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August 17, 2004

Microsoftese

Microsoft has a vocabulary all its own.

This isn't terribly unusual for large companies or specific industries. My partners and I ran smack-dab into Venture Capitalistâ„¢, a dialect specific to the VC realm, when we sold Pacific Rim to Verio. I ran into it again when I was doing work with Qwest (telecommunications people have a very, very specific way of talking).

You have to learn the lingo if you want to survive. I've already found myself adopting a number of terms that are in common use around here ("super" being one of them), but there's a handful of others that I've been working to slide in to my verbal patterns.

In case you ever run into a Microsoft person in the wild (like, you know, at a Starbucks or something), here's a quick dictionary so you can converse with them. Think of it as a pocket travel guide. =)

At the end of the day - Ultimately. Common usage: "At the end of the day, no one is going to care how much we put in to the product from a man-hours perspective. They only care about benefits to the BDM or end-user." This has massive, widespread use in Venture Capitalistâ„¢-speaking peoples.

Call out - To highlight, or specifically mention something. Common usage: "We really need to call out those sources in that white paper."

Crisp - Specific, clear, or cleanly-conceived. Common usage: "Be sure that your descriptions are really crisp, or the GPMs will discount your hypothesis."

Disconnect - A break between two facts. Common usage: "There's a disconnect between what features the customers are telling us they want, and what they're willing to pay for."

Drill down - To expand, zoom in, or get specific about something. Common usage: "After some discussion, we elected to drill down into the data in order to see what key learnings it contained."

Key learnings - Important facts. Common usage: "Here are the key learnings from our research." Also known as "takeaways" in other corporations.

Leverage - To make use of something in a new way. Carries connotations of efficiency or re-use. Common usage: "Be sure to review work that's been done on some related projects to see what you can leverage."

Richness - Loaded with features or capabilities. Common usage: "Because we're building on top of Windows, we can leverage the richness of its user experience."

Resonate - Something that people will agree with, such as a statement or an assertion. Common usage: "We need a message that resonates with our key customer."

Scenario - A particular use case. Common usage: "The features that are relevant in an end-user scenario don't resonate with BDM scenarios."

I hope this proves helpful at some point in the future. And, if you've got the time, feel free to do a Microsoft version of the "bullshit bingo" card - not that I'd ever use it in a meeting, of course. I'm too busy drilling down into the key learnings so I can get super-crisp about some of the feature richness that will resonate with our customers in certain key scenarios.

(I keed, I keed.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer at August 17, 2004 8:27 PM. Posted to MSFT.

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