Conceptual integrity

How do you maintain conceptual integrity when multiple people contribute to a project?

Fred Brooks, author of the software engineering classic The Mythical Man-Month, gave a talk at at OOPSLA 2007 entitled Collaboration and Telecollaboration in Design (audio here). In his talk, Brooks discusses the importance of conceptual integrity. Great products have conceptual integrity and are nearly always the fruit of one or at most two minds. Products reflect their creators, and products designed by committees have multiple personalities. How do you maintain conceptual integrity when scale and complexity demand the participation of many people? Listen to Fred Brooks for some ideas.

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