I just finished listening to a TechEd Webcast “Lessons Learned Shipping TFS” by Jeff Beehler based on content recorded during Jeff Beehler‘s trip to Australia earlier this year and produced by Charles Sterling. The audio quality in the copy I downloaded was poor in places, but if you are currently in the process of designing new software there are several lessons learned on how you can go about improving the end application.
Jeff discusses development processes in the SDLC such as continuous integration and ‘dogfooding’ (and how it enabled them to realise they had made mistakes and fix them before they became show-stoppers). He also makes an important point about making shipping and deployment part of the build-cycle so that it’s not the first time you do it on release day! (I know there are plenty of people out there nodding to that one…)