what’s the best way to develop any type of technical solution? through an open committee of course. you don’t really need to meet in person…what for? with e-mail (mailing lists), messaging forums, and so on. look at the linux kernel development for example, but i’m not just talking about coding projects. i mean any technical endeavors in general. bringing forth ideas, procedures, methods, all out into the open for review. discarding items that do not work and keeping ones that will. then continue on further improvement.

i also believe in the rapid development model. jumping in and getting things going (with some planning of course). a quick prototype will tell you whether a project will be feasible or not fairly quickly. jumping in too soon may result in some wasted time, but i think the benefits outweigh the consequences. meeting and planning for far too long without enough action is a far worse scenario to me. the time for action ends up being condensed into a very short time frame. then you find out nothing is working as planned and then those involved have to work at breakneck speed, or the project is simply dubbed a failure.

i want to elaborate on this process further…

also i want to make note of mr. ray noorda of novell fame. he passed away in 2006. he truly was a genius businessman. he believed in competing in the marketplace and not trying to profit via litigation.