Wrote this up but it didn't seem to post before...
Treat the remote workers as if they are local deaf workers. How would you accommodate a deaf co-worker? You'd write down a hell of a lot more stuff in emails, documents, wikis, blogs, etc. There's huge value in written documentation - and keeping it up to date - that goes well beyond the immediate "get stuff done ASAP!" needs. Every time a new person comes in to the team, they have a record of documentation, mailing list archives to sort through, revisions of docs to learn from, etc.
Somehow all the same tools and techniques that make collaborative development possible and popular in the open source world tend to get shunned in corporate cubes.
Treat the remote workers as if they are local deaf workers. How would you accommodate a deaf co-worker? You'd write down a hell of a lot more stuff in emails, documents, wikis, blogs, etc. There's huge value in written documentation - and keeping it up to date - that goes well beyond the immediate "get stuff done ASAP!" needs. Every time a new person comes in to the team, they have a record of documentation, mailing list archives to sort through, revisions of docs to learn from, etc.
Somehow all the same tools and techniques that make collaborative development possible and popular in the open source world tend to get shunned in corporate cubes.