One year ago today, we launched a system to help us keep track of potential SMEs. We now have over 2800 SME Profiles in our database. In the last year, we've recruited SMEs for every phase of exam development from these SME Profiles, as well as for research projects and for a few courseware projects. We have found this to be a very effective way for us to involve more experts in our development process, which helps us ensure that the content is technically accurate and relevant. We've reached out to more SMEs than ever before for blueprinting and for beta exams. We've also been able to help our content vendors find qualified experts for item writing and alpha technical reviews--which can be difficult when the product in question hasn't even been released yet.
Beta recruitment has been the area where we have seen the most dramatic impact from our perspective--we are now able to fill pretty much every beta exam with candidates whose skills and experience map directly to the target audience. Filling the beta seats in the initial beta period enables us to release the exam on schedule. It also improves the quality of the exams because we have more statistics and more comments to go on. We've sent over 8,000 beta notifications in the last year.
The last year hasn't always been a smooth ride, though I think that's usually true when you're trying something new. Not everyone who registered in the SME database received a notification for every beta exam that they expected to see one for. (In some cases this was simply because your SME profile did not indicate the specific skills and experience we were looking for. In other cases, it was a result of the survey not really being optimized for the queries we were doing. Or maybe you submitted your profile after the notifications already went out.) And not everyone who received a notification was able to actually register before the seats filled up. I freely admit that it's not a perfect process for beta notification, at least not yet. I hope you've noticed that we are listening to your feedback and trying to make improvements as we go along. According to a survey we did last February, 63% of SMEs agreed that the current beta notification process an improvement over our prior process; 30% thought that it was neither better nor worse. As for the last 7%, we'll be working to win you over in the coming year.
A year ago I would never have imagined that we would already have 2,800 SME profiles. I was shooting for 1,000. By the end of this year, I'd love to see us increase that number to over 5,000. So please, tell your friends to sign up! We'll also be working more closely with the other MSL product teams to make the SME database available to them, which means more chances for you to participate in content development. We'll be counting on you to help us make this program better. You can send your feedback to mslcd@microsoft.com. And if you have a SME profile, please complete the program satisfaction survey that you'll receive early next calendar year.
For those of you who haven't filled out the survey yet, I'm going to inflict a little Dr. Seuss on you: What are you waiting for? For the fish to bite? For wind to fly a kite? Or waiting around for Friday night? You can click here to go directly to the survey on Microsoft Connect, or click here for a link to a post with more complete instructions.