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.
I’ve been a part of the team since 2001. Along the way, I’ve seen a lot of changes as our people, our processes, and our catalog of products have changed over time. Recently, I took a step back to collect and reflect our best practices. Some practices were more effective than others, and we’ve lost some along the way. To help reflect and analyze the best practices, I created a map of the key practices organized by discipline. In this post, I’ll share the map (note that it’s a work in progress.) Special thanks to Ed Jezierski, Michael Kropp, Per Vonge Nielsen, Shaun Hayes, and Tom Hollander (all former patterns & practices team members) for their contributions and insights to the map.
Best Practices by Discipline
The following table is a map of the key practices used by the patterns & practices team over the years.
| Discipline | Key Practices |
|---|---|
| Management Team |
|
| Architect |
|
| Development Team |
|
| Product Management |
|
| Program Management |
|
| Release Checklist |
|
| Test Team |
|
| User Experience Team |
|
Some practices are obvious, while some of the names of the practices might not be. For example, “Fireside chat” is the name of our monthly team meeting, which is an informal gathering and open dialogue. I may drill into some of these practices in future posts, if there’s interest and there are key insights to share.
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As a former enterprise architect & aspiring Microsoft architect, this checklist provides benchmarks for growth & progress. I can also direct those in complementary roles to this post. Thanks for the guidance, JD.
Very timely gold nugget. AS an aspiring architect i am on hunt for these for faster ramp up.
thank you
@ Jimmy
It was a fun exercise in distilling down, what’s actually helped organizational effectiveness. The whole of the system is definitely more than the parts.
@ Alik
Thank you. I’ll definitely need to expand on some of these activities within the context of patterns & practices, but at least it’s a starting point.