In the industry where everything changes in mere seconds, one must not be complacent. This is very clear and realized by Microsoft. They did notice the need to be at par with the several competitors they have, some offering free software. Although they have a near monopoly of the software industry, this can change overnight when they do not move with their competitors. Luckily, their head, Bill Gates realizes this one so he keeps on pushing new innovations from them. However, one problem exists in Microsoft’s products, every time they bring out a new software, almost in just seconds before launching, there were reports of numerous bugs. This just means that testing was not done properly and their code wasn’t as perfect as expected.
Based on the article, Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software, Senior Officer Jim Allchin have realized this problem and wants to change how they were building their software. Although, every new project requires millions of lines of codes to be built, the way they developed it is not right. They are delivering full-blown software so it is understandable that they’ll be needing a lot of software engineers to do it. However, they lack the mechanisms or a well planned engineering process to do it. It was like, everything part was divided among the software engineers, they do their part, test them individually and then patch them all to make the big software. However, because of these, they are prone to errors like incompatibility of the codes. There was no planning of the whole project, what are the deliverables and what specific modules need to interact with each other. Although, time constraint in delivering a project is always a consideration, the quality of software should never be compromised.
I agree with the team of Allchin in making the necessary changes to how they make their software. They almost defy the wishes of Mr. Gates, however, careful planning has proved to be more advantageous to the company as the errors were greatly reduced. This has also somewhat changed the reputation of Microsoft as it has slowly become known of being a software provider dull of bugs. The careful planning of software is as important as the outcome of the software.
Works Cited
Guth, Robert (2005). Battling Google, Microsoft Changes How It Builds Software. The Wall Street Journal Online. September 23, 2005
