Here, the team isn’t managing the backlog, the backlog is managing the team. In the first instance, the product team was too hands off, and in the second, too hands on. What can the product team and the scrum master change to reverse this runaway train?

In many teams, pair programming or co-working are a daily part of the environment. How do you work together though, if you don’t know how to reach people, or when they are available? 

When failure happens on a team, how quickly can they recover? That is our definition of success

The reality is that if we have our work environment and culture set up to be self-organizing and psychologically safe, then the location where the person is working is irrelevant. This is only an issue in a command and control environment which is neither self-organizing nor safe. However, I also stress to companies that remote work should not be an accident. It needs to be intentional and deliberate.

If you find that you or your teams are constantly working overtime to keep up with the demands of the project, take a long look at how it is being managed and what customer expectations have been set.