[partisan]

I ran a distributed team for the better part of three years. I think all of this advice is right on the mark.

The one thing I would say is that everyone worked the clients hours, for the most part, with at least a 4 hour overlap. That meant that I would often find myself checking and answering chat messages around the clock because a single question could easily lead to a 24 hour delay. I would do my best to clear whatever roadblocks came up as soon as they did to avoid this. I also think we all became better at thinking through the work we had scheduled since it meant we would identify the issues upfront when possible.

The last bit about having fun was the most rewarding for me. I made a few good friends and we spent a lot of time laughing over Skype as we faced down the pressures of software delivery.

[twunde]

I ran a semi-distributed team. 4 hours seems to be the sweet spot. Once you start moving to 5 hours, it's just a little too far to do easily and some things start being dropped. One thing I found helpful was to have flexible hours as well. When I was 4 hours away, I would start work at 10 or 11 local time (or 6am client hours).