Hacker Culture and the New Rules of Innovation

3 The agile organization

Few people would associate Microsoft with agile innovation. The software giant is still shaking off its reputation as a lumbering, bureaucratic corporation that made a ridiculous amount of money in the nineties selling boxed software to desktop computer users. Until recently, Microsoft was notorious for its long production cycles and delayed releases. Internally, Microsoft had a reputation as a software sweatshop, where understaffed teams worked ‘death marches’ of sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, fixing thousands of bugs.

In 2011, Microsoft quietly began transitioning its Developer Division to agile. The transition was a big deal for the division, with over 4,000 employees working in hundreds of teams. It required ...