Know Thy Enemy

21 Rules of Thumb – How Microsoft develops its Software

As a software Developer on the MS Windows platform we are both cohorts and competitors with Microsoft. Rather you agree with the Microsoft development philosophy or not, this is useful information.

David Gristwood's WebLog contains 21 Rules of Thumb for Shipping Great Software on Time by Jim McCarthy of Microsoft Corporation. Here are the bullet points:

1. Don’t know what you don’t know.
2. Get to a known state and stay there
3. Remember the triangle.
4. Don’t go dark.
5. Use zero defect (ZD) milestones.
6. Beware of a guy in a room.
7. Never trade a bad date for an equally bad date.
8. When slipping, don't fall.
9. Low tech is good.
10. Design time at design time.
11. If you build it, it will ship.
12. Portability is for canoes
13. Enrapture the customers.
14. Remember one thing: Unity.
15. State your theme.
16. Vary it.
17. Balance it.
18. Evolve it.
19. Your product should be a hierarchy.
20. Establish a shared vision.
21. Get the team into ship mode.

But you will need to read the article to know what these rules mean.