Modern PM research techniques

re: Modern PM research techniques

Mike — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:30:52 GMT

Steven,
I'm flattered that I inspired a whole new post. (Or maybe I'm just arrogant :-)

With this article, I am in 100% agreement with you that data is key. Whether it's a PM or a developer that does the analysis, critical dissection of data is going to be a time consuming and essential part of our jobs. It already is :-)

Implicitly, I think you may see this as more of a PM role. There may be some PMs, but it will increasingly be part of the work that a developer does. Good developers of the future will not just be algorithmic geniuses, but also business savvy, and they'll take data from watson, or other CS tools, aggregate it together, and include all of the work in their solution proposals. If the dev is empowered with understanding his business, he can build in the tools to measure the effectiveness of the solution at the time the product is built, rather than having to go into reactive mode later.

Watson is a great example of this; its developers writing tools for developers, so that developers have the data to know which bugs are the most important.

re: Modern PM research techniques

Sam — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 10:57:16 GMT

This is off-topic to this post, but it would be helpful to know and it is relevant to this blog.

Would you make an entry on your comment policy so people would understand how to leave?

I've seen comments about anonymous sources (in reference to an blog not named here or else this will get deleted) not being credible. Aren't all comments in fact anonymous?

Thanks.

re: Modern PM research techniques

steven_sinofsky — Thu, 22 Dec 2005 20:47:53 GMT

Sam,

I am very interested in the questions and brief comments from readers. For folks from Microsoft, I am particularly interested in carrying on discussions on our corporate email system or in person as I have said many times.

I written that I view the comment policy as one along the lines of "letters to the editor" as you would see in any newspaper. So not everything can get printed and comments that are off-topic, or attempt to make different points on the coattails of what I wrote are not likely to be appropriate. I play the role of the editor.

Blogs are a wonderful thing that builds on top of what newspapers (online or print) can do--if you have a view on something and want to express it, you can start your own blog and write as much as you want. I am a big supporter of that.

--Steven

re: Modern PM research techniques

sam2 — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:33:50 GMT

So do you have an internal blog where employees can post their concerns?

re: Modern PM research techniques

steven_sinofsky — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:40:20 GMT

Feel free to email me.

re: Modern PM research techniques

Dinesh — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:10:21 GMT

Mike,

No arguments - but the ecosystem is built around capabilities, resposibilities and accountabilities.

Per your thoughts - developers would need to understand business requirements, create project plans, manage work schedules, manage tasks of other team memebers, manage budgets and then communicate all this along with developing the actual code? For a large project like Office, I can imagine the tasks that hundreds of PM's work on co-ordinating the feature sets.

Before coming to Microsoft, I worked on platform integration projects for a Wireless Telco - my mentor was a veteran Program Manager out of NASA, managed their software division writing code for satellite and space launches, that span multiple years and must result in 110% fault free code, no flexibility in terms of features and a big slap on the wrist if your system crashes during testing. Imagine that responsibility, your code runs platforms that will provide communication for millions of people, revenue for thousands of companies and impact a continent.

It takes years to become a true program manager and many more years to become a great one.

And if the Dev can do what everyone else can do, an intelligent Visual Studio would one day do what the PM needs, eliminating the need for a Dev ;)

Cheers,

Dinesh

re: Modern PM research techniques

Fadi — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 23:34:25 GMT

Long time Steven!

re: Modern PM research techniques

steven_sinofsky — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 06:15:06 GMT

Am I being stalked?

Since I'm focused on careers at Microsoft I took a holiday break from blogging (students are all busy) and then was on vacation until yesterday.

--Steven

re: Modern PM research techniques

Fadi — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 10:28:38 GMT

Stalked!!! No...I just enjoy your posts although i am now out of MS and out of the whole IT industry.

re: Modern PM research techniques

note — Wed, 29 Mar 2006 07:34:37 GMT

"I just enjoy your posts although i am now out of MS and out of the whole IT industry. "
Really enjoy the post.