  Distributed software development is more difficult than co-located software
development. One of the main reasons is that communication is more difficult in
distributed settings. Defined processes and artifacts help, but cannot cover
all information needs. Not communicating important project information,
decisions and rationales can result in duplicate or extra work, delays or even
project failure. Planning and managing a distributed project from an
information flow perspective helps to facilitate available communication
channels right from the start - beyond the documents and artifacts which are
defined for a given development process. In this paper we propose FLOW Mapping,
a systematic approach for planning and managing information flows in
distributed projects. We demonstrate the feasibility of our approach with a
case study in a distributed agile class room project. FLOW Mapping is
sufficient to plan communication and to measure conformance to the
communication strategy. We also discuss cost and impact of our approach.
