If you set the publisher for the solution, you can set a prefix which relates to that publisher, so for example instead of all new entities and fields being called new_mything they might be called prak_yourthing, as long as you create them from inside the
solution.
This helps identify which components in a system were added by whom.
Many consultants use an abbreviation of their company name for this prefix.
For in-house projects, I often use a solution and publisher which relates to an area of the business. So for example when building the changes required for the finance department, the prefix might be fin_, for HR hr_ and so on. Then I can later very easily
remember that a field is there because it was requested by a particular department during a certain phase of the project.
The publisher is also used with managed solutions to identify who created it (so you can't sell my solution and pretend it is your own work), and to allow a publisher to overwrite a previous version of their own solution (which others may not do).
Hope this helps. Adam Vero, Microsoft Certified Trainer | Microsoft Community Contributor 2011
