You could say that Moshe Dunie, who had led the team to that point, had loaded the bases. “I was scared to death coming over to this job because I wasn’t sure I was going to succeed,”īut the thing that convinced me to come over here was that Windows 2000 already had a great team in place. And this week they will celebrate the launch of the product, marking the operating system’s availability in retail stores. In December, they completed work on Windows 2000 and released the operating system to computer manufacturers. Now, a little more than a year later, the Windows 2000 team has achieved its goal. “I’d say, ‘We’re a long way from being done, but I can show you that today is better than yesterday, and this week is better than last week.'” “The idea was to let people know that first of all, we are going to get this done, and second of all, we’re going to have fun doing it,” He even performed stand-up comedy routines at weekly Friday afternoon parties designed to relieve stress and raise morale. He brought in veteran project manager Iain MacDonald and charged him with dissecting the team’s goals into concrete, achievable steps. “What is a decision? It’s a tool to remove confusion! Are you confused? If so, then make the decision and let’s move on!” “Decisions in 10 minutes or less, or the next one is free.”
He established steadfast goals and priorities, and made a motto out of the phrase, Valentine immediately set to work as the “lead motivator,” helping the team overcome the stress of such a large project with top-notch organizational skills and contagious sense of humor.
The team was wondering if it was ever going to get done and deliver on its original goals for the project.”
“And when I joined the team, it was a very challenging time. “Large projects go through a natural cycle of highs and lows,” says Valentine, who serves as senior vice president of the Windows Division. At the mid-point of the largest software development project in the company’s history, the 4,200-strong Windows 2000 team faced the challenge of finishing the product, finding and fixing bugs, fine-tuning new features, testing the product extensively and getting it “out the door” and into the hands of Microsoft’s customers. 16, 2000 - When Brian Valentine joined the Microsoft Windows Division in December 1998, development of the company’s next-generation operating system had reached a critical stage.
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