Microsoft introduces the Windows 8 development teams

We organize the work of Windows into “feature teams,” groups of developers who own a combination of architectural elements and scenarios across Windows. We have about 35 feature teams in the Windows 8 organization. Each feature team has anywhere from 25-40 developers, plus test and program management, all working together. Our teams are all focused on building a global product, and so some of our teams are located outside the US and are also delivering globally. In general a feature team owns and builds what that most folks would identify as an area or component of Windows. “Feature” is always a tricky word—some folks think a feature is a broad architectural component like the “user interface” or networking, and other folks might think a feature is something more specific, like the “start menu” or IPv6. So the term is a bit overloaded. When we set up different feature teams, we pair the architecture (code, subsystems, components) with the scenarios (user experience) in which users will encounter it, while also working to make sure we keep teams small and manageable. We long ago stopped trying to count new features because of the difficulty in defining a feature. We do count work items, which do map to the work and specs that we build (but that is a pretty long list). He also spells out what the teams are:

• App Compatibility and Device Compatibility
• App Store
• Applications and Media Experience
• App Experience
• Core Experience Evolved
• Device Connectivity
• Devices & Networking Experience
• Ecosystem Fundamentals
• Engineer Desktop
• Engineering System
• Enterprise Networking
• Global Experience
• Graphics Platform
• Hardware Developer Experience
• Human Interaction Platform
• Hyper-V
• In Control of Your PC
• Kernel Platform
• Licensing and Deployment
• Media Platform
• Networking Core
• Performance
• Presentation and Composition
• Reliability, Security, and Privacy
• Runtime Experience
• Search, View, and Command
• Security & Identity
• Storage & Files Systems
• Sustained Engineering
• Telemetry
• User-Centered Experience
• Windows Online
• Windows Update
• Wireless and Networking services
• XAML

Note the emphasis (added by me) above. There will be an App store in Windows 8. We now have confirmation. It’s a well written post. Check it out here…]]>