about 5% of the systems anyway and there is indeed a mess - but more importantly, a clear evidentiary shout-out that Microsoft has long since lost its way.
Software should be built for end-users - NOT so you snub Larry Ellison's nose. After all, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both, when I was starting out back the 1970s, used to constantly state the importance of the end-user. Apple still seems to have some thread of that left, but MS? Well, they lost it a long long time ago and its a darn shame.
March 18, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Microsoft is not a monotlithic bureaucracy with centralized top/down structure. It is more discovery park where ideas (meaning people) compete for attention and resources. If you want to change things, join the discussion, get the following and swing the direction or push through a new feature.
March 18, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Thinking about Henry Ford's quote reminded me of the last model Ford Escort. Ford asked its customers what they wanted and out came something that showed the world that new levels of mediocrity were possible!
If you ask someone what they want they will say, "what I have now but better". For real progress to happen you need someone to make a brave decision and say "this is the way forward". That sort of thinking does not come without risks and can only be made by individuals and not committees.
Would the public have come up with the iPhone interface for themselves?
I hated the rbbon thing at first but really like it now. It was a brave decision but it hasn't paid off for everyone. Had there been an option to switch to the "classic" view I would probably have selected it (if I could have found it).
Take a look at http://www.slideshare.net/jmspool/revealing-design-treasures-from-the-amazon?type=presentation to see how Amazon approach innovation. Quite an entertaining presentation.
March 18, 2010 at 2:49 pm
March 19, 2010 at 7:53 pm
MS may listen and its good that we try to get the message to them - but the core problem plaguing MS is the same as we just saw on Wall Street. Over-complexity with only a few ever really understanding all of any given app. For the rest of us, its endless reading, studying, and classes just to know how to use stuff that otherwise could be very simple.
That is almost funny comparing Microsoft to Wall Street is like forty percent of Vista users waking up to find their bank accounts are zero or negative balance, twenty percent have lost more than 80 percent of their money and the other forty percent is threading water barely afloat.
The Bush administration knows many people may have to be prosecuted if Henry Paulson did not let the last man standing of the old boys in the Bond Market to fail, it was the only thing to do. The Bond market is opaque so very complex math is converted to assets and given to commissions only sales men mortgage brokers who sold it to their brothers, sisters and grand mothers and most lost everything.
I'd say it's more bureaucracy. They're so large, and they're not one person. No one decides on SQL Server, it's a lot of little teams that try to balance what they think is interesting/cool/useful with feedback, with what sales/marketing thinks is needed to combat Oracle. As a result we tend to get a compromise, which like some laws, is just a mess.
That is a big problem because Microsoft the house that Windows built thinks RDBMS is storage while Oracle is the house built by what Microsoft employees calls storage.
All other companies that thinks RDBMS is storage is out of business.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ALL-BUSINESS-Dont-blame-apf-1832248780.html?x=0
Kind regards,
Gift Peddie
March 24, 2010 at 8:14 pm
I'm sure Microsoft listens to feedback, somewhere to some (small) degree (i.e., the ribbon). However, Microsoft has also, never been in a business of "Build it and they will come" approach either. Microsoft's market approach from its earliest days to now has always been "Let someone else build it and if they come, then acquire, hack or steal it!" 😀
"[font="Comic Sans MS"]It's better to absorb a company than to drive it out of business. It's better to purchase a division, product, or technology than to cause it to fail. It's better to hire good developers from the competition than to make them unemployed[/font]" -- from Chapter 3 Sizing Up the Competition Bruce Webster's "[font="Comic Sans MS"]The Art of Ware[/font] Sun Tzu's Classic Work Reinterpreted[/i]" -- required reading at Microsoft!
"Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand." -- Martin Fowler
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