In large projects with distributed teams, tools like VoIP (e.g., Skype) and instant messaging are of enormous importance to enable the fine-grained communications necessary to keep things running smoothly. Everyone associated with development—project managers, analysts, developers, testers—should have access to, and be accessible to, everyone else on IM and VoIP. It is essential for the smooth running of the delivery process to fly people back and forth periodically, so that each local group has personal contact with members from other groups. This is important to build up trust between team
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