Steven Sinofsky (born 1965^[1]) has been the President of the Windows Division at Microsoft since July 2009,^[2] responsible for the development and marketing of Windows, Windows Live, and Internet Explorer.^[3]

Education[link]

Sinofsky received his bachelors degree from Cornell University (Arts and Sciences, 1987) and a masters degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1989).^[3] He also spent 3 years learning Russian whilst he was in college.^[4]

Career[link]

In July 1989, Sinofsky joined Microsoft as a software design engineer.

In 1994, when the Office Product Unit was formed, Sinofsky joined the team as the director of program management, and led the design of the shared technologies in Microsoft Office 95 and Microsoft Office 97. He spent about four years as a software design engineer and project lead in the Development Tools group, where he helped lead the development of the first versions of the Microsoft Foundation Classes C++ library for Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Visual C++.

He previously oversaw the development of the Microsoft Office system of programs, servers and services, responsible for the product development of Microsoft Office 2007 and its new ribbon UI. Prior to that he also oversaw the development of Microsoft Office 2003, Microsoft Office XP, and Microsoft Office 2000.

Sinofsky has been actively involved in recruiting for Microsoft. His particular task was to convince engineers not to move to Google. Sinofsky has blogged in detail about his efforts at Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk, about what it's like to be a Microsoft employee, and what new hires in general most of the time never suspect or know about Microsoft, Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Windows.

Sinofsky at the Windows division[link]

Steven Sinofsky became the president of the Windows division in July 2009. His first heavily-involved projects included Windows Live Wave 3 and Internet Explorer 8. Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan also headed the development of the next major version of Windows to come after Windows Vista, Windows 7.

Sinofsky's philosophy on Windows 7 was to not make any promises about the product or even discuss anything about the product until Microsoft was sure that it felt like a quality product. This was a radical departure from Microsoft's typical way of handling in-development versions of Windows, which was to publicly share all plans and details about it early in development cycle. Sinofsky also refrained from labeling versions of Windows "major" or "minor", and to instead just call them releases.

Under Sinofsky's leadership, the Windows Division successfully shipped the successor to Windows Vista, Windows 7, which received universally positive reception^{[citation needed]} and praise among technology enthusiasts and mainstream users and currently has a rapidly growing user-base of over 450 million.^[5] The success of Windows 7 contributed to record-breaking revenue earnings for Microsoft in 2010.^{[citation needed]}

Sinofsky's successful leadership-style has influenced many other Microsoft divisions to follow his principles and practices on product development.^{[citation needed]}

Sinofsky and Windows executive Jon DeVaan worked as editors for the Engineering Windows 7 blog.

Sinofsky is currently working on Windows 8 and regularly blogs about the feature set of Windows 8 and the process of developing the new OS in his blog; Building Windows 8.^[6]

Future work[link]

Sinofsky is currently managing the teams that are working on the successor to Windows 7, Windows 8, as well as Internet Explorer 10 and a new release of Microsoft services, formerly called Windows Live as the successor of Windows Live Wave 4.

Book[link]

One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making, published by John Wiley in November 2009, was co-authored by Sinofsky and Marco Iansiti of Harvard Business School.

The book discusses Sinofsky's struggle with refocusing the Windows Division after the Vista debacle, and the planning and development of the next major version of Windows that would come after Vista. Sinofsky talks about the focus of making a desirable high-quality product, while making no promises to the public, and shipping and delivering that product on time.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Steven Sinofsky: President Windows, and Windows Live division Steven Sinofsky's biography at Microsoft's executive biography page.
• Steven Sinofsky's Microsoft TechTalk - Blog about working at Microsoft.
• Engineering Windows 7 - Blog about features and development methodology of Windows 7.
• One Strategy: Organization, Planning, and Decision Making - John Wiley catalog retrieved 2010-01-24.