ruminations

I read this fantastic blog post by Brent Simmons, the author of NetNewsWire about all the decisions that go into making even a “tiny” feature. You can read his blog post here:

http://inessential.com/2009/07/30/anatomy_of_a_feature

It explains all the scenarios you have to think through when designing a feature and how those decisions can make or break the user experience.

This post really resonated with me because it’s exactly the kind of thing I have to do on a day to day basis as a PM at Microsoft.

Brent’s job is a bit different in the sense that he’s both the PM & the Dev. He only has to convince himself that his idea is correct and then go and implement it. When you’re working as part of a larger team, you have to also convince other people (including your manager) about the decisions you’ve made.

Disclaimer: I work for the Macintosh Business Unit but had nothing to do with this release

MacBU just opened the public beta for the latest and greatest version of Entourage. It’s dubbed Entourage for Exchange Web Service because it uses a new protocol to talk to Exchange (2007 and above). This version finally does notes, tasks and category syncing.

Get it while it’s hot:
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/entourage-ews.mspx