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MICROSOFT SECRETS: How the World's Most Powerful Software Company Creates Technology, Shapes Markets, and Manages People
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITIONIt gives us great pleasure to write this special preface to the paperback edition of "Microsoft Secrets, " which we originally published in October 1995. The book has been translated into fourteen foreign languages and has been on best-seller lists around the world, in markets ranging from the United States and Japan to Germany, Brazil, and China. The personal computer software industry moves very quickly, and much has happened to Microsoft in the past three years. The strategies and principles discussed in "Microsoft Secrets" still appear to be guiding the company forward.
"The Internet: " The most important change has been the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web. When we were writing this book, Microsoft was almost totally focused on finishing Windows 95 (which shipped in August 1995), revising Office and some other applications to go with its new operating system, and launching the proprietary online network, Microsoft Network. Not until December 1995 did Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives become truly serious about the Internet, even though they did ship a basic browser, Internet Explorer 1.0, with Windows 95.
Since that time, Microsoft has changed most of its product plans and products to make sure that they took advantage of the Internet's enormous capabilities. Microsoft now has 40 percent of the browser market (compared to 60 percent for Netscape). Microsoft also has a strong and growing position in server software based on Windows NT Plans for Microsoft Network did not work out as expected, although Microsoft has remade much of this system into a Web-based service.
Microsoft has made maade their operating systems andapplications software. Microsoft Office had about 90 percent of the desktop applications market and had become a standard in corporations. Windows NT and Microsoft BackOffice (which includes servers and database software) were also growing rapidly in market share. These corporate products had higher profit margins than products sold to individuals and guaranteed that Microsoft's profits would probably grow faster than its revenues.
"Antitrust: " Perhaps the biggest concern about Microsoft was antitrust. The federal government, individual state governments, and governments in Japan and Europe were all concerned that Microsoft was too powerful. We saw these same concerns when we published "Microsoft Secrets" in 1995. Government scrutiny of Microsoft seemed more intense in 1998, however. The scrutiny was not so much with regard to acquisitions but with Microsoft potentially using its position in operating systems to extend its dominance to other areas, such as Web-based Internet commerce.
The most recent serious debate has involved features or products that Microsoft is bundling into new versions of Windows. The browser that comes with Windows 98, for example, is much more tightly integrated into the operating system than in Windows 95. Microsoft also continued to include the browser at no extra charge (which forced Netscape to make its browser available for free also, even to companies that previously had paid for it). The problem: Microsoft has allegedly pressured computer manufacturers not to load competitors' products, such as Netscape's Navigator/Communicator browser. The browser is no longer a revenue source in itself, but it is critical as a "port al" to the Web. Both Netscapeand Microsoft, for example, use their browsers to draw customers to their Web sites, from which point customers can purchase various products and services, such as books, news, and travel reservations. Furthermore, in Windows 98, Microsoft is including the Web TV software "for free" and is encouraging computer manufacturers to include hardware to support this technology. Web TV makes it possible to combine TV advertisements and programming with Internet-based sales.
Not all of Microsoft's initiatives will succeed. The company can misjudge markets, as it did with the Microsoft Network. Microsoft also has more competition in Internet markets than in operating systems or desktop software. But the possibilities are limitless for Internet commerce. And Bill Gates has clearly put Microsoft in a superb position strategically and technically to thrive in this new age of the Internet.
"Product Development Process: " To build new Internet and enterprise products, Microsoft has continued to use the same principles and organization for product development that we talked about in "Microsoft Secrets." The company has made some minor changes, however, that we feel are important to note. For example, in Internet groups that want to move especially fast from ideas to final products, Microsoft developers sometimes take the lead in proposing feat
"The Internet: " The most important change has been the rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web. When we were writing this book, Microsoft was almost totally focused on finishing Windows 95 (which shipped in August 1995), revising Office and some other applications to go with its new operating system, and launching the proprietary online network, Microsoft Network. Not until December 1995 did Bill Gates and other Microsoft executives become truly serious about the Internet, even though they did ship a basic browser, Internet Explorer 1.0, with Windows 95.
Since that time, Microsoft has changed most of its product plans and products to make sure that they took advantage of the Internet's enormous capabilities. Microsoft now has 40 percent of the browser market (compared to 60 percent for Netscape). Microsoft also has a strong and growing position in server software based on Windows NT Plans for Microsoft Network did not work out as expected, although Microsoft has remade much of this system into a Web-based service.
