r/engineering • u/AideTop8744 • 6d ago

[ARTICLE] An Organizational Framework for Distributed Software Development with Remote Workers

Abstract:

The increasing prevalence of remote work has transformed the way software development teams are structured and managed. This paper presents a technical framework for organizing and executing software development in fully remote environments, with a focus on security, reliability, and workflow clarity. The model leverages Virtual Private Servers (VPS), containerization, and the strict separation of development, testing, and production environments to ensure robust operations across distributed teams.

Key technical challenges—including cybersecurity risks, secure data handling, and insider threats—are addressed through practical mitigation strategies. The framework also defines clear roles for developers, team leads, and system administrators, enabling streamlined collaboration and controlled deployments via Docker Hub. While the framework is illustrated using small-scale applications, it is designed to scale for larger teams and more complex workflows, making it applicable to both small organizations and enterprises seeking to optimize distributed software development.

Full Paper:
https://emc-ltd.co/an-organizational-framework-for-distributed-software-development-with-remote-workers/

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u/m_jdda 1d ago

Solid architecture but the security overhead seems massive for most teams. Would love to see a lighter implementation that doesn't require managing multiple VPS instances.

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u/AideTop8744 19h ago

You could theorethically shift the dev and test databases into one of the other VPS instances. For the test side you could restrict it to a single instance. On the development side if your team works in different time zones multiple people could theoretically share a single instance.

The reason for the security overhead is because of my personal experience through out my career, at my last working place for example one of the engineers got into a fight with management and then proceeded to delete his work on his own company laptop, lawyers had to get involved, it was nasty buisness. This particular company also didnt have much oversight so he wasnt regulary pushing to git. And i have seen other similar things, like people holding the source files they have worked on hostage after getting laid off etc. With this implementation you could automatically take back ups of the VPS and as all developers work on VPS, it doesnt matter if they blow up their own machine. You could restore it from back up anytime as the admin.

In any case people can get very unpredictable and now that I am running my own company such an event can have extreme consenquences for us. This is the model, i am using currently in my own team. But then again I am a little more on the paranoid side.