I was checking the Mac BU (business unit) blog today hoping to find some communication about the Office 2008 for Mac Corporate Beta program. As the other Beta testers out there know, when responding to the invitation we were informed that the Beta program would start on October 8th (today).
But, nothing happened today. There was no change at the Microsoft Connect web site, nor any communication to those who confirmed their participation.
What I did find at the Mac BU web site is a post by Geoff Price announcing that a major milestone was met today-”ZBB.” For everyone who doesn’t speak internal acronym here’s what it means (quoted material below is from the blog post—emphasis is mine):
ZBB what? This stands for Zero Bug Bounce, or as alternately phrased, Zero Bug Backlog. At this point we have been logging, tracking and verifying all changes to the product in great detail for some time – collectively we refer to this list of logged issues as the “bug list”, though in reality it includes a variety of issues including bug/defect reports, tracking records for artwork or content, usability improvements, numerous suggestions (submitted by team members or beta testers, or representing customer or partner requests), and various other categories of issues. The ZBB milestone is defined as the date across which we will no longer carry logged product issues that are more than one week old. Hence, the “backlog” of issues has been cleared out, and all older pending decisions on what we are or are not going to change before we ship have been made. It also means that the developers have “caught up” or “outpaced” the incoming find rate of our test efforts.
The article also confirmed that, as far as things stand now, the product is on schedule and will be available starting on January 15th, 2008 (depending upon region).
Great! Now what about that Corporate Beta program?
UPDATE: 9 Oct 2007: The Microsoft Connect web site has made release notes and installation information available. Still no link to download the software yet.
Tags:Beta, Microsoft, Office for Mac, Software
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