[moron4hire]

It's easy to say that communication is key, because it is, but all else being equal, if your team can't execute projects in a distributed, remote environment as well as it can in a centralized place, then it's not as good at communicating as you think it is. Dragging a failing remote team into an office isn't going to magically make them successful, and scattering a successful team across the world isn't going to suddenly make the project fail.

I personally find the very disconnected nature of the teams I lead in my consulting work actually forces us to communicate in an open, concise, discoverable way that would be good for any type of team, but that co-located teams get to cheat out on because a weak team member can always ride his stronger teammates' organizational coat tails with nosey interruptions and annoyances.

We have to think things through and write clear specs, because we can't use body language to clarify and count on the people involved in the meeting to just remember the attitudes expressed. We have to be good about change management, because we can't just turn around and ask someone to "get out of a file" or do whatever we want to the database whenever we want to. We have to keep meetings to a minimum, because you just can't have a productive, two-hour phone call.

These are all good things for non-remote teams, too. But they cheat and don't follow good practice.

[jsudhams]

This and the top comment nails it down that if your team is not delivering the stuff in remote model then they most probably wont deliver in collocated space as well. I am not very sure why people still refer to year 2000 time of offshoring difficulties till now. For last 14 years I have been in working in the offshore(software and infra outsourcing) model. And I can vouch for the model to be very workable while it will have some extra work for either USA partner or for India partner (Mostly on Indian side as they may not say no even if USA side offer to take extra efforts). In my opinion the following has made the life much better for me and hopefully for my partners.

1. Have the key folks (leads/project managers) travel and stay with team for at least 4 weeks in a common place. 2. Do not force video (leave the mode of comms to peoples preference (video / email / call)) 3. Allow decision to be made over text chat and have it added to project decisions in weekly meetings 4. Identify couple strong people per 15 members team and have relationship where they will tell you before deciding like 6 months in advance and allow people to leave. They will come back later. And wholeheartedly develop them even if you know they will leave, with one condition that they will develop one more person like them for the team. 5. Have good leader in India who can speak open with out fear of a westerner (I find this a most difficult one). This is a real deal maker between peace of mind and micro managing and going crazy. 6. Be open t listen to same idea that your team thought and decided to ditch from your offshore partner. (we can go for full blog post on that)

I think this would take the team long way. Please remember either USA side or India will have to lose 3 evenings a week, irrespective of SRS, Comm tools and so on if you need a successful delivery.

[jsudhams]

EDIT ADD: There is no additional issues in managing remote worker than it is with regular in office . It is just kind of issue, it is definitely manageable.