[...]A conversation with Andy Singleton about distributed software development « Jon Udell[...]…

I like the other stuff, and I use it personally, but I don’t see teams picking it up.

I am not enthusiastic about audio, video, conference calls, and screen sharing, because I never see people using them. Those are things that have had many launches by many people for many reasons over many years. It’s hard to believe that after all of these tries, the problem is that it’s not the “right kind of synchronous connection.” The market has spoken.

In the case of online audio / video / screen sharing, they are really only used for 1-many presentations, or 1-1 (video calls). You never see many to many (team). In the case of conference calls there is a clear association with low productivity.

I’m not sure why that is true.

If face-to-face discussions are valuable at all, then maybe we just don’t have the right kind of synchronous connections, because of bandwidth or bad design or some other thing. But maybe these systems are demonstrating that face-to-face discussion is overrated even when it’s cheap due to co-location.

Agile can be done remotely… daily standups are an expression of a communication need and a blockage management system, not a physically bound necessity. In fact, the ten minute rule is focused on getting people out of the room, and thus distributed, as fast as possible so they can get back to their tasks.

I like this approach and think it can work in certain contexts. I like the interview by capability rather than inquisition.

Andy, would love to chat further if you’re interested.

Jan Drake
Serial Software Entrepreneur

Sure. But my point is: Basecamp /has/ APIs. Many systems do not have them, or at least don’t have ones tuned for these kinds of interactions.