by Dave Jacob, Managing Partner  

What it means to be a part of a software development team has dramatically changed over the course of my career. Yet while the current remote employee approach to software development is very different from the centralized approach used in my early days, the goal remains the same - deliver quality systems on-time and within budget.  Davalen does just this. Using remote employees, with little relocation and travel, Davalen maintains a high project success. However, the change to the remote development model was not without its challenges.

For me, the largest challenge, other than cultural, language, and time zones differences, was communicating requirements and validating work on an on-going basis. Initially, we focused on "perfect" design documents that the team at large (on- or off-shore) could code to. Design documents were created in time-consuming, pain-staking, details and the project scope had to be frozen early in order to have a prayer of working.  As it's common to experiment with part of the design before creating it entirely, an inflexible design document could never work.  The saying, "You built what I asked for, but it's not what I want" was often heard and understood... Read More