Re: Software development: they must let us in!

[Mysti Rubert <Mysti -at- SYBASE -dot- COM>]

Our company found a novel solution born of space shortages.
I work with all my developers in one big room (The Pit).

Yes it's nerve-wracking not having an office sometimes, but
I hear about each new development/feature change/bug the
minute it happens, and it has allowed me to write pretty full
documentation for a new product.  When we move to the new
building, we're going to stay with the one-room concept, the
developers, QA and tech writers (and for a brief period marketing,
but they moved him out because we kept kibbitzing on his
sales calls).  The manager & tech support sit elsewhere.
But they are going to give us a "quiet" office to
retreat to, they let us work at home up to two days a week,
and we've all developed the facility to tune each other out.
That and headphones :)

I highly recommend co-location for small groups.  We've got 6 developers,
one tech writer, one QA dude. We are more or less a team without
borders now.  Of course my guys had an unnatural disposition to
caring about the docs before the co-location, but there's no way
you can avoid thinking about customers needs, including doc, when
you'e all in the same small boat together.

ISO implementation has just started here, and it has dramatically
increased the amount of written source I have to work from, and
slowed the rate of change (adding features, anyway).  We'll see
what happens as we go through a whole cycle.
We've got a good implementation of ISO 9k, and a very cooperative
development staff.

Mysti