Ken Thompson, facilitated an interactive session at the 2006 SPICE Conference in Luxembourg in June 2006 with the leading practitioners and researchers in Software Process Improvement (SPI) on the topic 'Can software engineering teams adapt biological principles?'

Ken Thompson, speaking at the 2006 SPICE Conference in Luxembourg (May 5) has facilitated an interactive session with leading practitioners and researchers in the field of Software Process Improvement (SPI) on this challenging question.

Previously I have discussed The beliefs of High Performing Teams (HPTs) and shared the results of a research project on the beliefs of HPTs in a major software organisation. I now invite the SPICE2006 participants and other software engineers to participate in the next stage of this research.

The Liars club.

Why software development team members are not always truthful about rework levels and project progress and what you can do about it. A Bioteam's guest spot by Bill Hall of the Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society.

Can you spot which of these three international software teams is the bioteam?

Fortune Magazine, November 28, 2005 reports on research by Leslie Perlow of Harvard Business School on teams of software engineers in India, China and Hungary. But which of the three teams was most like a bioteam?

Businessweek report, October 3, 2005, that Open Source Software (OSS) has evolved to the point where it now has its own specialised economic ecosystem made up of not just the OSS Software Companies but also Specialist Brokers who can ‘marriage make’ between companies and investors, dedicated Venture Capitalists, Service Companies and Infrastructure Players.

In a previous article, Avoiding remote software collaboration disasters, I shared my mixed experiences of virtual software development and offered four golden rules I now use. I mentioned elance but have now also been favourably impressed with another service, Rentacoder, which allows you to post projects to be bid for by software contractors all over the world.

4 key questions for your early warning system

About 6 months ago I commissioned two small pieces of remote software development. My motivation was getting the best value for money in the technology areas of Microsoft .Net and Flash animation. One was a success and the other a disaster - I think I now know why!

Open Source Software (OSS) Development Projects use bioteaming

I attach a 2-page article by Brian Teeman, Roles and responsibilites of users and community members in an open source project.

Making distributed software development easier

Mike Gunderloy, in an article entitled, Tips for virtual teams, for Application Development Trends magazine shares five good tips for working in distributed software development teams.