Dimensions of Team Distribution within a Software Team

This chapter broadens the definition of distributed teams to include facets beyond geographic, cultural, and organizational boundaries. Through the example of a typical software development team and its version control process, it shows how varying the ability to share network resources adversely affects collaboration. This network connectedness dimension of variability is solved through progressive adoption of newer tools and techniques, which in turn have unexpected strategic benefits beyond solving the immediate need. From this example, a pattern is extracted that can be applied to any team by identifying a dimension of distributedness, implementing solutions, and capitalizing on those solutions.