RSS 2.0

Personal Info:

Joe Send mail to the author(s) leads the architecture of an experimental OS's developer platform, where he is also chief architect of its programming language. His current mission is to enable writing large-scale software that is reliable, secure, and scalable by-construction. Before this, Joe founded the Parallel Extensions to .NET project. He has been granted 19 patents, with 49 pending. When not working, Joe enjoys travelling with his wife, writing books, writing music, studying music theory & mathematics, and doing anything involving food & wine.

My books

My music

Disclaimer:
The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway.

© 2012, Joe Duffy

 
 Wednesday, July 28, 2004

These people are nuts (I'm including myself in this broad categorization, too, btw). Microsofties definitely utilize a different vocabulary than normal human beings. Sometimes this entails noun-izing verbs, mutating existing words, or even just plain making stuff up. I've noticed that I'm now incorporating nearly all of these into my daily speech, so before I've completely conformed I wanted to document the odd experience of being subjected to it all...

Here's a brief guide to the top ones I've encountered thus far:

ask
noun
A requirement or request that something happen.
Example: The Speedo team has an ask that we add red dancing baboons to our product's splash screen.
Example: What are the Speedo team's asks?

bar
noun
A dichotomy in which a set of criteria defines a categorization status of below/above. Things which fall below the bar are considered to be necessary to address, while things above the bar are not (most likely temporarily). The bar is subject to move up and down at will.
Example: We have a defined a bar for the Super Soaker 5000's release criteria.

blocked
verb
Prevented from making progress due to a dependency on someone or something else.
Example: Are you blocked on getting feedback from Henry?

bits
noun
Software.
Example: The Whidbey Beta1 bits are now available on MSDN.

drop
noun
A release of software intended for a specific purpose.
Example: We should expect the next product drop in May.

feature-complete
adjective
A product state in which all features have been completed, albeit not completely stabilized and tested.
Example: As of September 12th, you must be feature-complete.

Franken-build
noun
A conglomoration of unfinished software components which evidently function together, although the steps are typically Black Magic to reproduce.
Example: Hey, could you send me some reproducable steps to get a Franken-build of System.Collections, JIT hotspot inlining, and tuned GC working together?

needs
noun
The set of asks that a particular entity needs. This implies they are not full of shit. (See also: wants.)
Example: We should address team ZoomZoom's needs in our next status meeting.

own
verb
If you screw it up, your head is on the chopping block.
Example: Joe owns this initiative.

triage
verb
The act of taking a set of things, comparing it to a defined bar, and assigning a status to those things - i.e. above or below.
noun
An effort to perform triaging against a large set of items.
Example: We triaged our feature requests against the minbar, and came up with this set of items which need completion by the end of today.

S+ (or Sched+)
noun
An Outlook meeting request.
Example: S+ me w/ the details.

scrub
verb
When some set of things are reviewed to ensure that they are up-to-date, and if not updated to reflect the current state of affairs.
noun
A large-scale effort to perform scrubbing against a large set of items.
Example: By scrubbing our database, we were able to close out 90% of the issues.

vett
verb
Finalizing, discussing, and agreeing on a common outcome.
Example: Have you vetted the design yet?

wants
noun
The set of asks that a particular entity wants. This carries with it a connotation of not believing that the entity actually requires them, but rather that they are nice-to-haves.
Example: Do we have a good handle on team ZoomZoom's wants?

 

Recent Entries:

Search:

Browse by Date:
<July 2004>
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
27282930123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
1234567

Browse by Category:

Notables: