Software Company Management

I figured I should look into how companies like Microsoft ran their business, since they are obviously extremely successful. I’m not delusional enough to think that we could scale to anything of that level, but I think it is important to have a structure like they did. They had different teams working on sales, marketing, development, and testing. For awhile, we’ll have to hustle ourselves and multi-task to accomplish this.

Microsoft constantly pivots. It’s always revising things based on user feedback and market needs. The customers would define the product. Microsoft would have a development schedule and work in incremental changes/chunks. They realized that it is not always possible to have a complete product. Moreover, developers would work with product testers to refine the product. They would keep in mind user needs, user priorities and develop project milestones. Microsoft would have intended ship dates but this would change as they got more feedback. They would have beta testers, who would pay a small fee, and have them submit error forms. The beta testers would come up with a buglist prior to the release and ask them 10 things they would like to change. Along the way, they would meticulously document everything. I also thought it was interesting that they would have a checklist of tests and changes they would like to make before they would make a release.

Microsoft would spend most of its efforts on shipping products vs. product development. Their goal was to ship as many products as possible. They would commonly bundle their products together as packages and offer these at discounted prices rather than selling individual products. I guess this is more or less common sense, but if you’re just getting started in software some of this is not as intuitive.