Move team members physically as close to each other as possible
Move team members physically as close to each other as possible. Be sure that people with outer roles are located close to the central roles. The information essential to a role is not all that is needed to do a good job. Contextual information is also important, but it is hard to define precisely what contextual information is important. When people are physically close together, HallwayChatter and other informal means pass this information, by ‘osmosis’, as it were.
In fact the informal nature of chatter in the hallway and round the coffee machine can be extremely valuable. Ideas can also pass between teams and between projects, to the benefit of both. This is a much-neglected approach to skills and knowledge transfer. Where remote working is necessary, it can be sensible to allow extra time whenever remote workers are brought in for meetings, in order that such informal chats can take place (for more on this see FaceToFaceBeforeWorkingRemotely).