“Today I’ll be speaking with Microsoft’s Chief Consistency Officer, George Parr. Thanks for joining us George.”
“It’s a pleasure to be with you, Brian, thank you.”
“This is quite a new role for you, isn’t it?”
“That’s right Brian, Microsoft decided to form a dedicated Consistency Unit after we found that some of the products we offer work better than others. My team resolves these issues.”
“By making everything equally good?”
“That’s one way of looking at it, certainly.”
“Let’s start with an example many people will be familiar with, Microsoft Office. You recently made some changes to Word and Outlook, changing the way users search?”
“That’s an excellent example. We looked at those applications and how they were used, and it simply wasn’t fair at all. Some users were able to learn how the software worked, and those users were able to work better – doing more, to a higher standard, in less time. We’re proud to say we want to eliminate all inequalities of this sort from our product stack.”
“And these search changes achieve that goal?”
“100%. The new search box blocks most of the ribbon, including – and I’m particularly proud of this one – the Search options. It’s now almost completely useless!”
“Well, congratulations, I suppose. On to a totally different matter – the ‘Xbox’”
“One of our newer experiments, it’s exciting to be exploring this fresh territory Brian”
“You’ve been making Xboxes for almost 20 years!”
“20 years is the blink of an eye at Microsoft, Brian”
“I imagine you’re right. So, you made an excellent controller for the Xbox 360…”
“Thank you for saying so, Brian, but we mustn’t get hung up on ‘sacred cows’ – it’s important to be looking towards the future”
“Just not for more than 20 years at a time?”
“I’m sorry, Brian?
“Apology accepted. You decided to make some changes to the Xbox 360 controller when relaunching last year’s Series X model?”
“Yes indeed. The old wireless controllers weren’t dynamic enough for our testers. They’d stay connected to the PC or Console, often for hours at a time, without any variation in the signal strength at all!”
“And that’s a bad thing, to a consistency team?”
“I see what you’re saying, Brian, but you’re missing the point. There’s a fine line between ‘consistency’ and ‘complacency’ after all, and we found that gamers’ emotions really spike when their new £65 controller loses its pairing during a race or a battle”
“Emotions like anger and regret?”
“Probably, Brian, but we weren’t tracking that kind of detail”
“Why not?”
“The sensors kept dropping out”
“Fair enough. On to something a little more niche then – SharePoint”
“Yes indeed. Do you know what SharePoint is, Brian?”
“Not really. Does anyone at Microsoft?”
“Not a bloody clue. I tried asking around a few months ago, but everyone just ran off pretending they were late for a meeting.”
“Why are you offering it as a core component of Office Online if no-one knows what it is or how to support it?”
“Well, it’s already there, we don’t really need to do a lot with it. It was mostly finished back in 2007, so we just tinker with it every few months.”
“To put new features in?”
“To take them out, Brian. It had far too many, and there was a risk that people might actually use it to develop their own solutions to business problems.”
“Isn’t that what they’re supposed to use it for?”
“Not really, they’re supposed to get a few weeks into a project before running into some ridiculous limitation, giving up, and paying our consultants £650 a hour for something that’s secretly built using QBasic”
“£650 an hour?”
“Well, how else are they going to afford 10 buying Xbox controllers in the hope that at least one of them will work properly?”
“That’s business, I suppose. George Parr, thank you for your time.”
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