I woke up this morning to find that Frank Arrigo had pointed to a post by Gary Wisniewski regarding "Microsoft's New Win-Win Strategy". The four components of Gary's proposal are:

1. Scrap the Windows codebase forever.  Release Vista, and announce publicly that it will be the last version of Windows based upon the NT/Win32 platform.
2. Use Linux as the base operating system for the next generation of Windows.  Do not modify it, do not "Microsoftize" it.  Do not try to own it.  Exploit it.
3. Reinvent the Desktop.  Call it Windows.  Windows: The Next Generation.  Outdo Apple, outdo the current platform, outdo every "Linux desktop" effort in existence.
4. Put applications first.  Office TNG, Project TNG, Excel TNG, Outlook TNG.  Do not port.  Rewrite.  Do not create a Win32 compatibility layer.  Do it right.

Gary mentions in his post that he plans to follow up with a series of shorter posting explaining each of these in detail, so I'll hold off on most of my thoughts until I get a chance to see where he is coming from. This isn't the first time I've heard these ideas--when I used to brief execs from tons of companies (almost daily) on the Longhorn Vista plans, they often had ideas like these. After the first few dozen, I discovered that there is actually a short list of points people disagree on (or haven't thought through) that are critical to any reasonable debate about the future of Windows (or any other gigantic effort):

1. You can't estimate how long it will take to complete Windows (or any other humongous project). Regardless of what tools, people, and experience you apply, it's simply impossible to model a system like Windows, especially when you have to consider the butterfly effect that occurs every time a dev in RPC gets sick for a week. The "slips" in the schedule aren't due to engineering incompetence or lack of motivation, they're simply timequakes that occur when the organization acknowledges the need to recover from an overly aggressive schedule estimate.
2. You can't trick a development team into shipping on time by publicly overestimating a schedule. People always cleverly offer this advice when they've never been part of a product development cycle. There are two forces at play here. First, work will always expand to consume all available time (this was "discovered" by someone more clever than myself, but I can't find a link). Second, marketing-driven schedules (these are schedules marketing people define while the development team is still too busy shipping the previous version to pay attention to) tie into market needs and not engineering costs. As a result, each team ends up deciding what they can build based on what time they have and what the other teams are building. Teams often make a bet that another team can deliver a platform technology that they plan to leverage for their features, so when those fall through, they're stuck figuring out what they should do with the investment they've already made.
3. Windows is the best operting system ever. Caveats? Of course. Every time you make a claim like this, some guy will show you the Furby embedded system OS and explain why it's so much better for Furbies than Windows is. As a result, it's necessary to say "Windows is the best mass market operating system for clients and servers due to its reliability, scalability, performance, usability, documentation, application support, hardware compatibility, billions of already-trained users, and total cost of ownership". People who ask broad questions like "why doesn't Microsoft give up like Apple did and just adopt a better OS like *nix?" don't recognize how good Windows really is. I know I'm leaving this bullet very barren of supporting documentation.
4. Experienced users want to use the OS and apps they're experience with. Once again, there are caveats about Mac/Linux/whatever zealots who will always rebel against the idea of using Windows. But the plain fact is that most people who know Windows want to use Windows because they already know how to do the things they need to do. The same goes for applications like Office, etc. Every time someone says that Microsoft should scrap Windows or Office in favor of a brand new look & feel has never had to support 50,000 desktops of 9-5 users who are simply working for the weekend. If you use a PC because you love to use a PC, then you're more likely to have an emotional attachment. Otherwise it's as mechanical as using your CD tray as a coffee mug holder.
5. Application compatibility is critical. This may seem obvious to everyone, but it's always worth saying. Every time an XP app fails to run on Vista, a puppy will be shot from a cannon. Sadly, there will be many airborne puppies. Right now people are tearing their hair out dealing with UAP (where an admin isn't really an admin) and I'm seriously concerned with how it will impact perceptions of Vista when it ships. Even broaching the subject of scrapping a platform and breaking every app altogether is a surefire recipe for disaster of epic proportions. Not only would it destroy Microsoft as a company for a long time, it would have economic ramifications across the globe from IT departments who didn't plan their migrations well enough for such an ill-fated deployment, resulting in hospitals losing power, planes falling from the sky, wine turning back into water, and all dolphins leaving the planet once and for all.

To be clear, I'm not disagreeing with Gary just yet because I don't understand where he's coming from. However, I do have a feeling the issues are important to the four points he makes. It's also important to note that the points I've made don't map 1:1 to the points Gary makes and that they are not prioritized.

Oh, and I might decide to change the text at any time, so if you post a flame, I might reword the bullets to make it seem like you're disagreeing with something you actually like.

5/29/2006 10:42:05 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)      Comments [1]  
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