Ship-it Awards

When I was there, Microsoft had this really cool way of recognizing organizations that released **real** products to **real** customers. It was called a Ship-it Award. Maybe they still continue this practice, I hope so because it was a good one. Everyone who participated in the product development and market launch of a Microsoft product got one of these things. Mine has a nice grey marble base, with two black obelisks rising out from either side, with a glass etching in the center. The inscription on the glass reads like this:

"Every time a product ships, it takes us one step closer to the vision: empower people through great software - any time, any place, and on any device. Thanks for the lasting contribution you have made to Microsoft history."

Bill Gates' signature is below the inscription, and a small bronze plate with the employee name is under that. On each of the black obelisks, the employee is encouraged to put the 25mm-by-40mm aluminum plaque containing the name of the product, the version number, and the release date. I'm sure the Ship-it Award's verbiage and appearance evolve over time, but it is still an inspirational tool for employees. In fact, when people interview, they are often asked how many Ship-it Awards they have, an indication of how many development cycles they have worked through. I still keep my Ship-it Award on my desk, right next to the Sony plaques I alluded to in a prior blog posting. My Ship-it Award reminds me of the four years I spent working at Microsoft......

After Release B, we were on a good roll. The technical teams started gelling very well together, and everyone knew we were on to something good. The program managers spec'ed out all the features and APIs for the next release, getting buy-in from the software developers, test engineers, and marketing folks. The software developers coded the modules and subroutines necessary to support the marketing requirements. The test engineers performed quality assurance on the deliverables from the software developers, and when bugs were found everyone collaboratively resolved them one way or another. Some bugs need code modifications, others needed documentation changes, while still others were deemed not likely to occur in the real world, and yet others were left for future discussions.....

Finally, on June 1, 2001, we completed everything necessary and signed off on Version 1.0 of our product. True to form, just as we had hoped, the next release after Release B was production-worthy, so instead of calling it Release C we called it Version 1.0. We were so happy, ecstatic in fact! It had been a long haul - some of the engineers had been working on this product for a few years. It was very satisfying and gratifying for all of us in development. We only hoped our customers would be as ecstatic as we were. The customer landscape was changing, as the economy was diving deeper and deeper into recession, but we fervently hoped that our "showcase" customers would welcome our Version 1.0 product with open arms......