The men in charge of Windows 7, Steven Sinofsky and Jon Devaan, thus far have been making good on their promise to keep the public posted on the status of Windows 7 via their blog.  They said their initial post generated tremendous excitement and a great deal of email and comments.  Sinofksy said he took the time to personally read each of these emails.

He said many people are concerned with upcoming version of Windows "faster" and increasing the boot speeds.  He said that this is a tricky topic, which he will discuss more in upcoming posts.  He cited several contradictory email suggestions, such as one reader who suggests a more full-featured start manager which starts up programs early (before idle), while another suggests not starting any programs till the system idles.  He said both approaches in this case have merit and are being examined.

He added that many emails revolved around asking to keep or eliminate certain features.  These emails will be considered and will yield later discussions, he writes.  He stated that even the "most straight forward request" carries a great deal of "subtlety and complexity" due to conflicting user wants and needs and the size of Windows.

After discussing these requests, Sinofsky moved on to a rather humorous topic.  He has received a lot of emails accusing the blog of being fake or accusing his posts of being ghost-written.  He stated, "Much to the surprise of both Jon and I a number of folks questioned the “authenticity” of the post. A few even suggested that the posts are being “ghost written” or that this blog is some sort of ploy. I am typing this directly in Windows Live Writer and hitting publish. This blog is the real deal—typos, mistakes, and all. There’s no intermediary or vetting of the posts. We have folks on the team who will be contributing, but we’re not having any posts written by anyone other than who signs it."

Finally he addressed questions surrounding the frequency of blogs.  He noted that posts will appear about as frequently as they do on the Internet Explorer Team's blog.  He added that the blog has no set deadlines, though.

Moving on, he provided interesting insight into how the Windows team is composed.  In total, he listed about 25 different "feature teams" which compose the Windows engineering team as a whole.  Each feature team has about 40 developers.  Some teams produce products that are independent releases such as Windows Media Player or Internet Explorer.  Other teams like the Kernel & VM team focus purely on the guts of Windows.

Each team has three types of employees -- program managers, which define the objectives and monitor goals, developers, which write the code and design the architecture, and testers who validate the code and help in its promotion.  Each team has equal numbers of developers and testers, and about half as many program managers.  So that adds about 40 testers, and 20 managers to the team.  One particularly interesting team he noted is the User Interface Platform team in charge of developing the multi-touch, an important Windows 7 feature, as well as more traditional accessibility technology.

In addition he lists four groups -- Content Development, Product Planning, Product Design, and Research and Usability -- that don't serve as feature teams, but rather work with the entire engineering team.

He said that Microsoft's monolithic development teams have drawn criticism in the past.  However he says a program like Windows necessitates big teams:

The way that I look at this is that our job is to have the Windows team be the right size—that sounds cliché but I mean by that is that the team is neither too large nor too small, but is effectively managed so that the work of the team reflects the size of the team and you see the project as having the benefits we articulate. I’m reminded of a scene from Amadeus where the Emperor suggests that the Marriage of Figaro contains “too many notes” to which Mozart proclaims “there are just as many notes, Majesty, as are required, neither more nor less.” Upon the Emperor suggesting that Mozart remove a few notes, Mozart simply asks “which few did you have in mind?” Of course the people on the team represent the way we get feature requests implemented and develop end to end scenarios, so the challenge is to have the right team and the right structure to maximize the ability to get those done—neither too many nor too few.

He concluded the post hopeful that it encourages more discussion and promising to keep his posts under four pages. 

While the post may not answer many technical questions about Windows7, it does provide intriguing insight to Microsoft outsiders as to how Windows 7 is being developed.  It also hints at more technical debates to come, so stay tuned.