I have to admit it right away: When I set out to listen to Rini van Solingen talk about “distributed Scrum” on Software Engineering Radio, I was dead set to hate it simply because of the title. I’m aware that the realities might require you to perform agile software development in a distributed fashion but I don’t consider it something you should actively pursue if you can help it.

During the course of the podcast I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Rini has a very sensible view of things and also introduces the interesting angle that Scrum, being so heavily dependent on constant communication, can actually be a means of improving the collaboration of distributed. Throughout the interview it is very clear that he really understands and embraces Scrum, is keenly aware of the challenges that result from having distributed teams and makes sounds suggestions for overcoming them without making any bold claims to having found a universal solution.

I am also very taken with the fact that he is very cautious regarding tool use, names the right (in my humble opinion) reasons for doing distributed scrum (cost, most notably, not being one of them) and that he stresses the fact that even distributed teams should be seeing each other frequently.

I suggest you check it out.