At Microsoft, leverage is not a term of physics whereby a force can be magnified by the application of mechanical advantage. It is also not a term of finance whereby the power of a small amount of money can be magnified by the assumption of debt. In fact, at Microsoft, the word leverage isn't even a noun. It is a verb: to leverage, leverages, lever...
Microspeak is not always about changing a word from a verb to a noun or changing a noun to a verb or even changing a noun into a verb and then back into a noun. Sometimes it's about data compression. This testing won't inform RC, but we'll need it to inform an RTM release. First, you need to familiarize yourself with a less-used sense of the ...
At Microsoft, the take-away is the essential message of a presentation or the conclusion that you are expected to draw from a situation. It is something you are expected to remember when the whole thing is over, a piece of information you take away with you as you leave the room. XYZ demo take away (title of a document) The preferred intensifier...
I introduced this Microspeak last year as part of a general entry about management-speak, but I'm giving it its own entry because it deserves some attention on its own. I just want to have creative control over how my audience can interact with me without resorting to complex hacking in a way that is easy to explain but ups our blogging audiences...
In the Customer Service and Support part of Microsoft, you will often see the term funnel. Here are some citations: Effectively and efficiently solve issues by driving levers across the entire funnel. Putting the Fun in Funnel. Strengthening the front of the funnel. The funnel is a way of viewing customer support engagements. For some reason...
A colleague of mine visited an internal Web site for task ABC and found that the site was no longer there. Instead it was replaced with a simple message: Designed with the user in mind you will now find contextual ABC and DEF information served up in a secure format alongside all GHI information. Access to relevant multi-perspective content...
As they say, "piss or get off the pot."
I learned this term from a chart presented at a team meeting. It contained a column labelled BIS. When asked what those letters meant, the team manager explained that it's an abbreviation for butts in seats. Everybody in the room instantly understood. It is the number of actual human beings sitting at desks doing work. When doing project planning,...
The letters SQM originally stood for Service Quality Monitoring, but that doesn't really answer the question, "What is SQM?" SQM is the internal code name for the technologies behind what is publically known as the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. This is a voluntary program that customers can opt into, which gathers information...
It's that time again: Sending some link love to my colleagues.
