For the last 2 months (and until end of January next year) I have been working as Build Manager on a relatively large, and potentially high profile (when all the NDAs expire), project in the Solution Development Centre at Microsoft in Sydney.

Many of my friends have been asking all the obvious questions such as: What's the product I'm working on like? Who is the client? When will it go live? But also how projects are run internally at a large and professional outfit such as Microsoft. Well the time for me to tell all is not now, however, I can point to a post (here) by the Solution Architect of the project explaining how things are run on a daily basis.

Some of the early stuff I can't comment on, as I only joined the project mid-way, but the post is an accurate reflection of what happens here everyday; ie of a pragmatic and effective way to run a significant quality driven project in the face of complex and competing requirements.