ABSTRACT
The people living in the villages that agreed to take part in this unusual project held a leadership role. The project was successful primarily because the outside team respected the villagers’ non-western lifestyle and culture. The computer scientists, though well versed in traditional software engineering practices, recognized the need to employ non-traditional methods at every stage of the project. They succeeded in applying the most important tenets of software engineering by adapting them to the culture of the people in the villages. In the end, the computer scientists believe they learned as much as the Andean villagers. Lives were permanently changed for everyone involved in this project.
