Charlie Kindel on Windows Phone Development

Charlie Kindel on Windows Phone Development: "“We will do a few things, and do them really, really well.”

“If you write a list write it in priority order.”

“Focus on the end user.”

“Don’t show our organizational boundaries to customers.”

Many people were pleasantly surprised with the user experience for Windows Phone 7 Series we showed off two weeks ago in Spain. I heard & saw comments to the effect of “Wow, this is not typical of Microsoft!”.

How did we do that? What’s the secret?

I’ll tell you: It’s being able to say “no”. It’s being able to get an entire organization setup to be able to not just say what they are going to build, but what they are not going to build.

A mentor of mine once taught me a trick to managing any sort of project. He used the “5Ps” as a framework:

Purpose: Why do we exist? Why are we in business? Where do we want to be in the future.
Principles: What are the non-negotiable rules and key strategies?
Priorities: What’s the framework for tradeoffs?
Plan: How are we going to stage and tackle solving the problems?
People: Who’s accountable for every key part of the plan?"