Why are organizations not Insidering?

Yesterday I created a little Twitter survey asking folks if they run Windows Insider builds in their organization. Options were “Yes! Why wouldn’t I”, “No, but I want to!” and “No, it’s not allowed”. If the response was one of the no options, I asked why. So far there have been about 200 responses. Obviously this isn’t a very scientific poll, but the responses were interesting.

Let’s start with the numbers. 47% responded with yes. 17% said no, but they want to. The remaining 41% said it wasn’t allowed. At face value this is a little disappointing, but not surprising.

As I read through the tweet responses, something became very clear. FEAR. Fear of the unknown. This xenophobia seems to stem from either lack of understanding of the concept of Windows as a Service and the Insiders program, or legacy mindset of wanting to wait for the planets to align for a perfect, bug-free operating system. If you are in the latter of those two, I have news for you…it will never exist. At least not until the machines take over.

I’m going to focus on the concept of the Insiders. If you dig deep into the purpose of Windows Insiders, and in particular Windows Insiders for Business, you will find that the concept is nothing all that new. It’s agile development. It’s crowd-sourcing the QA process if you will. In the old days (think Windows 9x, NT, and XP), Microsoft released a new version every few years and it still had bugs. Even after Service Packs there were still some issues. The real difference now is the fail fast and recover quickly piece. Microsoft wants to your organization and YOU to be successful. Once you realize that, the fear begins to ease.

Now I’m not saying go out and run your entire organization on Insiders. Ideally, you would target 1% of your total population for Slow Ring, and a couple of engineering types for Fast Ring. Get people who are willing AND who own, manage, or support critical apps. Ease their fear (and yours) by having a secondary device or virtual machine available if they have issues. This is how you build the foundation.

It does not matter what sector or vertical you are in. It does not matter how risk averse your organization is. This can be done. If you want some guidance, just let me know as I will be glad to help!

Abraham Maslow said, “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” Ask yourself, do you want your organization to grow?