#2782

More Thoughts on Distributed Development

I. M. Wright’s (aka Eric Brechner, Director of Development Excellence at Microsoft) had an interesting post this month. It’s about the big, bad ‘B’s of distributed development—bandwidth, boundaries, and being there.

I thought one of his key points was it’s not about cutting costs, it’s about increasing available talent. Costs will eventually converge but the World’s best talent isn’t always where you are.

Many of the same ideas come up here as I covered in my previous posts which reflected both p&p’s experiences and that of other practitioner’s within the industry (including references):

Choosing an agile process – Part 4a: Offshore development
Choosing an agile process – Part 4: Offshore development

Another thing I’ve heard recently is that “time differences hurt more than distance”. I think this ties in with my experience. 4000 miles North-South (1-3 hour difference) is easier to deal with than the same thing East-West (8 or more hours).

Of course all this begs the question… Why do we still run projects counter to these best practices?

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