With the spread of COVID-19 as a declared pandemic across the world, the transitioning to working remotely, or what is classically called ‘work from home’ (WFH) has equally spread fast. Many organisations have realised that their staff can continue working from home without interruption, therefore minimising the impact of the virus lockdowns.
However, working remotely has it’s own challenges that need to be overcome in order to stay productive.
Herewith an Infographic guide, with compliments from Wrike, that covers everything you need from room temperature to ergonomic chairs, from what you play on your headphones to what you put in your belly. We trust that this will help you to stay super productive!
When you find yourself leading a virtual team, you will often need to take on the role as team coach to facilitate optimum performance. In order to do so properly, a good place to start, is with your understanding of what a team really is.
Much about teams and team performance can be learnt from the authors Katzenbach and Smith. No wonder that their definition of Teams became an industry standard over the years:
“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”
Katzenbach and Smith
In an article: “Organisational Culture” published in the Harvard Business Review, Katzenbach and Smith stated that teamwork represents a set of values that encourage listening and responding constructively to views expressed by others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, providing support, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others. They explain further that teams require both individual and mutual accountability. Teams rely on group discussion, debate, and decision, sharing information and best practice performance standards. Teams produce work-products through the joint contributions of their members. This is what makes possible performance levels greater than the sum of all the individual members, also stated as a team is more than the sum of its parts.
A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable. The essence of a team is common commitment towards a purpose in which team members can believe. The attainability of specific goals helps teams maintain their focus on getting results. The combination of purpose and specific goals is essential to performance. In essence, goals help a team keep track of progress, while a broader purpose supplies meaning and emotional energy.
In working with teams Katzenbach and Smith have found when a team shares a common purpose, goals, and approach, mutual accountability grows as a natural counterpart. When people work together toward a common objective, trust and commitment follow. Consequently, teams enjoying a strong common purpose and approach inevitably hold themselves responsible, both as individuals and as a team, for the team’s performance. This sense of mutual accountability also produces the rich rewards of mutual achievement in which all members share.
Project Lead as a Team Coach
Having the responsibility to facilitate positive change in teams you lead, whether in person or virtually, you have much neuro-science research to back you up according to the Neuro Leadership Institute. How can this help you to coach teams for optimum performance?
Well, virtual team members have differing skill sets and depending on their background also different levels of experience to consider. It is important for teams to have the right mix of skills including technical or functional expertise, problem-solving, decision-making skills and interpersonal skills. Interpersonal skills include risk taking, helpful criticism, objectivity, active listening, giving the benefit of the doubt, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others.
As a team coach it is good to be cognizant of behavioral differences in the virtual team. There are a variety of individuals with an even bigger variety of personalities. Having a basic understanding of personality types, will help you tailor your communication plans. Remember also that virtual team members may be at different levels of engagement and motivation.
Christopher Samsa from the Neuro Leadership Institute continues to explain important factors to consider as part of brain based team coaching. They are:
Collective intelligence
Collective emotion
Collective performance
Collective Intelligence
Collective intelligence is the prediction of the group’s ability to perform well. There is a correlation to how group members are social sensitive of one another, if there’s an equal distribution of conversation turn-taking and even the proportion of females in the group that can increase the collective intelligence.
As a team leader and coach you can help the team to be more meta-cognitive, to be mindful about planning out their work, tracking their progress, and assessing their own knowledge.
Collective Emotion
Collective emotion refers to the ability to empathise and to cooperate with one another. Some factors that come into play are:
Social regulation – a person’s ability to be explicit about their emotions. For example, if you join a meeting just after receiving some bad news, instead of trying to keep it to yourself, mention it and put it out in the open.
Mirror neurons – when we perceive some-one in pain, sadness, it fires the same emotions in your brain.
Social context, if are you friend or foe. A perceived similarity will help, perceived closeness will improve commitment. If one member shows progress, the whole team will feel they are making progress especially if they have a common purpose and shared goals. Work towards having positive connections and similarity in groups.
Help the team stay cool under pressure by managing expectations and helping other reappraise.
Collective Performance
Collective performance is about understanding the team behaviour at systemic and habitual level. Look at the culture of the team and figure out if they are generally positive. If they are connected to each other and are they contributing to team performance.
A common tool that many of you are familiar with, is the Tuckman model for teams. The Forming Storming Norming Performing theory is an elegant and helpful explanation of team development and behavior.
Principles for results coaching
The principles to use in order to coach for results are:
Self-directed learning – let people discover, find answers themselves, learning something new, making new connections.
