We have observed that many work in parallel across time zones, organizations experience dramatic an organization can accomplish benefits after successfully more in the same time than co- deploying one of these four located teams that are limited by location-independent agile models. an eight-hour work day. Leveraging For example: 24-hour, five- days-a-week development coverage with •Location-independence makes an significantly distributed (Model 3) enterprise more agile. Using the teams across U.S., India, and minimally distributed model Mexico, a large financial company (Model 2), a large U.S. retailer was able to cut the time it took to with a delivery team of 1,500+ introduce new products to market members in India reduced its IT by 78%. operations costs by 20% and improved end customer • By sharing skills across multiple satisfaction by 40% in 18 months. teams in different locations, These benefits resulted from a companies can accelerate work combination of steps, including without requiring business experts role rationalization, product re- to participate in daily decision architecting, and the application of making. One U.S. retailer was able DevOps practices for automating to complete an integrated channel newproduct deployment. delivery project in just 11 months (DevOps is an approach to IT with fully distributed teams (Model software development and 4) by leveraging the domain skills operations that emphasizes of product specialists in many automation to speed up software locations. While product owners still building, testing, and installation.) have to make prioritization decisions and confirm product •Location-independence makes an acceptance, they can delegate enterprise more productive. By significant amounts of knowledge using all 24 hours available to work involved in product execute development.