Due to a unique set of circumstances, I found myself placed on a project based primarily in India. At the time I had never worked on a distributed project, but over the course of two semesters I feel I ve gotten a good feel for this increasingly popular method of development. It seems a bit obvious to say that communication is the biggest issue on any distributed project. When I started the project, I knew that communication would be the biggest issue I would be facing. This is very rough feeling.
Email is worse.
Discussing a design in person is like explaining a difficult concept in open dialog interactive, engaging, and not too difficult. Emailing a design to someone is like writing a book. A brief glance at the vast number of diagrams, walkthroughs, and other forms of documentation generated in the fall semester just to understand the problem should be enough to highlight the difficulties. Open Source and Communication Open Source projects, for example, are highly optimized to keep communication to a minimum. For one thing, the rules of the game the Open Source process is published fairly explicitly and most people who are in a position to participate are aware of them.