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Dispersed Agile Development

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At OOPSLA 2001, a panel of the most distinguished methodologists of the day was asked "How would you do agile development where the team are a geographically distributed workforce, each working in his own home?"

They more or less unanimously said "We wouldn't even try!"

  • Distributed open source projects have worked successfully for some years.

    • Yes, but they don't work to commercial deadlines and requirements; nor within commercial confidentiality. And they don't get paid!

  • There are commercial precedents, even as early as the 1970s.

    • In Cobol....

  • Distributed Pair Programming has been shown to be feasible, especially with broadband connections.

    • But only in internal projects or academic exercises.

  • The use of agile methods reduces the scope for misunderstandings between co-workers.

    • Ha ha ha! Ho ho ho! Tell me another one!

  • We have some patterns for distributed agile development, and want to compile more.

    • Oh yes? Let's see them then....

  • See PatternsForDispersion.

  • Distributed working means you can earn money while living on the beach or up your favorite mountain, or wherever you like, without having to commute every day and without wearing a tie all the time, or sharing a smelly grey office with people who smoke or cough.

    • This exciting new method of software development is clearly the way of the future. When can I start?

 

 

 

 

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2004
    Per your last sentence, the focus is really on individual developer ability to communicate, and Microsoft hires some of the best people in the world. No surprise that it would work there.

    The Standish Group's CHAOS report has been telling us for years that the 2nd largest contributor to project success is the quality and skill of the development team. The first is customer involvement (wonder why Microsoft is blogging so much??).

    As for the Agile "movement", I've been a proponent for parts of it (parts of methodologies, not one whole one like XP or Scrum). A lot of that is hype, I'll admit that even though I am a supporter of agile in general. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on what they said.
  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2004
    Most useful aspect of agile IMHO is test-driven development. Write your tests first, then make them pass one by one. (Modulo a few things about how the test harness accesses the app.)
  • Anonymous
    April 24, 2004
    Apart from the methodological (is that a real word?) issues surrounding agility and dispersion, there are also wider social, political and economic drivers that would point towards "people who sit at desks typing stuff into computers" choosing not to travel very far to work. Having spent the last year or so working this way, I can attest it works very well indeed if you have the right people and the right approach. I can also attest that my quality of life improved significantly while I was doing it, and that the burden on central London and the transport system was lighter to the tune of one person... I am now back on the client's site - funnily enough in a seperate building to both the developers and the customer, who I speak to roughly once or twice a day, and usually on the phone or using instant messaging... My round-trip commute averages at 2.5 hours a day. go figure!
  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2004
    I'm told that a lot of the development group at Rational work dispersed.
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