Gavin Brook

Think of the problems you encountered during your last project, then imagine the team spread across different floors or buildings, or even continents! The problems and pitfalls are greatly magnified to a point where development is severely hindered. This is a typical distributed development team. The personnel involved in the project are unable to have direct face-toface communication. I will discuss common problems that can be encountered when working in this environment and talk about solutions that will greatly improve project development. First, let's start by defining an example team. A global project has been proposed and the only problem is that some members of the team are based in the UK, and some in the U.S. This is not only multi-site it is also intercontinental, where time of day becomes a big issue. Figure 1 shows the organizational structure of our dev... (more)