Microsoft has made maade their operating systems andapplications software. Microsoft Office had about 90 percent of the desktop applications market and had become a standard in corporations. Windows NT and Microsoft BackOffice (which includes servers and database software) were also growing rapidly in market share. These corporate products had higher profit margins than products sold to individuals and guaranteed that Microsoft's profits would probably grow faster than its revenues.
"Antitrust: " Perhaps the biggest concern about Microsoft was antitrust. The federal government, individual state governments, and governments in Japan and Europe were all concerned that Microsoft was too powerful. We saw these same concerns when we published "Microsoft Secrets" in 1995. Government scrutiny of Microsoft seemed more intense in 1998, however. The scrutiny was not so much with regard to acquisitions but with Microsoft potentially using its position in operating systems to extend its dominance to other areas, such as Web-based Internet commerce.
The most recent serious debate has involved features or products that Microsoft is bundling into new versions of Windows. The browser that comes with Windows 98, for example, is much more tightly integrated into the operating system than in Windows 95. Microsoft also continued to include the browser at no extra charge (which forced Netscape to make its browser available for free also, even to companies that previously had paid for it). The problem: Microsoft has allegedly pressured computer manufacturers not to load competitors' products, such as Netscape's Navigator/Communicator browser. The browser is no longer a revenue source in itself, but it is critical as a "port al" to the Web. Both Netscapeand Microsoft, for example, use their browsers to draw customers to their Web sites, from which point customers can purchase various products and services, such as books, news, and travel reservations. Furthermore, in Windows 98, Microsoft is including the Web TV software "for free" and is encouraging computer manufacturers to include hardware to support this technology. Web TV makes it possible to combine TV advertisements and programming with Internet-based sales.
Not all of Microsoft's initiatives will succeed. The company can misjudge markets, as it did with the Microsoft Network. Microsoft also has more competition in Internet markets than in operating systems or desktop software. But the possibilities are limitless for Internet commerce. And Bill Gates has clearly put Microsoft in a superb position strategically and technically to thrive in this new age of the Internet.
"Product Development Process: " To build new Internet and enterprise products, Microsoft has continued to use the same principles and organization for product development that we talked about in "Microsoft Secrets." The company has made some minor changes, however, that we feel are important to note. For example, in Internet groups that want to move especially fast from ideas to final products, Microsoft developers sometimes take the lead in proposing feat
528 pages, Hardcover
First published October 19, 1995
7 people are currently reading
257 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 30, 2016
When I picked this up it showed the release date of 2016. I am just grateful it was a library book and I didn't buy it. Deceptively this is really dated material. Windows three windows NT Windows 95. Still some interesting stuff on how technology leadership work at Microsoft. All things considered this was not worth the read Couldn't finish it
June 30, 2020
The book was a bit dated and not very informative. Compare this book to "How Google Works" and you will wonder how Microsoft ever got lucky and made it this far. I do admire MS more today than I did earlier.
September 21, 2012
Working at a technology company I found this a fascinating work. The candid quotes from MS employees on what was working, and what didn’t; what was being attempted and to what mere lip service was paid was very enlightening. Of course, the 90s technology has been left behind, but skipping over those parts (which I am surprised the original authors though to include), the organizational insight is telling. Here is a list of what I found most interesting, in no particular order:
1. p. 432: the process of self-analysis, post-mortems (p. 331), and maintain a historical base of metrics (p. 431) should probably be embraced by all software development firms and since it is not widespread is probably a big reason why software engineering is not as formalized, repeatable, reliable, and rigorous other engineering disciplines.
2. Planning timelines with built-in buffers for the unexpected … and vacations (pp. 201,4)
3. A logical, piece-by-piece and order development cycle that recalls to me Descartes’ Principal Rules Of The Method.
4. “Features Need to Be Twice as Good to Justify Being Different”, p. 280
5. Team development groups (p. 25), integrated with testers (p. 85; almost one to one!) and PMs for management (p. 64).
6. Ladder-leveled career paths, including pure technical along with managerial: "We're very conscious of the dual career concept, where a guy who doesn't want to be a manager can progress in his career and get promoted just as well as a guy who does want to be a lead or a manager." (p. 115)
7. Encourage expertise, specialization (p. 251)
8. Training (p. 105-7, 112)
9. Inter-group sharing and explicitly arranged collaboration (p. 343, 355)
10. The classic “eat your own dog food” (p. 345)
11. An open discussion of MS’s weaknesses in the approach to growing middle management (p. 420)
12. Embracing customer contact to drive feature planning (p. 369, 431)
13. Detailing development staff to PSS duty (p. 374)
14. A Product Improvement Group internally maintain focus on customer Top Tens (p. 371)
15. Focusing on user activities over behavior is a weak approach (p. 428)
16. The book summarizes MS strengths at this point starting on p. 405, including scaling small scale culture to larger teams and incorporating customer feedback.
