Implementing SharePoint technology solutions whitepaper

Something that I am asked quite often is around how to establish solutions in MOSS and WSS using best practices for multi team development, integration testing, authoring and production.  Also how to manage content deployments between these environments.  On the 25th January, the Microsoft SharePoint product team published a whitepaper (Implementing Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 Solutions)

This document outlines a methodology for team SharePoint development combining custom code and content, with the aim of accelerating implementation and mitigating production risks. To form the methodology, the document describes implementation scenarios, tools, and development environments. The document does not detail specific implementations (such as "how to write a Web Part" or "how to manage work items"), but describes the overall needs and techniques for the stated goal, and provides several references to topics for more information.

The whitepaper have a lot of information and contain a heap of links to other prescriptive guidance documents such as Content Deployment / Migration, Dev Tools, Patterns and Practices, Features, Packaging Tools and Hotfixes.  This is a MUST read for any SharePoint developer or IT Pro.