Recently I started a new project with one of the teams in the Microsoft Patterns & Practices group in Redmond, Wa. For this project our team will provide guidance materials and a reference implementation. We are aiming to help SharePoint developers overcome some of the more difficult aspects of SharePoint development as well as help new developers with the initial 0 to 60 learning experience.

Already we have started to look at development environments and team development scenarios as they related to SharePoint development. Watch for thoughts on those and more subjects here soon.

Although we are a small team, we have built quite an elaborate build process for out team. Our current configuration includes developer/tester workstations running Windows Server, a continuous integration (CI) and build verification test (BVT) server running Team Foundation Server, as well as test, staging, and production servers. Look for a CodePlex site soon with some guidance on team-based SharePoint development utilizing a build server, which has turned out to be quite a challenge.

This is how my Avanade laptop is currently configured for MOSS development:

• Windows Server 2008
• Visual Studio Team Suite 2008
• SQL Server 2005 SP2
• MOSS 2007 SP1
• Office Enterprise 2007