Solutions focus – look forward into how to solve problems, instead of only discussing problems and issues.
Positive feedback to the team and individual members often.
Stretch – provide stretch goals that are not always easy to attain.
Structure – be consistent with the agenda and format of discussion, it will help to make people feel safe.
Model for Coaching
In their research, the Neuro Leadership Institute shares another very useful Model, called the Co-create Model. Based on this model you need to remember the following when coaching teams for optimum performance.
Source: Neuro Leadership Institute
Spend enough time in the Forming stage to establish a common purpose for the team based on the shared vision.
Agree on the performance objectives based on the common purpose; they could be business objectives or project milestones and deliverables.
Identify the gap between where the team is now, versus performance objectives and the common purpose. This is where you need to take into account the budget available, the project timeline, the team’s experience, skills and emotional status.
Explore all possible ways of bridging the gap. This is where the team can be stretched.
The Team decides on the best way forward and allocates who does what. Allow the team to discuss how they will manage progress and accountability and when they will meet next to review the actions.
The Harvard Business Review: Organisational Culture, 1993. By Jon R. Katzenbach, founder and co-leader of the Katzenbach Center at Booz & Company, which focuses on cultural and leadership joint research within client situations, author of “The Wisdom of Teams” and “Leading Outside the Lines”. And Douglas K. Smith, Chairman of the Board of ‘The Rapid Results Institute’ and author of “On Value and Values: Thinking Differently About We In An Age Of Me”.
Neuro Leadership Institute: Managing your team virtually, April 2020
The remote work employment model started from an idea of motivating the employees towards higher productivity levels by granting them many conveniences otherwise unavailable in their office spaces. This model proved to be very successful, with many industries and branches putting in great efforts to embrace it fully.
Remote work, as previously mentioned, gives the people full flexibility with time management, amount of work input, work hours, etc. If your job starts early in the morning at a distant office, with remote working, you’re cutting off the time needed for transport while saving money for the gas.
As the day progresses, you choose what time of the day is the most productive for you to work, when you want to have a lunch, what part of the day you want to commit to yourself and your loved ones, etc. Around 99% of surveyed Americans employed in all branches stated they want to work this way for the rest of their professional careers.
Several industries are leaders in converting their work from the 9-to-5 model to remote work. Some of these industries and branches include information technologies (IT), transport and freight forwarding management, media, design, finance, and legislation, with many more joining every year. With this many people leaving office spaces, employers cut office costs enormously.
Most importantly, this change in the working model vastly raised productivity levels in workers. As the employees start spending more time with their loved ones and taking care of themselves, the surveyed ones reported up to 82% less stress and anxiety posterior to their office days, with a better sleeping, eating, and exercising schedule, improving their overall wellness and health.
Goremotely.net has put together an infographic to inform you about remote work and everything it provides.
Enjoy, there’s a lot of information that could be useful for potential ventures into remote work. Let us know what you think in the comments!
Successful virtual project management depends on superior teamwork. Positive interpersonal relations are a must. This is an essential precondition for trust to develop. Trust joins people together virtually by bridging time, geography, and culture. However, according to a large, growing body of research, establishing trust on a virtual project team is highly challenging. There’s little time or incentive for acclimatizing. There’s also almost immediate pressure to produce results. During the storming phase, unresolved interpersonal challenges cause significant disruption. Deadlines are missed and budgets run over. Without trust, too often team members disband remaining “virtual strangers”.
“Virtual teams need special leadership … trust is essential … teambuilding exercises pay off, and … unless a combination of high-tech and high-touch is maintained, performance peaks are often followed by declines in the productivity.” (Creativity in Virtual Work: Effects of Demographic Differences: L.L. Martins, C.E. Shalley, 2009)
Problematically, 80% of distributed or virtual teams receive little or no training. Research shows a direct link between the “soft” qualities of a team, it’s “team-ness”, and the quality of software produced. Only 39% of software projects are completed successfully. 43% result in late delivery, cost overruns, and/or reduced features and functions. 18% fail. In one global survey, 75% of developers believed their own projects would fail.
Case Study of a Virtual Software Development Team
Here’s the story of how one distributed Agile software development team proactively addressed the classic challenge of establishing trust at the start of their project during the forming stage.
