This is the first of several posts about how a team can be Agile while using Visual Studio Team System to manage their project and process.

You have probably heard the quip that the last simple project was done in 1960. The complexity and breadth of software projects today is truly astounding.  The size of teams working on a project seems to be getting larger. To deal with this complexity, teams must have higher bandwidth communication and various Agile methodologies like Scrum, XP, BDD, FDD, AUP, and Clear Case achieve this by emphasizing smaller local team sizes.  

However, if only one small Agile team were to take on something the size of a modern DBMS, accounting system, large scale e-commerce site, or a medical records management system, they would not be able to deliver product of sufficient value for years.  To achieve release goals, there have to be dozens or hundreds of small teams working on the project to deliver and maintain the product. And coordinating so many teams is, itself, a complex problem.

Does this sound like a Catch-22?

I just got back from teaching our Design Patterns Explained course in Mountain View. This was my first trip down there and I really enjoyed the class and the students.This was a very serious group of students. I teach this course a lot and for the most part the students are serious about their jobs and learning, but this group of 19 developers, architects, testers and managers were very serious.

I'm trying to say that this is a good thing. They listened to me, followed along in their manuals and asked great questions.