As someone who does and has worked on enterprise-grade software, and someone who now helps client teams facilitate development, both in-person, remote on-shore,

As someone who does and has worked on enterprise-grade software, and someone who now helps client teams facilitate development, both in-person, remote on-shore, and remote off-shore, I can confidently state: it all comes down to communication, and a lack of communication not only dooms telecommuting, but it's a strong indicator of longer term failure in the parent company. If ideas, thoughts and facts cannot be clearly captured and/or communicated in a facile fashion, any complex project is risking higher failure rates. In-person buffering is a crutch at best.