As most regular readers of the CRM Team Blog know, the next major version of the Dynamics CRM product is codenamed “Titan”. We on the team have all gotten used to the “Titan” moniker now, but it wasn’t the original codename for this project: long before we shipped CRM 3.0, we used the codename “Kilimanjaro” when we spoke of the version in planning. It was a great name – proud, monumental, distinguished – but it’s also hard to spell, so reluctantly we went with another proud, monumental and distinguished name, just a lot shorter.
Choosing a project codename can be a tricky matter. On the CRM team we start by going to the team and holding a election. Early candidates for the “Titan” project name included “Hamilton” and “Madison”, reflecting the historicist leanings of some of the CRM team managers. Group sanity prevailed, and “Titan” emerged as the winner.
The codename for the Dynamics CRM V3 project was “Danube Phase II”. If ever there was an ugly codename, that was it. I can say this with full confidence that I won’t be offending anybody, because it was my idea! The theory was that “Danube Phase I” – which became CRM V1.2 – would be the international part of the release, and the big architectural investment (custom entities, advanced find, web-service APIs, marketing automation, scheduling, etc) that became CRM V3 would be built in parallel as “Danube Phase II”. One big software river flowing through many countries down to the sea.
CRM V1.0 didn’t have a codename. The CRM initials were codename enough, as you will understand when you recall that the official product name was “Microsoft Business Solutions Customer Relationship Management 1.0”.