When I.B.M.'s Big Guns Won't Do

By John Markoff
The New York Times

Boca Raton, Fla. -- July 18, 1991 -- In windowless rooms here, jammed with personal computers and young programamers and littered with empty soda cans, I.B.M. is trying to prove that a giant company can produce software to match the best programs crafted by the wizards of Silicon Valley.

Writing brilliant software is still more art than science, best done by quirky and obsessive hackers willing to immerse themselves in thorny problems for months at a stretch. Until now the world's largest computer maker has taken its usual regimented approach, sending out battalions of programmers to conquer problems with heavy artillery instead of a few rifle shots.

But the International Business Machines Corporation is finding that its new mission requires a new approach. The company now sees that hackers are happiest and most productive working in small, nimble teams. Instead of having the marketing department tell them what to do, they can be their own bosses, deciding what the software should do and how it should do it. Instead of spending months writing in isolation, then praying that tests turn up no bugs, they bring in real-world office workers every few days to try their latest versions.

"It's a real head twister for veterans like me," said Tommy D. Steele, the manager of I.B.M.'s software project here. "But there have been no problems adjusting for the younger guys."

For I.B.M., the stakes are huge. Its computer hardware is becoming a commodity, sold for little profit at low prices. The industry's major advances and healthiest profits increasingly come in software programs that can expand the capabilities of computers and make them easier to use. Many executives and analysts believe that if I.B.M. fails to develop better software it will fall to the rear of the desktop computer business.

I.B.M. has for years relied on the Microsoft Corporation for much of this software. But last year the two had a celebrated falling out over Microsoft's insistence on backing its own Windows program instead of the OS/2 operating system it had developed with I.B.M. Windows duplicates the easy-to-use features of Apple's Macintosh computer

Now, I.B.M. is out to prove that it can succeed in the desktop business without Microsoft's aid. The computer maker has transformed the way it writes software, with the goal of producing a new version of OS/2 as a rival to Microsoft's Windows.

For the more distant future, I.B.M. has thrown in its lot with its arch-rival in the personal computer business, Apple Computer Inc. They plan to jointly develop new software that can squeeze the best performance from advanced personal computers.

But even as I.B.M. was looking for new partners, the company quietly transformed its own software effort. While acknowledging that the alliance with Apple might confuse its customers and software developers in the near term, I.B.M. says that work done here in Boca Raton will be the company's bridge to the future.

I.B.M.'s new software must appeal to the unsophisticated novice as well as the expert. Computers, once the domain of a trained technical elite, are now found on millions of office desks.

"We are pioneering for I.B.M. a different approach to building software that interacts primarily with human beings as opposed to computer operators or technical users," said Lee Reiswig, I.B.M.'s general manager for personal systems programming.

Literal-Minded Machines

Here in a sprawling building that once served as the factory for the original I.B.M. PC, the complex OS/2 2.0 program is being rewritten segment by segment. Teams of two to ten programmers are cramped so closely together that many sit shoulder to shoulder. Like a newsroom on deadline, the atmosphere is shot through with concentration and crisis.

Software writers face a mind-bending task, tediously arranging cryptic computer instructions to produce the best results with the fewest steps. And computers are frustratingly literal-minded and unforgiving: for them, even the obvious must be explicit, and the slightest error can cause them to fail.

But solutions are seldom obvious. The best programmers never follow recipes. They are individualists, possessed of an ability to see solutions that others could never imagine. Like jazz musicians and chess champions, they tend to be young.

I.B.M.'s programmers must go Microsoft's one better. The computer maker has promised that programs written to run with Windows will run even faster with the new version of OS/2. The new version must be so sophisticated that it can fool thousands of programs -- word processing, spreadsheets and the like -- by precisely mimicking Microsoft's Windows.

Out in the Open

That challenge has led I.B.M. to embark on a software development program that loosens the company's habitual secrecy to an extent unthinkable a few years ago. The Armonk, N.Y., computer maker has traditionally gone to great lengths to keep anyone outside the company from learning about products under development, swearing to secrecy the few outsiders who tested its software.

But now, subscribers to the Compuserve information service can read up-to-the-minute discussions on the latest test versions of I.B.M.'s program -- warts, bugs and all. These test versions pour out of I.B.M. every few days instead of every few months, so the programmers can quickly see how well their software works and then make changes.

