Performance of Co-Located Teams vs. Distributed?

I’ve been an advocate for co-located teams for quite some time. I wrote about why you should not use Scrum with your distributed team, and how agile transformations can be derailed by lack of co-location. However, I seem to be in the minority when pushing for co-location.

Am I crazy for thinking that if we put people together, we will get better results?  Am I the only one who believes that co-location is an essential ingredient to high performing teams?

My writing on the topic has gotten a lot of pushback over the years including from other Agile coaches. Some is easy to dismiss. For example, the Agile Practice Lead for Cognizant Technology Solutions pointed out to me that the reality is that most teams are distributed and we just need to deal with it.  Coming from Cognizant, whose business model is predicated on cost-effective staffing models for teams, I didn’t find it surprising.

Most Companies don’t have Co-Located Teams

But the data shows that distributed teams are the reality.  The most recent VersionOne survey (10th) had 82% of respondents saying they had some teams using agile in a distributed fashion. That doesn’t mean 82% of teams are distributed, but 82% of respondents had at least some distributed agile teams.

Another data point is the 2015 State Of Agile Development by Forrester.  That reports showed respondents had only 10% of their teams fully co-located.  The other 90% are either partially or fully distributed.

Finally, Dr. Dobbs had a survey in 2011 that indicated that only 26% of teams were co-located.

So it seems that distributed Agile teams are indeed the reality for most people.  But hey, just because everyone is doing it, that doesn’t make it right!

It is still a choice that leaders in organizations have made. It is only a reality because people did not take steps to intentionally set up co-located teams.

An Agile Thought Leaders view on Co-Located Teams

Last week, Jurgen Appelo spoke at a Meetup in Chicago and he touched on the topic of co-location for Agile Teams.  I really liked Jurgen’s Management 3.0 book so was a little surprised by what he said.  It had me wondering if I was off track.

Jurgen stated that most agilist think that co-location is important, but that the point of co-location is to create mental proximity among team members.

His point is that physical proximity may help, but it is mental proximity that is even more important.  You could have physical proximity (sitting together) without mental proximity, and mental proximity without physical proximity.

I dug around and found this InfoQ article where Jurgen expanded on his idea:

 

So what are some ways that we can create mental proximity independent of physical proximity, outside of the personal maps tool that Jurgen suggested?  Most distributed teams use tools such as these that work best for teams that share common working hours:

• Real-time collaboration tools (e.g. Slack, IM)
• Real-time “always on” video
• Video conferencing

These tools help us to put people over process and tools, to avoid relying on documents, and to have face to face communications.

The challenge is when there is little or no overlap in working hours for team members.  Then, there are a few asynchronous tools like Slack, Wikis, and Agile lifecycle tools like Jira or VersionOne.

However, it seems that we begin to fall back on document handoffs and infrequent or non-existent face to face communications.

So I guess I sort of agree with Jurgen that mental proximity may be more important than physical.  But I believe that the overlapping working hours are a must.  In other words, the proximity needs to be in working hours and ability to collaborate synchronously.

Your thoughts?