More reading notes:
Microsoft Secrets
interviews (all tape-recorded and transcribed into several thousand pages)
(documentation for users)
"execution is the thing that distinguishes"
"millions of lines of code"
"These little offices, hidden away with the doors closed. And unless you have this constant voice of authority going across the e-mail the whole time, it doesn't work."
"...what you have to do is make that structure as unseen as possible and build up this image for all these prima donnas to think that they can do what they like."
"It's like he's this huge computing machine that knows how to make money."
"The status reports are brief and have a standard format."
"sanity checkpoint"
"a comprehensive argument that views the world differently"
End User Group
"infinite defects"
"...we don't understand how the pieces will work together."
"...developers, without structure, are reasonably irrational: Left to their own devices, they will do things which may not make sense for marketing reasons or supportability or anything else."
"'Well, what about this?' To ask an insightful question. To absorb it in real time. A capability to remember. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective."
"I've seen stupid companies where they just hire bodies and attempt to make up for their hiring of lots of bodies by putting in lots of rules. I guess it may partly fix the problem, but the root cause of the problem was not lack of rules. It was hiring people that needed lots of rules to do their job."
superprogrammers
"private releases"
"end users' needs"
"someone detached from the spec"
"track bugs"
"They have followed the lead of the other specialties and formalized many of their procedures, and even characterize their processes in terms borrowed from software development." [manuals & documentation]
"Any company that has HR people do the hiring is doomed."
"maximize the number of individual offices with windows"
"The Microsoft way: Wake up, go to work, do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Go down and eat some breakfast. Do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Eat some lunch. Work until you drop. Drive home. Sleep."
"embarrassment drives the world"
"So we look for people who are eternal skeptics. They don't take anything for granted."
"Inexperienced but smart people"
"the first moment that they're here on campus has to be an exciting moment that wil carry forward for their whole career."
""Word Internals," "Excel Internals," and "Newcomer.doc.""
"We're very conscious of the dual career concept, where a guy who doesn't want to be a manager can progress in his career and get promoted just as well as a guy who does want to be a lead or a manager."
"Testing simple features for low-volume consumer products is probably at the lowest end of the skill requirements...."
"make old products obsolete"
"platform standards"
"character-based and graphical computing"
""golden master" ... the copy of the product from which Microsoft will make all others."
"describing clearly "what the product is not" as opposed to "what the product is.""
"For example, the initial specification for Excel 5.0 was 1,500 pages before the start of coding, and the complete specification when the product shipped was 1,850 pages."
"Word 6.0's initial specification was approximately 350 pages, and its complete specification was about 400 pages. A very early version of the latest Office specification was about 1,200 pages; Microsoft has not printed it recently, but it is now too large to bind as a single document."
"less emotional attachment" [to software]
"They just want it to work, and they don't want to learn it."
granular document
"It's a little like reading the ingredient list for an automobile and trying to figure it out, is this thing a sports car or what?"
"important of frequent user activities"
"spec the exe"
"one-page-of-what-we-learned"
"sim ship"
"the virtues of creating and using your own tools"
"usage scenarios"
"technical exchange"
"what runs great in 16 megs might thrash like crazy in 4 meg"
1. p. 432: the process of self-analysis, post-mortems (p. 331), and maintain a historical base of metrics (p. 431) should probably be embraced by all software development firms and since it is not widespread is probably a big reason why software engineering is not as formalized, repeatable, reliable, and rigorous other engineering disciplines.
2. Planning timelines with built-in buffers for the unexpected … and vacations (pp. 201,4)
3. A logical, piece-by-piece and order development cycle that recalls to me Descartes’ Principal Rules Of The Method.
4. “Features Need to Be Twice as Good to Justify Being Different”, p. 280
5. Team development groups (p. 25), integrated with testers (p. 85; almost one to one!) and PMs for management (p. 64).
6. Ladder-leveled career paths, including pure technical along with managerial: "We're very conscious of the dual career concept, where a guy who doesn't want to be a manager can progress in his career and get promoted just as well as a guy who does want to be a lead or a manager." (p. 115)
7. Encourage expertise, specialization (p. 251)
8. Training (p. 105-7, 112)
9. Inter-group sharing and explicitly arranged collaboration (p. 343, 355)
10. The classic “eat your own dog food” (p. 345)
11. An open discussion of MS’s weaknesses in the approach to growing middle management (p. 420)
12. Embracing customer contact to drive feature planning (p. 369, 431)
13. Detailing development staff to PSS duty (p. 374)
14. A Product Improvement Group internally maintain focus on customer Top Tens (p. 371)
15. Focusing on user activities over behavior is a weak approach (p. 428)
16. The book summarizes MS strengths at this point starting on p. 405, including scaling small scale culture to larger teams and incorporating customer feedback.
