Re: "it is hard to be agile when most of the coders are based in another time zone"
yes, I used to have to contend with this, ask an email question of the devs, get a crappy half answer the next day. You follow it up with clarifications and extra questions, get an answer the day after that may, if you're lucky, have what you need in it.
And so on, it can take up to a week, with much prompting, to get an answer to a question that should take 5 minutes.