SOLVED: What is Flighting in Microsoft Windows 10?

Microsoft changed the release cycle of Windows products from every two or three years to potentially every week.  This was part of CEO Satya Nadella‘s plan to modernize Microsoft.  The software world had changed to a must faster paced model of releasing new code and new products.  Nadella’s recent history at the time was with Azure cloud.

Azure developers release changes constantly to give people the latest bug fixes and newest features.  Neither developers or consumers want to wait a year or more for the next big thing.

So, Windows 10 and most other Microsoft products now release new features and/or major product fixes every few weeks.  However, the word “release” has a history of meaning major, important or final and that is just not what these builds are.  The word Flights seems to have the right feel and that is now what Microsoft calls them.

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As you can see in model above, Microsoft ‘releases’ software on a daily cadence internally to developers.  Then they release to Microsoft globally (ring not shown), then “Windows Insiders” and so on down the line of release rings.