More reading notes:
Microsoft Secrets
interviews (all tape-recorded and transcribed into several thousand pages)
(documentation for users)
"execution is the thing that distinguishes"
"millions of lines of code"
"These little offices, hidden away with the doors closed. And unless you have this constant voice of authority going across the e-mail the whole time, it doesn't work."
"...what you have to do is make that structure as unseen as possible and build up this image for all these prima donnas to think that they can do what they like."
"It's like he's this huge computing machine that knows how to make money."
"The status reports are brief and have a standard format."
"sanity checkpoint"
"a comprehensive argument that views the world differently"
End User Group
"infinite defects"
"...we don't understand how the pieces will work together."
"...developers, without structure, are reasonably irrational: Left to their own devices, they will do things which may not make sense for marketing reasons or supportability or anything else."
"'Well, what about this?' To ask an insightful question. To absorb it in real time. A capability to remember. To relate to domains that may not seem connected at first. A certain creativity that allows people to be effective."
"I've seen stupid companies where they just hire bodies and attempt to make up for their hiring of lots of bodies by putting in lots of rules. I guess it may partly fix the problem, but the root cause of the problem was not lack of rules. It was hiring people that needed lots of rules to do their job."
superprogrammers
"private releases"
"end users' needs"
"someone detached from the spec"
"track bugs"
"They have followed the lead of the other specialties and formalized many of their procedures, and even characterize their processes in terms borrowed from software development." [manuals & documentation]
"Any company that has HR people do the hiring is doomed."
"maximize the number of individual offices with windows"
"The Microsoft way: Wake up, go to work, do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Go down and eat some breakfast. Do some work. 'Oh, I'm hungry.' Eat some lunch. Work until you drop. Drive home. Sleep."
"embarrassment drives the world"
"So we look for people who are eternal skeptics. They don't take anything for granted."
"Inexperienced but smart people"
"the first moment that they're here on campus has to be an exciting moment that wil carry forward for their whole career."
""Word Internals," "Excel Internals," and "Newcomer.doc.""
"We're very conscious of the dual career concept, where a guy who doesn't want to be a manager can progress in his career and get promoted just as well as a guy who does want to be a lead or a manager."
"Testing simple features for low-volume consumer products is probably at the lowest end of the skill requirements...."
"make old products obsolete"
"platform standards"
"character-based and graphical computing"
""golden master" ... the copy of the product from which Microsoft will make all others."
"describing clearly "what the product is not" as opposed to "what the product is.""
"For example, the initial specification for Excel 5.0 was 1,500 pages before the start of coding, and the complete specification when the product shipped was 1,850 pages."
"Word 6.0's initial specification was approximately 350 pages, and its complete specification was about 400 pages. A very early version of the latest Office specification was about 1,200 pages; Microsoft has not printed it recently, but it is now too large to bind as a single document."
"less emotional attachment" [to software]
"They just want it to work, and they don't want to learn it."
granular document
"It's a little like reading the ingredient list for an automobile and trying to figure it out, is this thing a sports car or what?"
"important of frequent user activities"
"spec the exe"
"one-page-of-what-we-learned"
"sim ship"
"the virtues of creating and using your own tools"
"usage scenarios"
"technical exchange"
"what runs great in 16 megs might thrash like crazy in 4 meg"
April 1, 2020
Good book!
March 27, 2010
I worked with Microsoft guys who introduced me to a lot of the techniques in the book. Saw Cusumano at MIT conference. He was insufferable as he kept saying "as I wrote in my book..." The audience started groaning. Really turned me off to the guy. I think he basically just took notes at Microsoft since I didn't get the feeling he had original ideas.
April 27, 2009
From VMS to WNT, this book takes a year-long snapshot of the development of NT. Read along with Judge Jackson's US vs Microsoft decision, it's a chilling but dated look at "winning" at technology. Where's Philippe Kahn?
May 17, 2009
Especially good perspective on development lifecycle.
January 24, 2012
Great insight into how Microsoft works and how it's structured. I should have read this book years ago.
July 30, 2014
Learned so much from MS back in the day. Some useful insights.
March 30, 2013
A must-read company profile for knowledge workers, managers, directors, C-levels, and entrepreneurs.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews