Uncontrollable projects

An interesting post from a Windows team manager on why the Vista release date slipped, despite so many managers putting their reputations / bonuses on the line.

Some of the key reasons:

• Individual components simple but integration of the components hard (50+ dependency layers)
• Long approval process for each change (too many cooks in the waterfall kitchen)
• Windows coders only producing 1,000 lines of code per year (average)
• Culture of slipping. Nobody wants to hear how long something will actually take to do.