At the Moment: Microsoft's Chris Barry

A minute in the life of the tech product manager.

Chris Barry is preparing for another dog and pony show for visiting VIPs in Microsoft Corp.'s executive briefing center. As a product manager for the software giant's Tablet PC operating system, it's Barry's job to spread the word about the Tablet, a cross between a notebook computer and an Etch A Sketch. And, as in B-school, Barry gets graded on his performance. "Microsoft is very data-driven," Barry says. "Each presenter gets evaluated by every attendee of every session. If something's out of whack, you'll hear about it." Occasionally Barry escapes the Redmond campus and spends time in the field. At first he visited retail stores "in secret shopper mode" to see how well salespeople described the product; now he visits corporate customers to talk about their pain points. He expects to hear few. "For the first time I'm working on something I'd play with on my own time."