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Oh how different experiences are.

I have been involved in projects small and large. Worked in co-located teams and distributed (locally and globally). Some products failed, others survived.

The driving force in projects that survived was the team's sincerity, manager's determination and combined experience in the domain.

Not timezones, not manager seniority and certainly not the mean square of shouting distance between all team members.

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I agree that team cohesion, manager skill, and domain experience are significantly more important factors to the success of a project than physical proximity. A bunch of random people dumped into the same room will not outperform an experienced remote team. But that is not sufficient evidence that proximity is not a contributing factor.

To be more explicit: all else being equal (i.e. similar cohesion, skill, experience), teams that work together in a dedicated room seem to outperform expectations compared to similar teams that are spread across an open office or working remotely.

(Personally I did not notice anything close to the "doubling of productivity" claimed in the paper above, but it was sufficient to be noticeable even with a small sample size.)

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