Say what you will about Microsoft, they know how to successfully build and release software. Vince Maraia has been a key member of the build teams for many of their major software releases over the last fifteen years. In this book he distills the wisdom he has learned about building software, while also setting it into the context of related steps, including configuration management and deployment. While he uses Microsoft tools and case studies from within Microsoft, the book is as tool-agnostic as possible, to make the ideas applicable to the broadest possible range of readers. The book is written so that each chapter builds upon the previous one, following the standard development schedule; however, each chapter can also stand alone as a reference to that particular piece of the process. Microsoft has been so successful at developing build procedures that work that they will be incorporating many of them in the forthcoming suite of products called Visual Studio 2005 Team System, so this book is being released at a very opportune time.