The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.– Agile Principles
Manager, Tear Down These Walls
If you were tasked with designing a system that made spontaneous collaboration difficult, you couldn’t go wrong with the modern cube farm. Members of a “team” dispersed over an area of the office, isolated in their drab tchotchke ridden cubicles. Instant message, e-mail and chat might be great for passive communication, but when it comes to real collaboration, being physically present is essential.
But We’re Distributed!
Co-located teams are better than distributed teams. However, sometimes we cannot be co-located. That does not mean we resort to passive forms of communication and digital tools to convey our progress and ask questions. Skype is better than a phone call which is better than e-mail. Don’t underestimate your brain’s ability to gather important insight from the facial and body language of the person on the other end of that video chat.