Dogfooding was a new term to me when I joined Microsoft. I quickly learnt what it meant as I was immersed in beta testing the latest builds of Windows Vista and the 2007 Microsoft Office System. So what is dogfooding? Here's what Wikipedia says about Dogfooding:
To say that a company "eats its own dog food" means that it uses the products that it makes. For example, Microsoft emphasizes the use of its own software products inside the company. If a company were to use a competitor's products for its own day-to-day business, it could be disparaged for "not eating its own dog food"; this would seem to show a lack of confidence in its own wares, and would send a negative message to its customers.
So why dogfood? Well according to Microsoft IT we dogfood for the following reasons:
- Simulate the customer’s business user experience
- Ensure product readiness
- Gain enterprise experience
- Conduct compatibility testing for 3rd party and LOB applications
- Validate product value
- Develop and test training materials
- Prepare partners and Microsoft Support Customer Care
- Develop and document best practices for customer use: IT Showcase and Everyday Productivity Education (EPE) Guides
Microsoft IT released some stats yesterday on internal use of Windows Vista, 2005 Microsoft Office System and other beta products which have been RTM'd, or are soon to be RTM'd. The number of machines we had running the beta software is quite impressive as the graphs below show:
Microsoft employees do so much dogfooding that many of the bugs are fixed before our customers get to test the product itself. We make a great team when combined with our large number of public beta testers and together ensure that the software is as reliable and stable as possible. I know that I submitted quite a few bugs and I was always pleased with how responsive and thorough the developers were when they contacted me about my issues. We recently said thank you to our public beta testers by giving them a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition for all the hard work they put in – we really do appreciate it!
Application Compatibility
What about application compatibility? Well, as you would imagine we've been running many different applications on Windows Vista and testing how they function to ensure that customers have a seamless upgrade experience when moving from Windows XP to Windows Vista. The test results are fed back into the Application Compatibility Toolkit which customers can use to check which of their applications will work on Windows Vista.
Lessons Learned
It's important we share what we've learned along the way so you can learn from our experiences. The three areas highlighted by Microsoft IT were:
- Streamlined Deployment – Windows Deployment Service works with the Windows Vista Image format (WIM) to deliver out-of-the-box domain join and user addition to the admin group with no custom scripting.
- Reduced Maintenance Overhead – Windows Vista installs on desktop, laptop, and tablet machines from the same WIM. Language packs are a component of the WIM, configurable from Windows Vista setup and allow image to be “localized” at install time.
- Reduced Training Cost – The Enterprise Learning Framework (ELF) provides clear guidance for what help and training content is applicable for each deployment phase. Microsoft IT’s Everyday Productivity Education team provides templates to get this content to enterprise clients.
More Resources
Find out more about how Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista, Office 2007 and Exchange 2007
Download the productivity Guides
Find out how the Enterprise Learning Framework can help plan your product training