[AndrewKemendo]

>The good old email and phone is just enough, providing you trust the people you work with (if you don't then this is on you as a manager an no tool will help you)

This is the crux of things. If you haven't hired people who can be trusted to work remotely, there's nothing you can do to manage/lead them.

[SirLJ]

Thanks, that was the point to be made, but the amateurs got stuck on the phone/email comment and the need to use the best new shiny tool...

[nogabebop23]

OK, but your "people you trust" was one partial sentence out of several recommendations.

I'll go further: if you have entire teams of "people you trust" they will make it work regardless of your tooling and in spite of your management techniques.

This really avoids the challenge though; it's like when you have talented, experienced development teams they can make it work if you use agile, waterfall or little planning at all

Your approach relies on having the rare quality (experience, talent or trust) vs. approaches that try to grow these qualitites over time.

And appreciate the "amateur" shot - is that how you show someone you don't know well how empathetic and caring you are when they disagree with your opinion?

[AndrewKemendo]

My perspective is that if you don't have competent people you can trust, then you might as well just pack it up.

Any technical or non technical person with any skill level can be competent in their role and trustworthy. It doesn't take years to develop that, it's a personality trait.

[SirLJ]

What development teams, please go back and reread my original post, I am talking about operations, not development.