OPINION I have a habit of ironically referring to Microsoft's various self-induced whoopsies as examples of the company's "legendary approach to quality control." While the robustness of Windows NT in decades past might qualify as "legendary", anybody who has had to use the company's wares in recent years might quibble with the word "quality."

As repeated Azure outages due to configuration errors have shown, "control" is perhaps also inappropriate these days.

It's difficult to pinpoint precisely where it went wrong for Microsoft when it comes to quality. In 2014, the company decided it could do without many of its testers. Mary Jo Foley reported that "a good chunk" were being laid off. Microsoft didn't need to bother with traditional methods of testing code. Waterfall was out. Agile was

See Full Page