For 10 years, a selection of our top, most industrious employees have been getting early access to our products so they can find and help us fix problems before we ship them to you.
This year is the 10-year anniversary of Microsoft Elite, our innovative program where we give our employees early access to everything from Azure to Xbox so they can identify issues, provide insights, and we can fix them early in the product development process.
And they have a lot of fun doing it, via gamification, leaderboard climbing, and competing to win cool prizes, including a much sought after Elite-branded leather jacket that goes to the highest point scorer for the year. Elite jackets wearers are walking, talking promoters of a program that makes a huge impact at Microsoft.
“Elite enables us to do early adoption in a more effective and efficient way,” says Diana McCarty, a principal group program manager at Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization. McCarty created Microsoft Elite in 2014 and has led the program ever since, a testament to her firm belief in Elite’s effectiveness. “It’s a rapid, iterative approach to testing and troubleshooting designed to engage any Microsoft employee in the process of making our products better. Elite participants can have a direct impact on the biggest products at Microsoft or their most niche passion areas.”
It’s a mutually beneficial relationship between product owners who need to find bugs and validate experiences before they ship and Elite members who love getting to be the first to try new stuff, including software, hardware, games, certification exams, and much more. The beneficiaries are the rest of our employees here at Microsoft, and you, our customers. It’s the ultimate win-win-win, especially if you’re the one who wins the jacket!
Improving Microsoft products for 10 years and counting
McCarty has had a front row seat for the development of the Elite program over the past 10 years.
As she recalls, Windows needed testers. Office did, too. And so did many other product teams. But they all had to hunt for their own “dogfooders” within the company—sometimes competing with each other for participants—to gather the crucial feedback they needed.
So, McCarty proposed, “Let’s create a single place where people at Microsoft who are eager to be early adopters can volunteer and see all of the opportunities to get involved and provide necessary feedback. We’ll make it fun and offer awards for being active in a quality way. And let’s make it fast and easy for teams to add their products and tap into this pre-built community, so they can squash bugs, refine all the good stuff, and get ready for release.”
Elite has grown steadily over the years and now has 35,000 members, which is more than 15% of our employees. It’s now an irreplaceable part of how we provide IT services to the company.
“The steady flow of programs for validation and feedback in Microsoft Elite is now a core part of Microsoft’s DNA,” says Nathalie D’Hers, corporate vice president of Microsoft Digital. “It means every employee can play a part in making Microsoft products and services better than ever.”
Microsoft Elite is an extension of our Customer Zero mindset.
The Elite platform is designed to be a place for all of Microsoft’s employee-driven testing and validation. It hosts three major functions that drive the testing and feedback collection process:
- Scenario publishing. Program owners can publish scenarios for their products and manage them conveniently. Scenarios enable structured feedback collection, ensuring that all necessary information is gathered.
- Participant recruiting. Elite provides an embedded opt-in process for recruiting participants, making it easy to attract and enroll participants.
- Feedback collection. Elite participants can provide feedback, report issues, and engage in discussions on the platform in their registered programs. An interactive approach helps gather valuable insights beyond survey results.
Eileen Zhou, a principal product manager and Elite program owner who leads our internal deployment of Microsoft Teams and her colleagues here in Microsoft Digital have instant access to a ready and willing group of volunteers who can give them immediate feedback on their work to deploy new features and capabilities to our employees across the company.
“Elite helps us make the conversation and collaboration process so much easier. We don’t need to build anything for testing and feedback, it’s all there,” Zhou says. “Regardless of what product or service they’re working with, participants see the same processes, the same terminology. This is Elite. Everybody knows what it is.”
Zhou credits the reach and ease of use of the Elite platform with much of her product refinement success with Teams.
Putting people first
However, the most critical element of the Elite program isn’t the platform or the communication mechanisms or the way the teams measure results.
It’s people that make Elite successful.
“What I love about Elite is that it’s people helping people,” says Taj Heniser, a principal product manager for Microsoft Elite. “Our program managers and participants rely on each other and there’s a genuine desire to contribute and help, everywhere you look.”
Heniser is enthusiastic when talking about how anyone in the Elite program can feel instantly involved and invested in the success of the company. “It’s a community. Program owners recognize that Elite is vital to the health of our products, and they value the contribution of Elite participants. There’s an ever-present sense of belonging and mutual contribution.”
Sergey Shantyr has been a participant in Elite from the beginning of the program. Shantyr is a principal site reliability manager on the Azure Data team where he works on the Azure SQL Managed Instance. He is a consistently top-ranked Elite participant and one of our very first Elite award winners. In fact, he holds the record for Elite wins at Microsoft, having won the award seven times during his tenure.
“Elite was one of the first things I stumbled upon during my onboarding at Microsoft,” Shantyr says. “It was fun and entertaining, and it became a good habit that I’ve carried with me over the last 10 years.”
