I ran across a relatively new blog that is being maintained by the release team for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework.  I used to work closely with most of them in my former role on the setup team and now I meet up and play basketball with some of them before work on Tuesdays and Thursdays when I can drag myself out of bed in time.  Check it out at http://blogs.msdn.com/release_team, it gives interesting insights into some of the logistics behind shipping products at Microsoft.