Although there are significant benefits to distributed staff in terms of recruitment and enlarging the pool of available talent, there are also trade-offs in not having everyone in the same location. Nothing beats regular face-to-face communication for keeping all members of a team informed and engaged. However, there are key steps that can be taken to make distributed teams work even when they are using a method like agile that was developed for small co-located teams.
An article by Dan Radison at Atlassian provides good advice on making distributed agile teams work. From coordinating across time zones, to building rapport among team members and developing a strong team culture, he offers pointers to help make agile methods work when everyone is not in the same location. Although the focus is on agile teams, the advice seems appropriate for all types of work groups.
When we create workplaces, we make major investments of all kinds to set the conditions for productive work. We probably need to make the investments of the same scale in setting the conditions for productive work at a distance.
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