Windows Vista: The Two-Part Development

The development of Windows Vista began in May of 2001, before the release of Windows XP, and was completed in November of 2006. Vista was originally expected to ship in late 2003 as a small step between XP and Windows 7. Over the course of its development, Vista had a number of technologies incorporated into it which had been slated for Windows 7 which delayed its release a few times. In 2004, after dealing with numerous delays and feature creep (when features become overly complicated), Microsoft announced that it was making significant changes to Vista. Development at that point basically restarted, and only incorporated features which would be included for the operating system’s release. After Vista was officially named in 2005, an unheard of beta testing program was implemented involving hundreds of thousands of volunteers. The development of Windows Vista was completed November 8, 2006 with an announcement by the co-president of Windows development.

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