The tests take place at a special circular laboratory deep inside the plant. On the outer ring are rooms that resemble standard offices, where a broad range of users, from novices to computer sophisticates, work with test versions of OS/2. In a middle ring sit researchers who watch them through one-way mirrors. From the center of the lab, the programmers can watch both groups.

OS/2, like Microsoft's DOS, is an operating system, which controls a computer's basic functions. Like a busy office secretary, the system handles several tasks at once. Just as the secretary routes phone calls and visitors, the operating system handles the flow of messages and information from programs like word processing, shuttling the data between a computer's disk drives and its internal memory.

3 A.M. Phone Calls

When I.B.M. began working on the first version of OS/2, introduced in 1987, its software development process was dramatically different, spread out on two coasts and two continents. Microsoft's programmers in Redmond, Wash., collaborated with I.B.M labs in Boca Raton and Hursley, England.

"We figured out that there had to be a better way than by making phone calls at 3 A.M.," said Mr. Steele, who manages the OS/2 project. "Our own people were telling us the way we were writing software was messed up."

But the computer maker is finding that managing a huge software project is among the most complex of industrial undertakings. Ultimately, OS/2 will include almost two million lines of instructions.

"You need to do more than break your programmers up into small teams," said James F. Moore, president of Geopartners, a Cambridge, Mass., consulting firm that specializes in managing such projects. He says it is necessary to understand how all these teams and their software segments fit together. "Then you can understand where the bottlenecks are and what the technological risks are."

Removing a Drawback

In Boca Raton, the company has departed from several other traditions. It has stripped away the distinction between software designers and coders -- programmers who do the routine work of writing software. Now, the same people design and program, to make certain that the original software specifications survive in the writing.

Mr. Moore said this approach removed a drawback of many large software efforts. "In a big company, the marketing guys usually give the specifications to the engineers," who in turn tell the programmers what to do, he said. "This almost always ends in disaster."

Mr. Steele, the OS/2 manager, points with pride to young programmers like Jose Tano, who leads a small group that is writing the part of the software that installs the new program on the user's disk. Mr. Tano wears an Izod alligator shirt and jeans, the jeans neatly pressed; this is, after all, still I.B.M.

Users have complained that installing earlier versions of OS/2 was too complicated without the support of an I.B.M. service technician. Mr. Tano said his group's mission was to produce a program that users could install more quickly than the competition -- which happens to be the new Macintosh System 7 operating software that Apple introduced last month.

I.B.M.'s boast that the new version of OS/2 will improve the performance of programs written to run with Micosoft's DOS and Windows has caused some skeptics, particularly at Microsoft, to scoff. "I.B.M. in its haste has glossed over some of the technical problems," said Steven Ballmer, Microsoft's vice president in charge of system software. Software written for Windows does not always behave predictably, he said. "There are a lot of gotchas."

Market researchers still doubt I.B.M.'s chances of making its version of OS/2 the industry leader. The majority of software companies are now writing their programs to operate with Microsoft's Windows program, not I.B.M's OS/2. The Gartner Group, a market research firm, has predicted that in 1995 Windows will have 41 percent of the desktop market while I.B.M.'s share will be only half that.

Industry Impressed

But the new program has clearly impressed industry executives and analysts. At the recent PC Expo computer show in New York, I.B.M.'s demonstration of the new OS/2 drew large crowds and favorable comments.

"Until now Microsoft has been doing the drum beating," said John Dunkel, an industry consultant at Workgroup Technologies in Manchester, N.H. "I.B.M. is solving their two worst problems: lack of applications and price."

Industry analysts say that if I.B.M. can deliver on its promise to run DOS programs better than DOS and Windows programs better than Windows, it stands a chance of breaking Microsoft's stranglehold on personal computer software.

I.B.M.'s programmers are confident they can shed the company's reputation for being unable to write great software. "We think we're the best operating system company in the world," Mr. Steele said.

GRAPHIC: Photos: I.B.M has embarked on a development program to produce a new version of OS/2 software to meet the challenge of Microsoft's Windows program. At Boca Raton, Fla., teams of young programmers, like the group led by Peter Magids, standing at center, work on the new software in an atmosphere of deep concentration. (pg. D1); At I.B.M. in Boca Raton, Fla., teams of programmers work on small segments of the complex OS/2 2.0. The team shown above checks applications software written for use with Microsoft's Windows, to insure that those programs will also work with the new OS/2 system. (pg. D10) (Susan Greenwood for The New York Times)