Global products under rapid development

Rapid development is perhaps the most common development methodology used in the software industry today. You may encounter the strategy under the name "Agile", or some variant of agile. In contrast with classical development methodologies, cycles are fast, with daily, weekly, or monthly sprints that deliver finished functionality.

Global and international requirements can fundamentally affect the design and implementation of every component in an application or system. That's why it's vital to start with a Minimum baseline for localizability, even when you aren't actually translating anything yet.

Once a feature is delivered, it can become difficult to go back and re-engineer for globalization. The feature crew may have moved on to other work for the next sprint.

Globalization and international development concerns are best addressed within each sprint when a feature is created. This is the same principle described in Start early, applied to the sprint. The more aspects of globalization that you can address within the sprint, the fewer issues to address later when they can be more expensive.

When globalization and localization is fully integrated with each sprint using continuous localization, you can achieve simultaneous shipping.

Once you have the overview of the strategy and process, you can get into more detailed implementation considerations. The International design article provides a detailed checklist.