Re: [tlug] linux@example.com How many widely can we do that?

[Curt Sampson <cjs@example.com>]

On 2009-10-28 13:42 +0000 (Wed), Josh Glover wrote:

> The goal of the documentation is to communicate with teams that are in
> a different location (and often, time zone).

And one of the requirements the customer placed on you was that "this
software must be built by at least two geographically separate teams,
even if it costs me more money?" :-)

This is where the real agile approach comes in. Rather than starting a
project and asking, "How can we best write documentation to co-ordinate
our two separate teams?" the agilist will instead take not even just one
step back, asking "What are all of our options for co-ordinating these
teams?" but two steps back, asking, "What business problem are we trying
to solve by having separate teams working on the same project, and what
other solutions are also available?"

One project I worked on quite some years ago was a fairly sophisticated
web site that was rolled out in both North America and Japan. We tried
the specification approach, and it failed pretty dramatically. Flying
developers back and forth on a reasonably frequent basis turned out to
be a much better and cheaper solution. Eventually, we abandoned even
that and simply split it into two products, each with a co-located
development team, and that made the customers even happier yet.

cjs
-- 
Curt Sampson       <cjs@example.com>        +81 90 7737 2974
           Functional programming in all senses of the word:
                   http://www.starling-software.com