story by Salima Vastani

One of the inventors of the Workflow feature for Microsoft's new Windows Vista is SFU Computing Science alumnus, Dennis Pilarinos. Dennis was a Computing Science undergraduate student when he applied for a co-op placement at Microsoft. That was the beginning of Dennis' exciting and challenging career and he has not looked back since.

At the end of his co-op work term, Dennis applied for a full time job at Microsoft; he was hired and was extended an offer pending one year completion of university. Dennis came back to SFU, completed his degree, went back-packing to Europe for 8 weeks and then settled into his new position with Microsoft. He jokes that he did much better in his final year of university when he knew he had a job.

The Workflow feature that Dennis co-invented can be described as a series of steps or a map that you can follow to get a task done. He explains his point by giving an example of a regular workflow in an office environment. "Say for example, that you have a document that you want to collaborate on. So, sequentially you would first write the document, then send it to your team members and ask for feedback within 3 days. Now, each team member has a task associated with him to go and review the document. One of them, as it happens in a regular office set-up, may not have time to work on it and may pass it on to someone else." This kind of negotiation and process of getting a list of tasks done on a project is a simple kind of workflow.

Windows Vista's Workflow feature that Dennis helped build enables you to build this kind of scenario. The framework allows people to describe these steps. A developer or an information worker, as he calls it, can use this tool to create these workflows and then actually execute them. For example when someone places an order, the information worker processes the order workflow by going through a series of steps ranging from checking the credit line, making sure the funds are available, shipping the order, issuing tracking numbers etc. Workflow enables you to build these different types of scenarios.

When asked how his degree in Computing Science helped him in his current job, Dennis responded: "A degree in Computing Science teaches you how to think. It teaches you how to be very systematic about approaching a problem, how to pull that problem apart, and persevere through getting that problem solved."

As a child, Dennis had a natural tendency towards understanding how things worked. He would pull things apart and be lucky if he'd be able to put it back together! He had a curiosity to start working with computers, and just build things.

He feels that there is a creative aspect to software, quoting one of his Computing Science professors at SFU, Professor Bill Havens, "Computing Science is more of an art than a science!" It is this mixture of creativity and curiosity that matters to Dennis. "The creative aspect of being able to build things, understanding how things work, and then making sure you can project all that at a place where you can help people play with stuff you are building - that's super important."

Dennis has great memories from SFU and considers meeting his fiancée who was also studying Computing Science at SFU, the highlight of his time here. Currently, Dennis is a Senior Technical Lead at Microsoft Corporation. After the success of Workflow, he has transitioned into running a start-up team project where he is satiating his curiosity and creative urges—working on something that millions of people will get to play and use!