A day in the life

NOTE: I found this in my drafts folder and I thought I'd go ahead and post it even though it was written several months ago - BW


I get asked fairly often what it is like to work at MS on the Zune team. There is no short answer to that question. I can tell you that it is incredibly rewarding, intense, creative, exciting and difficult all at the same time. There is never a dull moment!



I thought I might share what I did over a few days last week (sorry guys, no spoilers here). First things first. I should start with what exactly is my role on the team. I work in hardware business development (not just accessories). I work with a team of folks in three core areas; device hardware, accessories, and automotive. While related, each area has peculiarities, but those things keep the job interesting.



In the span of a week (actually three days) we managed to spend time in each of those areas. I started the week with some contractual discussions around the first generation products. Most people believe that once business development "does a deal" that is the end of it. That is not the case at all. We own the agreement from inception to termination. Something could come up at any time, and if it needs addressing, it is our responsibility to deal it. Further, items come up all the time that were not in the original agreement such as new features that sometimes need to be reexamined. So, we are never really "done" until the contract expires. So I spent some time looking at the 2006 products.



I am also fortunate enough to be involved with both the 2007 and 2008 products. In the case of both of those products, our involvement is around partnerships and technology that needs to be "developed." In other words, I don't (usually) deal with things you can get off the shelf. We have a great team of procurement folks who purchase those items. My team looks at things that don't exist and need to be created or existing products that need to be changed in some way. The vast majority of this work is future-looking (18 months out). So the decisions we are making today need to be right since there is no changing it when it comes time to incorporating them into the new products. While exciting, it can be incredibly nerve-wracking because of the pressure to get it right. We had several of those discussions last week.



Part of the hardware business is looking at new technologies that we might be interested in. this is really the "development" part of business development. this can be very exciting, and frankly, one of the areas I find really fun. When looking at these options, there are really two types of partnerships; things that exist that you want to acquire and things that are purely technology that you may want to acquire. I was fortunate to look at both last week. In the first case, it is pretty simple - is it something we can get off the shelf. It is a bit trickier in the second since it isn't nearly as tangible. In both cases, though, it is fun in that you are really trying to bring something into our ecosystem that doesn't currently exist.



Another element of the job is making sure we have a programmatic way to look at products and evaluate them. this is most true for the accessory business. I have literally hundreds of people who want to build accessories and finding a systematic way of evaluating them can be daunting. Fortunately, I have an amazing program management team to help. Last week we came up with a more streamlined way to look at new products and rolled it out to the partners. we are constantly revising the process for maximum efficiency, which is thankless but necessary work. We also added three partners last week. Getting them up to speed with the program is also something we have to do. That means the team gets to hear me give the same speech over (and over) again.



Lastly, we often have reviews with the management team on the plans for the group. There will literally be tens of hours put into putting together a 1 hour presentation. Everything from writing the deck to vetting it with all the cross-group teams and even one on ones with interested parties. It really is a group effort. Last week we have a review in the automotive and travel section. The team worked for several weeks to get that done.



So there you have it. We worked on old stuff, new stuff, stuff that doesn't exist and and stuff that we plan on doing. We have an amazing group of talented, driven individuals that work together to execute on a project better than any other organization I have ever worked for. It is amazingly difficult work, but fun work as well. Hopefully, that gives you a little insight into our days on the Zune team.