a new word: Dislocated

This week I am attending the 2011 Agile Alliance Conference in Salt Lake City, and so this seemed like a good opportunity to share my new word with you. I’m going to start referring to non-collocated teams as dislocated rather than non-collocated.

One of the principals of agile is the idea of co-location, that is, having teams work together where they can be face to face. From the Agile Manifesto 12 principals of agile:

The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.

There is an acknowledgement that the best way for teams to work and communicate is face to face, and that there is a hurdle that must be recognized when we are not able to work face to face, or when our working hours have limited overlap do to time-zone differences.

We often use the term non-collocated to refer to distributed teams, or to the degree that they are distributed. I’ve always felt that non-collocated was strange since it didn’t describe what the team was, but rather what they were not. Also, the term distributed doesn’t really convey the challenges that must be addressed and worked through when teams are highly dislocated.

What do you think? Does the term “dislocated team” make sense to you? Does it communicated that natural dysfunctions that often arise from dislocated teams if not addressed?

Photo Credit: (cc) John Scone