[gtycomb]

Between you and what OP is saying, I think there is this something thing else also. Core software development activity (UI, databases, messaging, web servers, configuring legacy systems, testing, release and delivery, etc) is helped by people sitting together on an agile track. However for some software development this also means architecting the product itself, an aspect that is crucial to a company's survival too. In a company building a demand management product, I need to learn and understand the market, consumers, sales processes, our internal systems that manged these before drafting the demand models, fine tune the methodology, etc before anyone really build the software product/services that reach the end-user. And there is a cycling back and forth between the two activities as we move ahead to get things right. I had no product manager or analyst who could really help with the product itself that the company wants. This latter part is where where I have a very hard time sitting in an open space with 10 people talking on the phone or getting pulled into frequent meetings.