I need some advice on collaborative software environments. More specifically,
I am looking for books and reference materials that can aid me in understanding team and code structures and the interactions thereof. In other words books, blogs or white papers explaining:
Different strategies for structuring teams that share common code
between each other but have distinct individual functions?
To summarise my question I would like to know what would be a good source of knowledge if I were to set up teams in an organisation that shared code but each unit still remained autonomous.
I have done some research on this subject and explored:
code review tools,
distributed VCS,
continuous integration tools,
Unit testing automation.
The tough part about implementing these tools are to determine where a good place would be to start, which tools are low hanging fruit, which tools or methods provide higher success rates. If someone asks me about code quality reference I point them to Code Complete. I am looking for an equivalent guide on software team structures and tools to make this equation work better.
I realise that this question is quite vague but it arose as "we need to share code between teams without breaking each others stuff and causing management headaches and reams of red tape"
The answer is definitely not simple and requires changes on many levels, hence the question. If the question is too vague please vote to close or delete. I would accept any good starting point as an answer.
