Working over the years in the Information Technology industry I have learned that face to face interactions lead to success in delivery and innovation which are the important areas in this industry.
But this is the result of imperfect interactions from a distance. For this let us analyze what is a successful interaction:
- Successful interactions for good delivery and innovation are continuous in nature and not just fixed hours per week/day/month
- If we restrict ourselves to a very fixed schedule say every week or month we come with a very specific preset agenda and miss out on human emotions, behaviors, motivations and so on which also have a big role in success for delivery and innovation
- Face to face meetings add on top of the set agenda an aura of informal interactions around friendship, relationship, behaviors, emotions, motivation, what we like / dislike, etc.
To augment this from offshore for countries like USA & Europe and remove the disconnect better way would be to have continuous interaction.
Connect boardrooms, developer areas, testing team rooms, agile rooms, finance rooms, operations room via video conferencing and audio with a view of full team and area on live and continuous basis. Once you do that you remove the fixed agendas and schedules of meetings which cut out the soft side of human behavior, etc. which is only visible in a face to face conversation. This disconnect of fixed schedules and fixed time meetings can be overcome by continuous interactions. We already have continuous integration for delivery teams and AGILE as a model for delivery. Taking it to the next level would be continuous interaction between offshore and onsite.