Do MS listen to all feedback

paulsalter said:

Reading various topics on this and it appears that MS only listen to what the majority of people want, all other feedback is ignored, does anyone know how true this is

I've been a Microsoft beta tester since sometime around 1995. I haven't tested every product Microsoft has put out, but enough that I know a little of what goes on without being a 'spurt.

Until Windows 8, Microsoft had a "stable" of experienced and inexperienced beta testers (BTs) from the wild. That is, those not in the TAP program, not MVPs, Corporate and other specialty groups of "first asked to participate" testers. We consisted of what you see in these forums . . . from guru to novice. IOW, a very broad cross-section of Windows users. What this accomplished was to let Microsoft know if the general public would accept what they did with the new product or OS. If this broad cross-section of BTs could easily use the new OS or product, it would be reasonable to expect the general public to do the same.

We had newsgroups where we all discussed things (both right and wrong) with the particular product we were testing. If someone had a problem, like here, everyone jumped in to help. When someone filed a bug, they gave a link to it and there was the "me too", suggested workaround, and even sometimes a solution given. Along with bugs posted, there were also suggestions posted. And, when a bug/suggestion was posted, there was a Microsoft answer to the input, even if it was only "by design". We even had answers that said, "Not now, but maybe in the next version."

We told Microsoft Windows Vista wasn't ready for prime time, but Marketing wouldn't listen to us. It was RTM'd anyway and the rest is history. We really didn't want Windows 7 RTM'd when it was either, but it was in much better shape than Vista when released.

Along came Steven Synofsky and beta testing as we knew it was changed forever! He decided that BTs weren't necessary to Microsoft. All those folks who had tested prior versions of Windows were dumped! I'm sure there were some Windows 8 testers, but none from the wild that I know of. I'm not even sure those who tested were listened to. Surely they wouldn't want such a fiasco loosed on the public!

And now we go to the opposite extreme! Every Tom, Dick and Harry from the wild has Windows 10 TP on his/her machine.

And now, down to the nitty gritty of the matter:

Within the past six months, Microsoft laid off some 18,000(?) employees. That doesn't mean they have 18,000 less people working there . . . some will be replaced with contract labor (you don't have to give benefits to contract labor). I feel like a large number of those contractors will be sifting and documenting the feedback being received on Windows 10. From there, the next tier of contractors will categorize the feedback. And so on . . .

Where are we in the coding process of Windows 10? When I was working on Windows 7, some of us got what was called "dogfood". In plain speak, that's alpha, not yet beta. Even in the dogfood phase, some of the code was so good that I could and did use Windows 7 as my everyday OS. What that means is that some of the code is so set that if you change something, you stand to break something else. I'm not a coder, but I have been told enough that if we change this, we break that, etc. As far as I can tell, Windows 10 is somewhere between Alpha and Beta.

The bottom line is that it's not really whether more people want what I want, but whether I can give you what you want without breaking something else. I'm on a beta that I can't mention because of NDA. We're far enough into the coding that the Team says, "We like your idea, but we can't implement it right now." Or, "Maybe we'll do that in the next version." And, "Thanks for the input. This will be fixed in the next build."

paulsalter said:

How would MS deal with this?
Would the 80% get what they want and the 20% just have to put up with it?
or
Would MS provide an option so both of these are happy?

Microsoft wants to make their customers happy. That's the way to sell product. I will say that Microsoft is swinging back to the point that we're getting more options and choices, which were gone for awhile there. So if a compromise is possible, Microsoft will go for it.

paulsalter said:

caperjack said:

why would they change it if only 20% of the voters wanted it .

put yourself in there place ,lets say you owned a retail store ,with a 1000 customers every day ,and you had a suggestion box by the front door and every customer put in a suggestion for you to put a coffee shop at the entrance of the store , and 800 said no and 200 said yes ,would you put the coffee shop in ,,I know I would not

I see your point, but your example is an ongoing cost, with windows once the feature is there it doesn't cost MS if someone uses it

If you had a restaurant and said to people should we offer free water
800 said they wouldn't want it, 200 said it would be a good option
should the 200 be denied water if they ask for it with a meal

If 800 don't want Charms Bar and 200 do, once this feature is added as an option, what extra cost is there?

well said ,I never thought about the added cost, but if the change meant that some people might not buy win10 ,then its still a little about making money ,. maybe ,maybe not .