Team Profile
The software development team, consisting of 9 team members, is cross-functional and cross-cultural in composition. The team lead, Dr. Faisal Nasser Shehab, is an Enterprise Architect and Associate Professor as well author of “Emergent Leader Detection and Identification in A Virtual Team Environment: A Grounded Theory Study” The team is building a “Virtual Team Business Management System” based on Dr. Shehab’s research. Their mission is to provide organizations with “the knowledge, the framework, and services required to implement a robust and a mature virtual team management capability”.
Context
Last Spring, Dr. Shehab learned about a resource called the Prelude Suite™ that supposedly helps accelerate virtual team trust during formation. Aware of how disruptive and costly interpersonal challenges can be on distributed teams, he wanted his new team to start on the best possible note. After seeing the online demo and meeting the prospective resource facilitator, Dr. Shehab scheduled the Prelude Suite™ for the team.
Process
The team met together online for three sessions of about 90 minutes each. This process was guided by a trained facilitator. With each step, the team moved from a “me” to a “we” orientation. Throughout they used Self-Assessment, Self-Expression, Co-Creation, and Dialogue.
Each step features a set of exercises, team-based and synchronous as well as individual and asynchronous. Everyone meets together virtually in a private online platform called a Sandbox using rich media (Video, VOIP, Chat, Interactive Whiteboard). The following outline the team’s step by step experience.
Session 1: Tune Up
Exercise: iStar Self-Assessment™
Prior to their first session, teammates completed an online self-assessment called iStar™. Their resulting iStar Badges are automatically uploaded to the Team Constellation page. During this session, everyone produced their individual iStar Story™. This is brief, holistic positive thumbnail quickly written and easily shared round robin. This is a rapid yet meaningful way to build new awareness and understanding of team diversity and shared strengths.
They also reviewed their unique Elemental Table. This reflects the team’s overall make-up in terms of a range of soft skills. Teams are able to quickly, easily understand where change may be needed. Teamnates also receive an individual digital StarSmart Journal™, which allows for ongoing personal and professional reflection, goal setting, and measuring progress.
Exercise: Team Elemental Table™
Session 2: Practice
In their second online session, teammates practiced key soft skills together synchronously through a co-creation challenge using an online interactive whiteboard. First, they each create a personal iTag™ to symbolize their unique quintessential qualities and strengths. Everyone then shares their tags with each other. In the second exercise the team as a whole is then given a challenge to co-create a powerful digital symbol of their team spirit and excellence called a weTag.
Exercise 1: iTag™
Exercise 2: weTag™
Session 3: Bridge
In their third and final session, teammates went through two exercises. The Team Alignment Plan™ enabled them to quickly, easily bridge their shared soft skill inventory with project work goals, tasks, and deliverables. This is final check for the team to assess if they have what they need to move back into operating mode. Their final team exercise produced a robust Team Charter reflecting the insights gained and lessons learned about themselves as a team.
Exercise 1: Team Alignment Plan (T.A.P.)
Team Member Feedback
“As a team leader, the Prelude Suite™ provided me with valuable insights into our team’s diverse strengths. This helped us to properly align team members with the tasks at hand. It also helped us to clarify our focus while affirming we’re on the right track. It was wonderful seeing how everyone came together online as a team. The weTag we co-created was a dynamic, truly creative way to spark team spirit and identity. I really enjoyed the simplicity of the interface and the process.” Dr. Faisal Shehab
“The Prelude Suite™ is the most unique team facilitation approach that I have encountered as a student and co-worker through my life time experience. This resource provides the most important thing for successful team formation – transparency. Moreover, it shows your own weaknesses as well as areas of strength. I highly suggest the Prelude Suite to any team that wants go through a proper facilitation and build transparent relationships in fast and smooth manner.” Georgy, Khetsuriani
“The Prelude Suite™ user experience model is fun and simple yet innovative and challenging. I rediscovered a great deal about myself and others in the team. The most important feature is not the technology we don’t see or the user interface but the ability of the program to create a shared sense of community.” Ferrel Son
“The ITag™ exercise was illuminating. It helped boost my confidence and belief in myself. Team exercise: helped with team bonding and awareness of traits of team members. Overall: first time with kind of experience. The collaborative approach makes it authentic and I will recommend the Prelude Suite™ to others.” Ifeoma Okafo-Eke
Outcomes and Benefits
These outcomes and benefits may be achieved by any virtual project team committed to a truly successful delivery. This simply requires three 2-hour online sessions, high-speed Internet connection, video, headphones and mike. Pricing, available upon request, is competitive and flexible.
