Leveraging distributed software development

The Internet has been changing the way people collaborate on software development, offering certain advantages but also creating new requirements. Internet based collaboration does make a wider base of talent available, but the development cycles running at Internet speeds require maintaining higher levels of precision. From a project management perspective, communication is a key factor in Internet based development. Internet based collaboration requires effective team communication. The authors point out that when a development team isn't communicating well, it is nearly impossible to create and validate design solutions and manage the team's deliverables. So while Internet collaboration offers a number of advantages, the friction created by distributed (therefore delayed) communication typically increases the overhead associated with sharing project information. And the technology itself, including system interoperability and the synchronous or asynchronous collaboration tools, can create problems in a distributed development environment. As the complexities of distributed collaborative development environments increase, frameworks designed for such environments will become essential. The authors describe one such framework called SoftDock, and the new technologies it exploits. It lets developers analyze, design, and develop software from component models.