Generally speaking, I don’t post blogs about news releases. I figure that if you’re reading this blog you’re reading other SharePoint blogs and you’ll know when the product releases to manufacturing or when some new service pack is released, however, today’s news – that the Microsoft Patterns and Practices group released version 3 of the SharePoint Guidance. Why is that different? Because for me it’s been a 9 month journey into trying to create the best advice for creating spectacular solutions on top of SharePoint – and I believe we’ve done it. I’ve blogged in the past that I’ve been partnering with the p&p group for a while (here, here, here, etc.) . This wave started in August or September of last year. (It sort of depends upon what you consider the start.) We started talking about what things were going to be important for SharePoint 2010. It was an awkward place for the p&p group – and for me. I’m used to people asking me to document proven practices after they’ve been proven. At the same time we both recognized the need to provide a firm foundation of guidance when the product released.

Over the last nine months we’ve had conversations with advisors, experts, and architects for SharePoint to talk about what the best practices should be in several different areas. We started with execution models – how you get stuff done in SharePoint. We cover Sandbox and we cover workflow. We cover timers and web parts. The idea is you’ll get a chance to pick the right execution model for your application. We cover data models including when to use BCS – and when not to. We also cover client and what you should plan on doing in Silverlight and Ajax. While the guidance is by no means comprehensive or perfect, I can say with great confidence it’s the best work yet.

Whether you’re an architect, a development lead, or just a developer on a SharePoint project I’d highly encourage you to read the guidance cover-to-cover and discover what other people are calling essential.