Mini crunches “Longhorn Reset” crew

Mini-Microsoft, the MS maverick, recently reformed, responds bitingly to the following comment on the Windows Vista/Longhorn “Reset” of last year. This is the interesting comment :

FWIW [For what it's worth], the Longhorn reset was due to the fact that the main folks were distracted with Windows Server 2003 SP1 and then Windows XP SP2. During this “distraction”, it was primarily devs [developers] that were working on Longhorn, and they were doing so in different branches. Release management had their 3rd string assigned to Longhorn. The testers weren’t really even looking at it. The ones that were, were distracted with a new test harness and in learning/writing managed code automated tests. Very little actual quality assurance was going on because those folks were just too busy shipping other good stuff.

When folks finally came up for air and looked at Longhorn, the reset made sense because the Server 2003 code base was rock solid whereas some devs had been mucking with Longhorn unchecked for years. I think the scheme they came up with made great sense… instead of starting with a big mess and integrating changes from a solid code base, start with a solid code base and only merge rock-solid features into it. In hind sight, it’s a no-brainer (though it was far less obvious back then).

Here’s the response from Mini : “Right. The issue I, and I imagine everyone else in the company, has is the circumstances that were allowed that led to the reset and that no one was held accountable after the metal had stopped screeching and the fires died down.”

It’s astonishing that no-one has been disciplined for what went wrong. If the Wall Street Journal article is halfway correct, the buck probably stops with Bill Gates.

When a project is flowcharted almost to the size of the Bayeux Tapestry, either something is seriously wrong with it, or someone has not been keeping an eye out. Wouldn’t be Harold, would it?