Teamwork

Abstract

Successful projects start small and are developed by a small, coherent group of people. They emerge as large projects where nobody controls everything. People no longer know each other, nor do they understand the area of code someone else is working on. Architects no longer touch the code. They rise a few levels above the keyboard to discuss the necessary changes in the next version of their product while playing golf with existing or future customers. In this setup, it’s easy to completely lose track of what is going on. In fact, that is almost necessary. Nobody can understand the whole system. Cluelessness gradually increases. Despite that, it’s necessary to produce a new release even in a loosely organized system. There is only one way to do so effectively: selectively choose the aspects of the project that are important and concentrate on those. To that end, this chapter outlines a few recipes that work reasonably well in the NetBeans project.