To imply that I should refuse work or revert to some less adaptable process is ludicrous unimaginative. I also find your inference that management is somehow to blame. Take a little responsibility, find some imagination and find the right people. If you can’t get distributed teams to work effectively and efficiently then perhaps you need to look inward rather than sticking out your chest and refusing to work at all.

I used to agree completely with this, but have since coached exactly one distributed team that really is a team. They are a group of people who worked together for years physically, live just a couple hours’ drive apart, and have strong relationships. They get together physically as needed, circa once a month. The rest of the time, they work virtually, with a lot of audio conferencing and virtual pair programming. They know this isn’t ideal, but strongly prefer it to uprooting their families to move closer together.

I’d still agree that companies trying to build virtual teams are all likely doomed to fail, and if any succeed they will pay a large price in productivity and agility.

When they haven’t even tried a collocated agile before trying some distributed variant, I think it’s an especially large mistake, as they quite literally don’t know what they’re missing. Often, they’re trying to get the benefit of change without doing any of the work, like somebody who buys running shoes and a track outfit, and then just wears those while sitting on the couch.

Still, there are (very rare) examples of good distributed teams, and I think the real problem is people making some change in a half-assed and illusion-driven way, rather than distributed teams as such.

Response: Hi William.  Yes I agree with you.  When team members know each other as people (not just employees), have worked together physically, established a rapport and trust one another then working in a distributed fashion, by choice can work very well.

As you say, the problem is not distributed teams as such, but people not wanting to do the real work of change. 

Having worked with the company for a length of time before actually meeting with the clients, I found that the difference between emails and face to face contact is immeasurable. I thought I knew so much until I actually talked to users and watched their daily processes; my performance has since improved enormously, and has been noted by our users and my supervisors.

The Scrum process is a wonderful tool and solution for users, but with a lack of knowledge, can easily be abused by managers looking for a quick and dirty way to “improve” their company. Your comparison to child labor was not far off.

At any rate, a toast to your post, thanks for the read and the great links.

Cheers,
Cat