About the Author: Howard B. Esbin PhD is the creator of the Prelude Suite™, training and certification that is offered via an online interactive course involving theory and practice. The unique learning design is informed by Howard’s academic graduate research and extensive management experience in international development, philanthropy, and the private sector.
The International Labour Organization, Education Canada, and UNESCO have published his writing. Click here for his chapter on virtual team creativityin Strategic Management & Leadership for Systems Development in Virtual Spaces.
With more companies expanding globally, the trend to work on projects with virtual team members who are remote workers, is growing. I have now worked on a project spanning three countries across three different time-zones. Despite having cloud-based tools for project plan sharing and logging test defects, the latest communication technology like Skype for Business in addition to everyday emails, it has been severely challenging.
Challenges in handling virtual teams
Project managers face a variety of challenges when handling virtual team members who work from different locations, who are permanent or freelance workers, who come from different backgrounds and cultures. It can be difficult to schedule a meeting with all members at a fixed time, especially with a 8 hour time-zone difference as was the case with my project. It impacts the decision-making process negatively.
It can be difficult to communicate a message correctly to remote workers. They may fail to understand the context or cannot grasp specific issues related to a project. They don’t always appreciate the consequences if they fail to have a same-day turnaround, that it can cause 2-3 days delays.
A risk I had to manage through-out was to keep team members aligned in terms of the project schedule, the latest decisions, new project baselines etc. Due to the fact that one team worked during another team’s night time and visa versa, it meant that any requests sent via email had to be very clear in terms of context and what was expected. If the receiver of the email had a question, they usually had to wait another day to receive an answer. This caused repeated delays in getting multiple requests fulfilled. As the project progressed, and especially during testing when team members in different time zones had to work together, we had to resort to different work hours to create more of an overlap between team members and to enhance the communication process and response times to issues and defects.
How to manage remote teams effectively
It’s important for project managers to effectively manage both remote and on-site team members to achieve project success. Have a look at the infographic below from Wrike Software, providing a checklist for managing Virtual Teams.
Have you ever worked with virtual teams as a project manager? (Click for related articles) From my experience of working with virtual teams who are distributed and working remotely, we have to overcome the communication challenges by using tools like tele-conference facilities, instant messaging and email.
This article is Part 2 of a discussion of research findings about the challenges virtual teams face, communication preferences and recommendations. It is based on an online survey done by Software Advice’s Noel Radley (*) with professionals who regularly work on virtual projects, and who had an opinion on the challenges of virtual projects.
Virtual Team Members’ Preferred Communication Channels
Preferred Communication Tools
The survey confirmed recent reports that email usage has not yet declined to the extent some predicted. To the contrary, 41 percent of virtual team members surveyed selected email as their most preferred communication tool. However, it was also stated as problematic by some (23%) due to long email threads.
After email, phone was selected by 36 percent of those surveyed as their preferred communication channel perhaps due to the benefits of a “real-time” collaboration tool. Surprisingly, tools designed for online collaboration were selected by the fewest respondents. Only 12 percent selected virtual conferencing as a preferred communication channel, and discussion forums and chat rooms were selected by just 10 percent.
Miller recommends instant messaging (or chat) as one of the more effective real-time communication channels for virtual teams. It’s a much better way to collaborate on something that’s in active progress, or to reach a final decision on an issue. It can also be used to link directly to Web pages or relevant documents that may come up in conversation.
When facing virtual workers who prefer traditional communication channels, managers may need to push adoption in order to help bridge the gap between the tools team members are accustomed to and the tools that help them collaborate most effectively.
Communication Channel Preferences by Age
To add further complexity, our findings revealed a shift in communication preference based on age. Generally speaking, the preference for digital mediums (such as email) decreased with age, while the preference for analog communications (namely, phone) increased with age.
Demographics: Communication Channel Preferences by Age
Email preferences were greatest among the youngest team members surveyed: nearly half of those aged 25-34 had a top preference for email (46 percent). This preference was slightly less for 35- to 44-year-olds (41 percent), and lower still for 45- to 54-year-olds (36 percent).
The greatest preference for phone was held by team members in the 45-54 age category, at 41 percent, while 34 percent of the 35-44 age bracket and 29 percent of the 25-34 age bracket preferred communicating by phone.
These trends change when it comes to video conferencing and discussion forums and chat. The 35-44 group is less likely to prefer virtual conferencing and more likely to prefer chats and discussion forums than both the older and the younger age groups.
These differences may mean that companies with trans-generational teams run into subtle misunderstandings, as diverse communication preferences result in people not answering the phone or not replying to emails. To keep distributed teams on the same page, Miller recommends a “multifaceted” approach.
