Office 2008 on schedule

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 10 October 2007 09:19

Business IT - Technology

Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit last week reached an important milestone in the development of Office 2008, and the development teams say they will be ready for release to manufacturing in December with shipping in mid January.

According to Geoff Price, product unit manager for Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit, the Zero Bug Bounce milestone was reached on target last Wednesday. This is the point at which the developers have caught up with the list of known bugs and change suggestions.

That doesn't mean the product is finished - there's still plenty of testing to be done, and any further changes are closely scrutinised before they are made to reduce the risk of unwanted side effects.

"Stabilizing the product for release requires conscious commitment to slowing and eventually stopping the changes we're making to it, and as a result we now start reviewing all proposed changes daily in 'triage'," Price observed, "at this stage of the project the most important feature is shipping."