In a previous post, I talked about starting a new project to create SharePoint guidance. We heard you need guidance to help with:

• Unit testing and debugging
• Packaging and deployment
• Setting up a team development environment
• Unclear which SharePoint features/ components to use and when
• Solution maintenance/upgrade
• How and when is SharePoint Designer applicable

Based upon your feedback, we decided to guidance on SharePoint Intranet Development. This includes help with solution architecture, solution development, and packaging and deployment.

Elevator Pitch:

Target Customer: Primary: SharePoint Professional Developers (Includes Architects); Secondary: SharePoint IT Pro's

Statement of Need: Guidance for architecting, designing, building and maintaining intranet sites that require collaboration, human workflow, BI and LOB integration, and administration capabilities.

Product Name and Capability:

• Intranet Application Development Using SharePoint
• Reference implementation, application architecture, and library for developing departmental transactional applications.

Key Benefit:

• Provides a reference implementation that demonstrates an appropriate use of SharePoint
• Guidance on which SharePoint capabilities to use for implementing the specific scenario
• Guidance on the SDLC as it relates to the specific scenario
• Common pitfalls in SharePoint development
• Strategies for testing and debugging
• Improves predictability of developing similar SharePoint solutions.

Focus Areas of the Guidance:

Solution Architecture:

• Architect/developer needs to decide which SharePoint components should be used
• Architect/developer has to decide if they should be writing custom code
• Architect/developer has to decide between storing data in a SharePoint list or a database

Solution Development:

• A multi-site development team needs to setup their development environment and processes
• Developer needs to unit test and debug SharePoint code
• Developer needs to define the Visual Studio solution structure

Packaging and Deployment

• SharePoint solution must be deployed to test, staging and production
• Developer needs to troubleshoot deployment issues
• Developer needs to upgrade an existing solution package

Here is a link to the vision/scope. Let us know your thoughts on the vision.

We plan to deliver the guidance in the late fall. Here a link to our most current drop. Checkout how we unit test our current version of the Reference Implementation. We are using a tool call TypeMock. Unit testing was one of the most requested areas of guidance for Sharepoint.