Recommended Solutions
In addition to using instant messaging, also consider mailing lists, a project wiki, and a project blog. A conference or face-to-face sessions where active project members are invited to get together is also a good solution. This works well at the beginning and end of projects.
Successful virtual projects, therefore, require more than just selecting the right communication tool for your team to use. Managers and project leaders for remote teams should supplement communication channels with engaging online information, collaborative environments and even perhaps in-person events to ensure that all team members stay in the loop.
Conclusions
Effectively managed communication will be more of a solution than a problem for a variety of issues, such as task management and team members with commitments to multiple projects.
Moreover, a multi-pronged approach, including instant messaging, agile project management tools, blogging and wikis, should be used to engage teams and foster effective communication. When confronting teams with diverse preferences, a comprehensive communication strategy involving a variety of tools and techniques can help solidify team connections, as well as improve project visibility.
According to Miller it’s important to keep enthusiasm and engagement high, and to make sure that team members’ direct managers or sponsors have easy access to meaningful information showing the value of the work and the overall return.
Have you ever worked with virtual teams as a project manager? (Click for related articles) From my experience of working with virtual teams who are distributed and working remotely, we have to overcome the communication challenges by using tools like tele-conference facilities, instant messaging and email.
This article is discussing research findings about the challenges virtual teams face. It is based on an online survey done by Noel Radley of Software Advice (a company that researches and evaluates project management technology) with professionals who regularly work on virtual projects, and who had an opinion on the challenges of virtual projects. It is divided into two parts. Part 1 is about the main challenges virtual teams are faced with and task management as a top threat to effective project communication.
Top challenges
Thirty-eight percent of team members said communication was difficult on virtual projects, making it the top-cited challenge.
Poor communication regarding task management was perceived as the top threat to project success, selected by 41 percent of team members.
Email was a preferred channel for 41 percent of respondents—though 23 percent noted long email threads were a communication pitfall.
The lack of the right software or technology was given by 33 percent.
A lack of productivity was seen as the biggest threat to project success by 28 percent, since many team members believed those who work remotely are held less accountable.
In addition to communication challenges there are also others based on feedback from Matthew Miller, a project leader at the open source technology company Red Hat who has worked with thousands of contributors on open-source operating system called the Fedora Project.
A deeper challenge of most remote teams is the fact that members are typically “drawn from other teams,” and thus have only partial responsibility to their virtual projects. Miller said that typically there’s more work that needs to be done than time to do it, and often commitments to virtual teams are the easiest to break. In view of the productivity challenge stated above, the issue may simply be that they have other commitments that take priority. Managers may need to consider analyzing the scope of a team’s commitments when assigning tasks or attempting to pinpoint problems.
Virtual Team Members’ Top Project-Communication Problems
Task Management
When analysing the top communication-related challenges of remote projects it was found that approximately 41 percent of respondents answered that the failure to clearly assign and update tasks, was the top threat to effective project communication.
For 23 percent of respondents, long email threads were the top obstacle to communicating effectively. For others (19 percent), they most experienced trouble scheduling virtual meetings and conference calls. And 16 percent of virtual team members experienced confusion about which communication channel—phone, chat or email—to turn to for which tasks.
Many turn to software solutions for task management. Software Advice found in a recent report that 52 percent of project management software buyers were seeking a task management application.
Although tools are important, Miller emphasized the importance of having established processes in place for your team, like regular group interactions for shared tasks for example.
Being the project manager of a virtual team can be quite a challenge. The normal rules for teams who are co-located do not apply to virtual teams. With the advances in technology it has become easier to organise and manage dispersed groups of people. This post will focus on the lessons to apply to successfully manage virtual teams.
Some advantages of virtual teams are that companies can hire the best talent regardless of their location. Similarly for projects, you may hire the best resources for the relevant roles on the project team to ensure you have the most suitable people to perform the project tasks.
One problem is that companies tend to treat their virtual teams the same way than they treat teams who share a location. Leaders and project managers need to realize that different guidelines and best practices would apply to virtual teams.
From a study done by OnPoint Consulting, it was found that virtual teams have common pitfalls:
Lack of clear goals, direction, or priorities due to communication challenges with dispersed teams.
Lack of clear roles among team members. It is very important for virtual team members to understand their individual roles and how their work impacts other team members.
Lack of cooperation and trust due to lack of face-to-face contact.
