Why the delay for Windows Vista? "too much manpower"

[Deja Q]

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/technology/personal_technology/14196272.htm

:eyes:

Too many cooks spoil the soup, and too many software developers can cause more problems than they solve.

This could explain, at least in part, what's wrong at Microsoft.

The company suffered a huge embarrassment last week in slipping the consumer launch of Windows Vista back to January.

This came after Microsoft made solemn pledges to ship Vista, the newest version of its flagship operating system, in time for this year's holiday selling season.

Vista is crucial to Microsoft's future.

Windows XP, its predecessor, is almost 5 years old -- retirement age in the fast-moving world of computing. Improved security and slick new features in Vista could help Microsoft regain a cutting-edge image snatched away by faster-moving competitors such as Apple Computer and Google.

But Windows has gotten so big over the years, designed for everything from high-end computer entertainment systems to portable touchpads, that coming up with a new version is untangling a bowl of spaghetti.

The challenge of big software projects was probably best described by Frederick P. Brooks Jr. in his classic 1975 book, ``The Mythical Man-Month.''

Brooks, a professor of computer science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, stated then what he called Brooks' Law: ``Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.''



Try too many ingredients instead. XP itself has over four billion lines of code. Vista is 5 years in the running, has had set backs and components axed out before...

And, no, vista is NOT crucial to MS's success. Most corporations wait to deploy it; they observe end user/home user responses first. It's less expensive that way.