The 6th Principle.

"Face-to-face conversation is the best form of communication (co-location)" 
– That is the sixthof 12 principles upon which the agile manifesto was proclaimed. 

We, the Agilists of Eastern Iowa Agile, a meet up group, gather regularly in Cedar Rapids. During the last meeting at Kirkwood College, we had Richard Lawrence of ‘Agile for all’ (http://www.agileforall.com/ ) delivering for us.
It was an interesting workshop with no presentations. The entire gathering took part in opining and realizing the values of agile principle. As an interesting exercise, we were asked to pick most favorite 3 from 12 Agile principles. And we were discussing the pros and cons. But later at the end, we noticed for everyone’s surprise, no one had picked the 7th principle. Then Rick concluded that this should be actually obsolete today and the communication media should have replaced the need to meet face to face. A ground breaking manifesto of 2001 becomes obsolete in 2014.

But, I think a Taskboard full of activities should certainly make a difference in the mid set of teams to bring a healthy competition and would help the team members to understand their contribution in overall delivery, no matter they meet face to face or not. My team is well distributed across the US geography and we ensure that Task board is shared by all of us in scrum, every day. 

Because the HR theories of T-groups are still there in books and are found fruitful. So, the truth should be standing tall somewhere between Yes and No. May be…