The Engineering Windows 7 blog is taking up full speed supplying the news hungry web community with new information about the coming Microsoft operating system. The last article took a look at the internal development structure of Windows 7 while the new article is about measuring the scale of a release.
Steven is taking a loot at various customer classes, their expectations and understanding of major and minor operating system releases. This is another theoretical article that does not contain news about Windows 7 per se but is a good read to understand the thinking structure of the development process.
Customers like End-Users, IT Professionals or Developers have all a different understanding and perspective in judging a release as minor or major. To say it blunt: It’s a major release for end-users if they go out and buy it. The problem with this line of though is that it is actually Microsoft’s classification of an end-user. End-Users themselves do not think in those terms usually, many probably cannot even name the operating system that they are using right now. And why should they..
Pleasing all customers could be difficulty and Steven talks about finding a balance to please everyone.
The key is always a balance. We can have big changes for all customers if we prepare all the necessary folks to work through the change. We can have small changes have a big impact if they are the right changes at the right time, and those will get recorded over time as a major release.
The article seems to hint that Windows 7 might be a minor release, a Windows Vista R2, and not the new shiny Microsoft operating system we all hoped to see.
