Here comes Channel 9, an open window on Microsoft. Will it work? Hmmm, well I think the best and most important part about it is that at least they are trying it out. If it flops, ok fine they tried it. Not much lost. But if it works? There will be lots of congradulatory pats on the back for not missing the next thing. When you have billions in the bank, you can spend a few hundred thousand on a hunch.

The worst part about modern software development and long software projects is the increasing disconnect between inception and production release/use. I'm talking about people using the software allll day every day, not just beta testing it -- that's where you notice extra mouse drags and clicks and usability problems and worse, missing features that your customer wants/needs.

It's difficult to get feedback into your products when that inception-release delay increases -- and the delay will increase as software becomes more complex and ambitious. Folding in this feedback reduces the risk of releasing the product (nevermind that extreme programming addresses these problems in its own ways but it's not mainstream so its irrelevant to this). But first you have to gather the feedback and manage it, channel it to people that can make the changes.

So you want to build a community around what you are doing and get your customers/users involved in a personal way. Don't send them a newsletter or a CD-ROM every month, have a conversation with them. Make them a real stakeholder and they'll give you good feedback because they know you'll use it in the next release, when it really matters to them. Treat them like a first class citizen on the project.

I could see this being just the start (and it may be a slow start, people should try to be patient -- the old system is entrenched) to a new customer feedback driven software revolution. It could also usher in more customer-centric feedback driven processes like extreme programming. Sounds good, bring it on.