Development Needs Analysis

Augmentive has found that many software development organizations have implemented processes and practices that contemplate a centralized project structure. A centralized project structure relies on the fact that domain experts, designers and possibility the constructors are all geographically accessible to one another. Often this means that critical communication is conducted in ad hoc conversations that occur in the hallway or over lunch. In a distributed offshore development situation, projects members are geographically dispersed and therefore do not have unlimited and unrestricted access to one another. Consequently, "Let's talk it over at lunch" does not work.

Augmentive works with its customers to define a development process that can support a distributed development team. Often, minor adjustments to an existing process or practice can be implemented to enhance the support of a distributed development team.

Listed below are some of the issues that need to be explored and some of the questions that need to be answered in the analysis of your development process.

Project Management Needs

• Do we want a centralized project management model or do we need project managers at multiple locations?
• Given the geographic time differences, do we have project management software tools that can support our distributed development team?

Domain Knowledge Requirements

• What level of functional domain knowledge is required for roles that will be performed in the offshore group?
• How will we build functional domain knowledge in our offshore group?
• What ongoing training programs are required to support our development process?

Hand Off Points Within the Development Process

• Does our development process have an adequate review process to replace the ad hoc communication process?
• Are the documents we use in our development process adequate to support team members in remote locations?