Wynona said:

I've been a Microsoft beta tester since sometime around 1995. I haven't tested every product Microsoft has put out, but enough that I know a little of what goes on without being a 'spurt.

That's a pretty good representation of the events, but it doesn't really cover everything.

The fundamental way that Microsoft develops software changed with Synofsky. And that, necessarily, lead to a fundamental shift in testing. The old way of development was best illustrated by Steve McConnell's books in which he talked about how code was like Jello... it wobbles all over the place and at some point, you stabilize it and when it stops shaking, you ship it.

With Synofsky, Microsoft went almost entirely Agile Development. This is a cyclical development style in which various "sprints" achieve fully debugged (or largely so) and mostly production ready sets of features. You go through cycles of sprints, and each sprint adds more features (or extends existing features).

What this means is that what we now call "Previews" are really much more stable than the old alphas and betas. They aren't feature complete by any means, and new builds bring in new sprints with new feature sets over time, but you can watch the product evolve.

In other words, instead of having a bunch of builds that have all the features half-finished, with barely working code in them, we instead get almost completely working code, but we only get small sets of features incrementally as they are finished.

This, combined with a much stronger advent of automated unit testing, integration testing, and regression testing means that by the time a build gets into the hands of even internal folks at MS it's pretty stable.

Of course, there are always still going to be bugs, and that's part of what getting it out into the hands of millions of average joes is about... getting telemetry data from all the billions of permutations of hardware is invaluable. These preview tests are less about YOU beta testing, and more about Micorosft getting telemetry data from the system installed on your machines, and getting telemetry data about how you use it.

Feedback will of course still be important as well.. but my point is that the entire process has fundamentally changed more because the way MS develops software than anything else.

Mystere said:

That's a pretty good representation of the events, but it doesn't really cover everything.

Of course not. I didn't intend to; the post was long enough to give it chapters and a name.

Mystere said:

With Synofsky, Microsoft went almost entirely Agile Development. This is a cyclical development style in which various "sprints" achieve fully debugged (or largely so) and mostly production ready sets of features. You go through cycles of sprints, and each sprint adds more features (or extends existing features).

And we see the end result of his beta.

Mystere said:

What this means is that what we now call "Previews" are really much more stable than the old alphas and betas. They aren't feature complete by any means, and new builds bring in new sprints with new feature sets over time, but you can watch the product evolve.

Although Vista fell flat on its face, if Marketing had kept its paws off and let the team finish letting it jell . . . After the second or third build I tested, I could use Vista for my everyday tasks. Windows 7 was even better while it was in the dogfood/alpha phase. I dumped Vista, preferring Windows 7 alpha over RTM Vista, and didn't look back.

The only thing Windows 8 had going for it is that if the user let it stay on his/her computer long enough, they weren't willing to give up the speed. Windows 8 was the only "public beta" I didn't keep on my every day computer. Well, there is one that's in storage that still has the RTM version of Windows 8 on it.

Thankfully Windows 10 seems to be the best of all worlds, although there are things I'd change. That's for another discussion.

Bottom line is that Microsoft is listening to its customers more now (I believe) than it ever has.

All I know is that the sleep bug I, and others, reported was fixed in 9860. But who knows whether it was our feedback that caused this. I am just glad the fix was made.

Wynona said:

I've been a Microsoft beta tester since sometime around 1995. I haven't tested every product Microsoft has put out, but enough that I know a little of what goes on without being a 'spurt.

Until Windows 8, Microsoft had a "stable" of experienced and inexperienced beta testers (BTs) from the wild. That is, those not in the TAP program, not MVPs, Corporate and other specialty groups of "first asked to participate" testers. We consisted of what you see in these forums . . . from guru to novice. IOW, a very broad cross-section of Windows users. What this accomplished was to let Microsoft know if the general public would accept what they did with the new product or OS. If this broad cross-section of BTs could easily use the new OS or product, it would be reasonable to expect the general public to do the same.