Shantyr remembers the first time he won and the Elite-branded leather jacket that was his reward. Elite winners from each of Microsoft’s primary operating regions are awarded gift cards and Elite-branded clothing every January based on the points they earn from their contributions to the program. Awards are also given to new members, stand-out contributors, high-quality feedback providers, and members who contribute significantly to the Elite community.
However, it’s not the awards that keep Shantyr coming back, year-after-year.
“I feel like I’m making a meaningful contribution to the company,” he says. “We’re not only contributing to the products that our job roles are focused on, but we’re also contributing more broadly to the success of Microsoft.”
The sentiment of meaningful contribution is pervasive among Elite members. Contributing to the greater goal—even when it isn’t tied to their performance evaluations or career progression—is the key motivator that drives Elite’s success. In turn, it’s also driving the success of Microsoft products.
Working together to make Microsoft better
Karin Skapski is relatively new to the company, having recently celebrated her one-year milestone as a senior cloud architect with Microsoft Global Partner Solutions. Like Shantyr, she joined Elite in the early days of her onboarding.
“As I transitioned into taking on the full responsibilities of my role, I had the time and opportunity to join Elite,” she says. “A lot of my contribution to Elite has been in Microsoft 365. Getting access to new features was a big reason that I joined Elite, but I’ve stayed with it because the program managers and the user experience of the Elite platform have been so great to work with. I love the fact that I can help improve the products that I’m working with every day, making them more enjoyable and effective tools for every Microsoft employee and customer that uses Microsoft 365.”
Microsoft products such as Microsoft 365 are perhaps the greatest beneficiaries of the Elite program. Before they ever show up on a customer’s device, Microsoft products undergo testing, troubleshooting, bug-fixing, and fine-tuning from Microsoft employees, some of the most meticulous testers you’ll find.
Elite is an important part of the Customer Zero approach at Microsoft Digital. We use Microsoft products and services internally before releasing them to external customers. This practice allows product teams to identify and resolve issues, optimize performance, and ensure that the products meet high standards of quality and usability.
Elite’s program managers like Heniser work with Elite participants like Skapski and Microsoft product program managers like Zhou to ensure that Elite meets the needs of everyone taking part in the Customer Zero process.
Zhou has run multiple programs through Elite, including scenarios for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 Copilot. She appreciates that engagement is almost a guarantee with Elite participants.
“I always have great contribution with Elite,” she says. “Sometimes too much engagement is what we have to work around!”
Zhou recounts the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when the entire company was working remotely. Microsoft Teams was the hub for communications and collaboration at Microsoft, and several key features were released in Teams throughout the pandemic.
One of the big perks of Elite membership is early access to new features, and Elite was flooded with new members a few times as Microsoft employees opted in to use—and test—new features they were waiting for.
Heniser remembers it too.
“We were working with Eileen on a scenario for video backgrounds in Teams,” Heniser says. “We had 8,000 people join Elite overnight. It was wild but so encouraging to see Microsoft employees excited about new features and willing to help develop those features.”
It was this type of engagement that helped validate remote work experiences for Microsoft products throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and enabled millions of Microsoft customers to adapt to modern work quickly and efficiently.
Realizing tangible benefits
Elite gives program managers like Zhou comprehensive feedback on the products and features they’re testing, including metrics, sentiment surveys, bug-fix requests, and a dashboard that brings all the data together in an easy-to-use format.
The result is rapid, actionable feedback that helps shape Microsoft products and ensure we’re meeting customer needs and use cases with everything we deliver.
“Elite has helped our product teams validate customer experiences so quickly,” McCarty says. “It’s been a big part of Microsoft products adapting to the rapid pace of business and technology change over the past few years.”
Moving Elite forward into the next 10 years
Elite has had a profound impact at Microsoft over the past decade. From validating experiences during the urgent shift to remote work during COVID-19 to providing early feedback on groundbreaking technologies like Copilot, the Elite program—and especially its participants—have consistently demonstrated their value. Their contributions have not only improved Microsoft products but also helped maintain productivity and innovation during critical moments.
“I think if you walk through the 10 years and the way the program has evolved, there’s something very notable here,” McCarty says. “The impact of Elite at Microsoft on our products and our business tells a compelling story about the difference a single employee can have for a company like us.”
Microsoft Elite is on the cusp of a next-generation evolution, capturing the value of Copilot, realizing the promise of generative AI, and growing into a more scalable and consistent platform to support the next round of Microsoft products and services.
At the center of it all, you’ll find people. The Elite program team, our product team program managers, and the Microsoft employees who contribute their time and expertise to making everything we do at Microsoft the best possible for you, the Microsoft customer.
Here are a few key points on how Microsoft Elite shapes the future of technology and maximizes the benefits of innovative tools and features at Microsoft:
- Test new features. By giving employees early access to new tools and features, product and program managers get informed feedback they can use to improve their products.
- Try out scenarios. To meet customer needs effectively, you need to know how they want to use your products and services. Testing use cases, not just products and features, can generate valuable insights.
- Create community. Elite participants consistently cite the satisfaction of pitching in for a greater goal. Improve your products and your culture by giving employees a stake in the success of the company.
