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Shaping Software

Enduring Ideas in the Realm of Software

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Best Software Engineering Books

Best Software Books of All Time According to a Microsoft Exec

“Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.”— Charles William Eliot Every company is a software company and software is the future, and software is the backbone for the digital age. To build better software, you need to learn …

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Pitch a Business Idea

How To Effectively Pitch a Business Idea (Customer, Problem, Competition, and Success)

This is a simple frame for testing your vision, your pitch for a project, or your proposed solution. One of my mentors uses it all the time to test the thinking and to make sure the team stays on track. I've adopted because it's a great way to stay focused on the basics. Don't let the basics get in the way of great results.

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Customer-Connected Engineering

Customer-Connected Engineering at patterns & practices

This post is a write up of how we do Customer-Connected Engineering on the Microsoft patterns & practices team. Our Customer-Connected Engineering process has been a key part of our success and impact in the software industry. While this write up is about how patterns & practices implements Customer Connected Engineering, you might find that you can tailor and adapt some of the principles for your scenario or context.

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Lessons in Software Development from Eric Brechner

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Eric Brechner. Eric is author of the book, and blog, I.M. Wright’s “Hard Code.”  At Microsoft, Eric is Director of Development Excellence on the Engineering Excellence team.  His group is responsible for improving the people, process, and practices of software development across Microsoft.  Eric has more than …

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Best Practices at patterns & practices

The Microsoft patterns & practices team has been around since 2000. The patterns & practices team builds prescriptive guidance for customers building applications on the Microsoft platform. The primary mission is customer success on the platform. As part of that mission, patterns & practices delivers guidance in the form of reusable libraries, in-tool experiences, patterns, and guides. To put it another way, we deliver code-based and content-based guidance.

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