We had newsgroups where we all discussed things (both right and wrong) with the particular product we were testing. If someone had a problem, like here, everyone jumped in to help. When someone filed a bug, they gave a link to it and there was the "me too", suggested workaround, and even sometimes a solution given. Along with bugs posted, there were also suggestions posted. And, when a bug/suggestion was posted, there was a Microsoft answer to the input, even if it was only "by design". We even had answers that said, "Not now, but maybe in the next version."

We told Microsoft Windows Vista wasn't ready for prime time, but Marketing wouldn't listen to us. It was RTM'd anyway and the rest is history. We really didn't want Windows 7 RTM'd when it was either, but it was in much better shape than Vista when released.

Along came Steven Synofsky and beta testing as we knew it was changed forever! He decided that BTs weren't necessary to Microsoft. All those folks who had tested prior versions of Windows were dumped! I'm sure there were some Windows 8 testers, but none from the wild that I know of. I'm not even sure those who tested were listened to. Surely they wouldn't want such a fiasco loosed on the public!

And now we go to the opposite extreme! Every Tom, Dick and Harry from the wild has Windows 10 TP on his/her machine.

And now, down to the nitty gritty of the matter:

Within the past six months, Microsoft laid off some 18,000(?) employees. That doesn't mean they have 18,000 less people working there . . . some will be replaced with contract labor (you don't have to give benefits to contract labor). I feel like a large number of those contractors will be sifting and documenting the feedback being received on Windows 10. From there, the next tier of contractors will categorize the feedback. And so on . . .

Where are we in the coding process of Windows 10? When I was working on Windows 7, some of us got what was called "dogfood". In plain speak, that's alpha, not yet beta. Even in the dogfood phase, some of the code was so good that I could and did use Windows 7 as my everyday OS. What that means is that some of the code is so set that if you change something, you stand to break something else. I'm not a coder, but I have been told enough that if we change this, we break that, etc. As far as I can tell, Windows 10 is somewhere between Alpha and Beta.

The bottom line is that it's not really whether more people want what I want, but whether I can give you what you want without breaking something else. I'm on a beta that I can't mention because of NDA. We're far enough into the coding that the Team says, "We like your idea, but we can't implement it right now." Or, "Maybe we'll do that in the next version." And, "Thanks for the input. This will be fixed in the next build."

paulsalter said:

How would MS deal with this?
Would the 80% get what they want and the 20% just have to put up with it?
or
Would MS provide an option so both of these are happy?

Microsoft wants to make their customers happy. That's the way to sell product. I will say that Microsoft is swinging back to the point that we're getting more options and choices, which were gone for awhile there. So if a compromise is possible, Microsoft will go for it.

Hi there

Not wanting to get into the realm of Politics - but there's NOTHING wrong with some types of Contract Labour or even Part TIME. I deliberately exclude that abomination known as "Zero Hours" contracts -- most places outside the U.K rightfully outlaw the worst excesses of that type of working.

I've done contract work for YEARS and prefer that way of working -- What would I do in the same place for YEARS just doing maintenance after a new project has been rolled out. Just get BORED TO TEARS I guess.

With contract work I (and still do) get travel all over the world.

Large engineering (or Software or even Banking I guess) projects work best that way -- you need a HUGE number of extra people during the build phase who you don't need afterwards

Here's a PERFECT example for using Contract Labour - you couldn't really use any other kind on this type of project. London's New Cross Rail Project. Different people in for building Tunnels, installing electrical / mechanical gear, designing the stations etc etc. The new Canary Warf station will even have a publically accessible REAL Horticultural GARDEN on top of it !!!

Here's a link to this fascinating project.

Crossrail - Crossrail

Here's the First tree being planted at Canary Warf (Garden opens in 2015) -- must be the ist public underground transit system with a ROOF garden being built on it too.

http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/arti...-wharf-station

In the EU - apart from the UK which opted out of "The Social Charter" bit even Contractors have to get a minimum of 1 Days paid holiday for every 13 weeks of work so it's not all doom and gloom.

I often ask I.T "Permies" what they do for an "Encore" after the once in a lifetime large project gets rolled out -- usually it's not much other than maintenance which IMO can get really boring.

Cheers
jimbo