it from truly implementing that coding process," Andrews wrote. "Now it's a matter of making itself semiagile wherever possible."
But Microsoft officials argue that being agile has less to do with shaving some time off of a product release schedule than it does with being able to ship higher-quality software in the first release of a product.
Users who hear that kind of talk "may roll their eyes" because of the shipment delay on SQL Server 2008, acknowledged Ted Kummert, a Microsoft corporate vice president who heads development of the database. "But we are driven by the end quality we feel we have to deliver, which lives on far after the RTM party we have on campus," he said. The CTP release of SQL Server 2008 that became available last week was the sixth issued thus far by Kummert's team.
The SQL Server and Visual Studio development teams have switched over completely to CTPs, which are interim software builds that provide a faster opportunity for feedback from users but aren't supported as extensively by Microsoft as full-fledged beta releases are. The Windows Server group used a combination of betas and CTPs during the development of Windows Server 2008, according to Microsoft officials.
Another key element of Microsoft's development process for enterprise products is its Technology Adoption Programs, which let companies get extensive handholding from the software vendor as they test and then go live with beta or CTP releases in production environments. Microsoft's customer service and support team manage the TAPs, and the company gathers feedback from participants both in the form of informal comments and more quantitative survey-type data, said Rich Kaplan, a vice president in the customer service unit.
Some users who have worked with the prerelease versions of the new products during the latest development cycle said that they noticed an increase in responsiveness and flexibility on the part of Microsoft.
"Almost everything that we asked for while testing SQL Server 2008 is now in the final product," said Umit Nazlica, database systems manager at Garanti Bank, a banking and financial services firm in Istanbul, Turkey, that is taking part in the TAP for the new database. For instance, IT staffers at Garanti requested stronger resource management and governance capabilities, as well as data compression and encryption improvements, Nazlica said.
The bank, which runs 140 instances of Microsoft's database with 11TB of data, also participated in the TAP for the current SQL Server 2005 release. The testing process has been much better this time around, according to Nazlica. "We had a lot more time to evaluate the product," he said. "And we were more experienced about how to work directly with the people at Microsoft."
Microsoft's development teams "truly are listening and really take into account what is said," said Michael Ruminer, an agile development consultant in Boston and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional with a focus on its Visual Studio Team System software. "They don't take on a hubris in the product development that they know best."
Agile development can't simply be mandated from above by management, Ruminer said. But he added that when he talks to developers at Microsoft, he gets the sense that their managers are taking real action by removing obstacles to agility and needless process requirements. And he said that the company has made significant improvements to the Visual Studio testing suite after outside developers complained about it -- a step that Ruminer saw as evidence of Microsoft's increased responsiveness.
He did note, though, that there is "a lot of discussion about whether Microsoft is actually pushing out CTPs too quickly." That leaves some users and third-party developers feeling overwhelmed, and pressured to try all of the releases, Ruminer said. But to him, the upsides outweigh the potential negatives. "No one is forcing you to install the CTPs," he said.
Microsoft hasn't always been so responsive. For most of its history, the company adhered strictly to a development philosophy called Zero Defect, according
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