What's Next...?

Every Christmas Day we cook a rib roast on our BBQ - and even as much as we look forward to the result, it can be a frustrating experience. Not because cooking outside on Christmas is often cold and rainy in Seattle, but rather because after five to six hours of close temperature monitoring and slow cooking the final step is to "let it rest" for 20-30 minutes. It's off the grill, sitting loosely covered on the cutting board in the kitchen, filling the room with wonderful smells, and we can't...quite...yet...cut..it...and….start…..to…...enjoy. Those of you anxiously awaiting the imminent release of Whidbey know exactly what this can be like. Trust me though, it's almost dinner and it will be worth the wait!

So, now that Whidbey is "off the grill", what comes next for all these cooks we have in our kitchen? The answer is a few well deserved (we think) days off, and then we start planning and preparing for the future. And in this future you should expect to see two major lines of effort: making customers successful on the products we have already released (a list that is about to include Whidbey!), and getting started on the next major release of Visual Studio and the managed code runtime and frameworks.

I can't begin to lay out the entire roadmap for either effort here, but I do want to give you some visibility into one part of the process that will be starting very soon. One of the first signs of activity some of you are likely to see is that the customer bugs that were postponed as we drove through the end game of Whidbey will be re-activated for consideration. Those of you who submitted postponed bugs in our feedback center will soon see that they have been "reopened". Then over the next four to six weeks or so our product teams will go over each bug to find an appropriate disposition. Many will be fixed. Others will turn out to be product suggestions, and will be examined in the context of other feature requests and requirements for the next version. And, in the end, a few will likely not make the cut either as bug fixes or as feature requests. In all cases you can expect to see the status changes and the reasoning behind those changes. You will also be given opportunity to comment on resolutions you might not agree with. Whatever the resolution of your particular issue, please know that we value your feedback and are committed to working openly with you to address the issues that you have raised.

Finally, a brief thought about those issues we are able to fix. You should expect that the majority of these fixes will be available first in the next major product version. We do intend, however, to work with you to identify the customer reported issues with broad impact and/or appeal and to include those fixes first in the major Whidbey servicing releases along the way. Stay tuned for more details on when and how we will be soliciting your feedback on what should be in our first Whidbey servicing releases…!

And for now I hope you feel the excitement over the Whidbey "meal" we are just now laying out. Dig in!

Eric Peterson
Group Program Manager
DDCPX