Author By Krishnan Ramanujam President, Business and Technology Services, Tata Consultancy Services When the signatories of the ‘Agile Manifesto’ spelled out a new way to develop software in 2001, the sixth of their 12 guiding principles was having agile team members work in the same room. “The most ecient and effective method of conveying information to, and within, a development team is 62 face-to-face conversation,” the authors said. But 17 years later, this is not only impractical for many initiatives, it has become a big liability. Letting agile team members work from different locations is now a must. And it is one that a growing number of companies are proving to be both paramount and possible. What other companies have found is that having agile team members operate from different sites gives them three advantages in digital transformation: skills, knowledge, and speed. In this article, I will explain why location-independent agile teams can beat agile teams whose members occupy the same room, and thus why companies must be prepared to make their agile initiatives location-independent. 62 Agile Manifesto , Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto, accessed April 17, 2018, http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html