Agile style development with Dynamics CRM 2011

Question

My team is in charge of a medium sized CRM system (~1000 users). Currently our CRM is built in-house on Java Servlets, and we are switching over to Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011. We will have to do a lot of customizations to suit our business logic and regulatory requirements.

We currently do bi-weekly release of features and bug fixes (swap out old jar/jsp files, and swap in new ones). My questions are:

1. With Dynamics CRM, how would something similar be done? Managed Solutions?
   What if a user made customizations based on v1 of a deployed managed solution, can I uninstall that solution, and install a v2?
2. How is change control done?
3. What do you find are best practices, and pit falls?

Answer 1

This is very important discussion and i don't think that is a best answer, it will depend what you want and how you work. I agree with most of Rickard said, i will give you some links that help me a lot establish a process of development:

1 and 3:

• http://gonzaloruizcrm.blogspot.pt/2012/01/managed-or-unmanaged-solutions-in-crm.html
• http://xrmconsultant.blogspot.pt/2011/11/crm-2011-solutions-problems-best.html
• http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Merging-CRM-2011-Solutions
• http://www.dynamicscrmtrickbag.com/2011/05/28/dynamics-crm-2011-solutions-part-1/

2:

• http://intovsts.net/2012/12/28/integration-of-dynamics-crm-2011-solutions-with-tfs/
• http://community.dynamics.com/product/crm/crmtechnical/b/crmmusings/archive/2012/05/31/solution-packager-enable-source-control-for-solutions-in-crm-2011.aspx

I think you can encountered here useful information for you define your process of development.