[wpietri]

I agree 100%, and am especially excited to see automated testing as going from "impossible dream" (c. 1999) to "reasonable, broadly expected quality practice". It has been a long road.

However, there's one obvious problem that isn't mentioned: hiring mercenaries half-way around the world who have never met you, don't care about you, don't care about your product, and don't care about your audience.

I think it can be ok to do that sometimes, but it's idiocy to do that and expect to work in the same way as having a permanent employee who sits next to you and who will lose their job if the business fails.

Software developers, even the ones 8 time zones away, are actual human beings not coding robots with coin slots in their chests. If you are going to strip out all of the human connection and replace it with 3 milestone payments plus some spec documents, you can't expect them to care beyond what's necessary to cash the checks. (They might anyhow, out of a sense of professionalism, but you can't expect it.)

The only contracting or remote-team situations I've seen work even moderately well have done a lot to create real human connection.

[ctdonath]

Such a situation may enhance the issue the author addresses, but his point remains paramount: don't expect what you don't inspect. If anything, hiring "mercenaries half-way around the world" requires more of what he enumerates, which is the objectively practical form of, as you say, "do a lot to create real human connection".

[wpietri]

Requiring unit tests is a great idea, and I am 100% behind using the techniques she describes, but it's not the real human connection I'm talking about.

One of the best distributed teams I know spends a week per month together despite the travel nightmare that entails. Another reasonably good remote project had the product manager spending 1-2 weeks every 6 weeks with the development team. Having developers participate in user tests is also great, as is finding some way for them or their friends to become actual users of the product.

If the developers don't give a shit about you or your users, you'll have to do a lot more inspecting than if they are personally fired up to make things work for people they care about.

[lewaldman]

Did you gave a look on this: http://37signals.com/remote/