d2r: microsoft eats the dog food

microsoft eats the dog food

An article in Fast Company that talks about how the Microsoft Project team improved its software by using it. Example:

Microsoft Project included as a regular feature a time-sheet tool that helped project managers stay on top of their team's hours. Particularly for teams working a regular 9-to-5 shift, it was a useful feature -- or at least the Project team always assumed that it was.
Until, that is, Capossela's own software engineers learned that they were going to have to start filling in time sheets.

Now, this article has to be MS-spoon-fed drivel. No mention of the fact that Microsoft changed this in the latest revision of the product. That means that they didn't use the software up to that point. How is that supposed to be "cool" as the article implies? Microsoft is eating its own dog food, great.

But maybe they should have started eating it a long time ago.

Categories: technology
Posted by diego on August 18 2002 at 9:44 PM

Comments (please see the comments & trackback policy).

Microsoft have always used their own tools. They use Visual C++ to build their C' compiler for instance. Project has only just become a 'reasonably' good tool for software project manangement, although that is questionable.

Posted by: Brian at August 19, 2002 10:41 AM

Yes, they have used many of their own tools, but not all of them. There is something to be said for using your own tools all the time and not just after several years of pushing them down users' throats.

The point is, if anybody should be able to do it, it's them. But even if they don't do it, shouldn't at least that article be a more more critical of that? :)

Posted by: Diego at August 19, 2002 11:22 PM