Wednesday, August 02, 2006

another delay in vista

As I wrote earlier about imminent delay of Vista and masses and websites now pouring over and running their own customized news, I want to talk about this delay.

Delay means not reaching market at right time. Microsoft 95, 2K, 2K3 were never perfect softwares but were released in the market due to the competitive pressures and market growth. Desktop/laptop growth was higher than current adoption rate. Vista is more now as replacement OS.
Delay is imminent but I think it shouldnt be done. Engineers/Engineering community will always be obssessed with near perfection and they also know nothing is PERFECT in the world. Vista is very large and complex project which doesnt need to be 100% perfect to work. It needs to work and run according to its main objective rather than the experimentation which small number of people will do. Windows 95, Windows 2K and Windows 2K3 just did that.

Engineering perfection obessesion will leave Vista in labs for endless time and it'll keep on delaying. People can comment that it has to be delayed to work to perfection, everything but after a point a decision has to be made to release it. Sooner or better. Vista is supposed to work with everything which is impossible.
This strategy can never work. Google keeps everything beta just to avoid this embarrasment. Gmail will never get official release but remain beta and engineers/ITs will never be able to say anything.


Classic marketing/business/engineering/product case study.