Our company's IT developers work almost exclusively from home. We use the Team Foundation Server Scrum tools and Lync to communicate over the network. Anyone can see the scrum board or burn down chart because it is located in TFS. I can communicate, camera to camera, with anyone one or group on the development team. I admit it is not as easy to collaborate as it was going to someones desk but if a team member is busy I can send them an email of my ideas for the eventual discussion. Sometimes writing down my idea has merit because when I have to explain it I truely have to understand it and can see some pitfalls already.

I live in the Seattle area and there is the Puget Sound between me and all that work in the Seattle. My commute to Seattle is 4 hours a day and Redmond and Bellevue is 5 hours because of the traffic. One company I worked out a 10 hour work day so I only had to commute Mon - Thurs and even then I got to work at 5:00 am so I could leave by 3:30 and miss most of the traffic.

Instead of sitting in traffic I go to the gym, coach little league, play golf, work in the yard. And if inspiration hits me while I am on the eliptical thinking about that bug I could not resolve I can always log in when I get home and see if it works.