Co-location saved a big project at a crucial point, after I had done my best to inject a wrench into the project. A few years ago, I raised some concerns about

Co-location saved a big project at a crucial point, after I had done my best to inject a wrench into the project. A few years ago, I raised some concerns about the hacks we were doing at the end of a sprint review session. As part of the innocent "does anyone have anything else to say". This completely derailed everyone and the senior product management was surprised. This was about 60% into a 1.0 product. As a result, our scrum master and tech lead flew the other two members of our team who were remote in - and we had intense/design/coding sessions in a conference room for a very long week. We were able to address all of the hacks and get on the right track going forward. With my unsolicited comment, I was able to surface a lot of what was being unsaid (remember, techies at times of stress can tend to clam up). By co-locating the entire team for one week (on very short notice - travel arrangements were made the next day), our tech lead was able to address the problem straight on and bond our team stronger. I can personally attest that my best coding sessions have all been pairing in person. Face to face is still the best collaboration mechanism out there. Even the best Campfire session is just a transcript of the human drama.