Shield: Product Development in a Distributed Team

Howard’s First Days

During his first days on the job, Howard familiarized himself with the product, which was highly advanced from a technological standpoint. He did his best to get to know the members of the team and their work style. This was facilitated by the location of his office around the corner from the team computer lab, where many developers met to work together during the

1. 
   Code ownership should not be confused with intellectual property. While the property rights to the technologies used in Shield belonged to the US firm, over time, ownership of the four modules belonged to both sites.
   

day. They also worked intensely in their offices, alone or in small groups, figuring out design and coding issues, but the lab was a central hub of activity, where much interaction took place. This was where engineers came to discuss problems or resolve coding issues.

Two-thirds of the US-based developers were not American, but foreign nationals. Howard saw this as a good sign — the company was attracting the best and brightest from around the world.
Walking around the offices, he observed what one might expect to see in a busy software development office: engineers working together in front of white boards, brainstorming ideas. Having started out as an engineer himself, he recognized the value of impromptu meetings.
He saw that they were working intensely and enjoying the feeling that they were going to produce something that worked, that would not disappear quietly, as so many software products do.
In one interaction, Howard stood in the doorway as several developers worked in front of a screen, pointing to different lines of code and working out bugs. After a few minutes of collaborative work, they solved the problem. One developer, noticing Howard, exclaimed, “See, we did it, and no e-mails!”