The team as a whole is comprised of over five hundred people, who work in groups of 20 to 30, each of which is focused on developing a specific feature. As a release manager, I coordinate a wide range of people and activities to bring together the final product. There are people running in many directions and I just try to line them all up to hit our release date with the features that customers request and with the high quality we have established in our release criteria. To define a feature set, we have to make two different assessments. First and foremost we work with our customers to determine what features will provide the best solutions for their business challenges.
Timing is a factor too.
Eighteen to twenty-four months is the ideal amount of time for turning around a major product release. We work to determine where the technology will be in two years, look at the range of feature requirements that we want to include, and then factor in what we are capable of delivering in that timeframe. One of the unique things about the Exchange team is the close relationship we have with key customers. We met with key customers very early in the product release cycle of Exchange 2000, and walked them through the features we were planning to deliver. Based on their feedback throughout the entire process, we made changes and reprioritized features.