How We Work
For obvious reasons, a few people have asked us if we use agile development behind this site. Well the simple answer is yes - we do! In fact, agile development is critical to us keeping the boat afloat.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
We are a virtual team of eight people spread across four time zones and four companies - so the interpersonal interactions are critical. While one of us might have a great 15 page standard on how to do something, we still need to be able to work when somebody presents a conflicting approach. When it comes to tools we have a whole cocktail of systems between us, so utilizing then integrating the results consistently is also pretty critical.
Working software over comprehensive documentation
This one's pretty obvious isn't it? Hurricane Rita wasn't going to wait for us to document the underlying code and neither were our users.
Responding to change over following a plan
As new APIs were released by Microsoft, legal guidelines changed, and natural disasters approached landfall the Via Virtual Earth community site was consistently the best developer resource on the web. To maintain this position, content had to be rolled up and published to a broad audience in a fraction of the usual time.
Does this mean we don't plan? Of course not! We know where the site is going, and when we want it to be there, however we are constantly reviewing and revising this plan as we move forward.