Lessons learned from an extremely distributed project

Distributed development projects are highly complex and introduce new challenges for organizations in areas such as communication, collaboration and knowledge transfer. On a recent 30-person, mixed skill team distributed across Australia, India and the UK we attempted to overcome these challenges using a number of techniques such as daily stand-ups, exchanging ambassadors, small autonomous teams and a dedicated build team. We also used a number of tools such as instant messaging to assist with distributed communication. This experience report describes each tool and technique we used and the lessons learned in their application