Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

Shaping the Future of Windows Home Server

Shaping the Future of Windows Home Server — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 14:03:14 GMT

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re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

artfudd — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 10:17:12 GMT

Whatever the approach.. every report, whether bug related or a suggestion/wish for some improvement, MUST be given careful thought and consideration. There should be no such criteria as “if it does not get 10 votes it will not be considered”… etc.. Voting should only be used as a guideline for the team to guage customer interest and not a measure of the useability or functionality or adviseability or practicality of a suggestion. An idea may get no votes because of visibility or poor subject wording, or unclear description wording … whatever, but may in fact be a very good idea that needs to be looked at.

-Art (artfudd)..

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

Tink — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 17:38:04 GMT

Agreed, Art! While I support Kevin's idea, I also want to see all reports for bugs or suggestions looked at, and the voting only used for verification of those who have had the same or similar problems for bugs or support of suggestions. However, a 10 votes or higher criteria IMHO is very unrealistic for anything, as there are even many suggestions and bug reports in most betas that I have been involved with that have not seen that many votes, and yet are serious problems that have been fixed, so to me, setting the criteria at 10 or more is just not realistic, and sort of casts an less than optimistic view of the overall effort.

Jan :)

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

Kevin Beares — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:49:34 GMT

OK, let me clarify the use of 10 votes was a for example. The concern we have is that if the level of participation from the community is tremendously high, there is no way in heck that we would be able to resource this to realistically look at every issue. This is where the community must add it's value. The rating / voting is key. If there are not votes or rating, this means it has not been looked at and the community has not weighed in. We need community help in order to understand the priorities of feedback.

While I agree in principle that we should read any and all feedback, it is not realistic.

So, how would you propose setting it up that respects the level of resources that have to be budgeted to look at the feedback.

Now, because this is an RTM channel for feedback, we should not expect to get the level of feedback that we received during the beta, but given the level of participation that we had from everyone, it is not inconceivable that we could still get a larger that manageble level of feedback.

Thoughts?

Kevin

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

Kevin Beares — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 01:52:29 GMT

I think it is important to point out again that I am not talking about a beta of WHS. I am talking about the RTM version of WHS. It is also important to point out that I am not talking about break fix bugs. I am talking about feedback that you want to pass on to the product team.

What I am ultimately trying to get at here with you all on this thread is how would you plan for an unknown volume? I completely agree that the Eutopian view of the world, you would staff according to demand and look at, triage, and respond to each item of feedbac that you receive. We do not live in this Eutopian view of the world. I live in the same world you all live in. We staff according to business needs and taking on any additional work load must be shouldered by the team in place. Short term and long term, you

can make adjustments to your staffing if you can make a compelling enough of an argument and get the headcount that you ask for, but not always.

Let's look at the current landscape one more time.... How do you, members of the community currently "Officially" submit a suggestion and or bug today against an RTM product? Now that the Vista Beta is over, how do you "Officially" submit a bug or suggestion to the Vista product team?????

........ Call CSS. That is it or at least that is all I know right now on

how we have enabled feedback to the Product team for bugs and suggestions for RTM Products.

What I am proposing as at least taking one step closer to consolidating feedback to the product team into one location where it will not get lost and it has broad public exposure. With CSS it is strictly a one for one mapping and it is not visible to the general public. It costs money to staff CSS and this why they charge the going rate for a professional or consumer support incident and if the case is deemed a bug, the refund is given. However, if the case is not deemed to be a bug, the money is not refunded.

We, the WHS team and SBS teams do not have any data on how hard we would get hit with feedback if we turned on this channel for our RTM product. We could be actually talking about 100 total feedback items in one month. We could be talking about 5 a week or we could be talking about 1k or more in a month. We do not know what level of feedback we could get. This is why I have to

talk about putting a filter on this channel. How else could I possibly set an expectation with the community if we have no idea on what kind of traffic we are looking at? There is no way to reliably predict what the incoming rate will be. In our betas, we expect a lot of feedback and during the time of a beta we are all heads down working on that code base and treat all imcoming bugs from the public beta basically the same as we do with bugs that are discovered from our testers. Once we hit RTM, a vast majority of

the product team moves towards developing code for the next version. So, we are not staffed at nearly the level we were when we were during our beta phase.

Let me throw an analogy at you. What if you started up a coffee or a donut shop in a neighborhood that depserately needed a coffee or a donut shop? Now, you can do all the research in the world to ascertain how many people live in the area, look at how many competitors if there are any in that same area and take a really

good stab at how much business you might get. In order to get a loan from the bank, you will have to do this anyway. So, you would at least have a really good clue on what the bottom of the barrel would look like. However, the big thing you probably will not be able to guess is when will the amount of customers be greater than your capacity to service them. In my analogy, if the line for coffee or donuts is too long, you will chose to go elsewhere or come

back later. We had a Krispy Kreme open up in Issaquah, WA a few years back and it was insane. There was no way to get a donut unless you knew someone or if you were willing to stand in line for what seemed like an eternity to get service. Eventually, 3 months or so later, the volume dropped down as well as staffing adjustments were made to handle the volume, but initially

the level of service from this fine establishment was a little bumpy.

So, I hope you can see what I am trying to get at here. I am trying to plan for the un known and I want to get ideas on how you would do it given the resources I have available to me.

Would this be better than what you have today or worse? How would you set expectations with the community?

Thanks,

Kevin

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

davwilli — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:24:49 GMT

I wonder if it would be possible to enlist the help of MVP's and Insiders to filter the feedback, and pass the "best" suggestions to the product team? Just a thought.

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

Kevin Beares — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 22:38:53 GMT

I think that is a great idea. What is interesting is some features that are coming down the line with MS Connect that will allow us to enable moderator privileges on feedback. So, active members of the community like MVPs would be able to help triage feedback and maybe even have the ability to escalate certain issues that look important. I think what is important to keep in mind, is we would love the communities help is looking at triaging the feedback much like what already happens in the newsgroups and forums today. No one expects the product team to respond to every post in the newsgroup or forums today so why would the expectation be any different for a feebback channel like this? We do try to look at everything in the newsgroups and forums today, but responding would be an impossible task unless we had a limitless pool of resources.

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

davwilli — Sat, 11 Aug 2007 05:27:40 GMT

I just want to add, I think the idea of such a channel is fantastic! And I agree that the product team can not be expected to have time to review, or respond to every post, when the potential for ahuge reponse is very real.

re: Enabling a broad feedback channel to the Windows Home Server team and SBS team via MS Connect for RTM releases

stryqx — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 16:27:55 GMT

Nice to see this post. I'm glad someone in Microsoft sees that the organisation has no process in place to capture feedback for bugfixes or feature enhancements in a clear and consistent way.

The fact that CSS wants to charge me for providing Microsoft with a fix or workaround for a bug is just plain insulting. I find CSS only useful for obtaining limited release hotfixes. Extended turnaround times and slow moving escalation processes are only of use when the problem is systemic and non-urgent - of which there aren't many.

The use of MS Connect to obtain feedback is a good start, but this is ad-hoc and relies on product manager buy-in. The culture needs to be well and truly set by senior management if Microsoft really wants to gain feedback across all its product range. This may be an issue with resources though, as feedback levels could be very high.