Lack of engagement. Virtual teams can be more distracted and there is a lack of dynamic face-to-face interaction.
In the book: “Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance” (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley), there are 6 lessons for creating successful virtual teams:
1. Focus on people issues. It is easier to succeed when the whole team is engaged and communicating
2. No trust, no team. Sometimes in virtual teams trust is more at a task level than at an interpersonal level. It is important that the team meets face-to-face early in the team’s formation.
3. Soft skills are essential. Virtual teams who have been through team building and interpersonal skill development perform better.
4. Watch out for performance peaks. Many virtual teams face a performance peak after about 12 months. For virtual project teams this could be after shorter periods like 6 months. After that performance tends to decline.
5. Create a high-touch environment. Virtual team members need to meet at least once a year and for project teams regularly throughout the phases of the project.
6. Virtual team leadership matters. Leadership is the factor most important to the success of virtual teams. Team leaders in a virtual environment must be especially sensitive to interpersonal communication and cultural factors.
Better planning around the formation and management of virtual team can have a major impact on virtual team success. In a nutshell, these are some pointers to assist you with managing successful virtual teams who perform as expected and who can achieve synergy despite being physically apart. If you have experience working with virtual teams, please share some of your lessons in the comments section.
In the next post I am going to share some lessons that I have learnt from working with virtual teams and what the important factors are to manage consistently.
Following on from the previous post about useful tools for working with virtual teams, this post is about useful techniques to make working with virtual teams more efficient.
The techniques for working with virtual teams are less tangible than the tools. Now, let’s look at some techniques that are useful when working with virtual teams.
Techniques for working with virtual teams
Techniques are the application of knowledge, tools and procedures that enable and achieve maximum efficiency from virtual teams.
Competencies and skill – As with any other team the structure of the virtual team should factor in competency and skills that are required to accomplish the project. Competencies and skill should be balanced to ensure that there is no polarization.
Feedback – Since the team seldom meets face to face, there is a possibility that some of the team members become passive with respect to feedback. As a project manager working with virtual teams it is important to encourage and provide timely feedback. Feedback also helps uncover hidden risks and opportunities of improvement. Feedback should always have a follow-up action plan associated with it.
Roles and responsibility clarification – Lack of clarity in roles and responsibilities can creep up very quickly in a virtual team environment. Establishing ownership and accountability is critical to avoid conflict and ensure the team’s effectiveness. Implementing a project responsibility assignment matrix and publishing it can help mitigate this risk.
Multicultural sensitivity – Virtual teams are usually spread across geographies. Team members may come from diverse social and cultural backgrounds. In such cases it is helpful to understand these uniqueness and values beforehand and make the teams aware of it to avoid potential disasters. Casual socialization meetings like during a project kick-off are excellent times to initiate such awareness.
Do you have experience working with virtual teams? What are the tools and techniques that you have found most effective? Got feedback? Please comment and share it here…
The next post on “Working with virtual teams” will focus on the critical success factors that determine the effectiveness of virtual teams.
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About the author: Sam Palani, (PMP),is a Senior IT Project / Program Manager and Technology Management consultant. He specializes in managing enterprise projects and technology initiatives. Sam blogs about his experiences in project management, technology and other things that help you be more effective on his blog www.aroundthechaos.com. You can also follow him on twitter: @samx18
Working with virtual teams is a challenge that many project managers are facing today. Virtual teams are individuals or groups who dispersed geographically, but work together to accomplish a common goal or a project scope. These teams may have limited or no face to face interactions. Though the team members may be physically located in different geographies, they share a common goal and have roles and responsibilities defined like any other project teams.
Working with virtual teams is rapidly becoming a standard and is no longer an exception. Although the cost benefits of having virtual teams is a primary factor and business justification for working with virtual teams, knowledge availability is also a key driver. Sometimes the required knowledge and skills might not be available locally or at one place. In such cases a virtual team might be a very good option. Similarly, virtual teams are also created to address time zone related requirements i.e. where round the clock work is required. Then work is shared between teams located in different time zones.
Tools (Technology) for Virtual Teams
Let’s look at some tools that facilitate working with virtual teams. Useful tools include software, hardware and the underlying technology that supports or enables them. The tools also include the innovations in network infrastructure which is the backbone for virtual teams enabling organization to operate in a true border-less ecosystem. These tools are primarily technology driven and facilitate collaboration and communication between teams. Collaboration Tools
Collaboration tools enable virtual teams to accomplish the common goal. Virtual teams need to interact in the same manner as
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