Once you have a program—a collection of interrelated projects focused on one business goal—and you have technical debt, you have a much bigger problem. Not just because the technical debt is likely bigger. Not just because you have more people. But because you also geographically distributed teams, and those teams are almost always separated by function and time zone.

Implementing configuration management in small teams presents a distinct set of challenges. Your ability to “right size” the effort will go a long way in how successful you are. Find out what questions to ask before you get started.

In part 2 of this interview, Jonathan Kohl discusses testing location-based services, the value of a good social network for crowdsourcing, and how poor optimization practices might literally burn a hole in your pocket.

Small teams can be highly effective at creating big systems. In this "Behaviorially Speaking" feature, Bob Aiello explains how to be successful in a small team environment and also handle the growth often necessitated by success.