Virtual Teams

A virtual team is defined as a group of individuals who work across time, location, and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology ⁽¹⁾. Examples of virtual teams include networked teams, parallel teams, project or product-development teams, work or production teams, service teams, management teams, and action teams.

Virtual teams can cut costs associated with team projects in several different ways. The cost of recede itself, associated costs such as lodging, meals, parking, onsite commuting, and the decrease in the loss of productivity associated with increased time away from other work assignments. Virtual teams can eliminate the need to save a dedicated project space, a luxury that most small companies cannot provide. Virtual teams are able to respond more quickly to business opportunities. Workers increasingly demand personal flexibility and technological sophistication. Virtual teams are also being used in higher education. With the increase in technology and globalization, virtual teams are to the current century what self-managed work teams were to the past ⁽²⁾.

One of the greatest factors in the success of a virtual team is building and keeping trust. Other factors include the existence of written goals, objectives, project specifications, and performance metrics. Team communication should be prioritized be the sender. Good access to technical training and information on how to work across cultures is essential. The team’s processes should be standard and agreed upon. Leaders should set high performance expectations and exhaust technology effectively. Deadlines should be set, especially in a product development type team structure. Members are required to have superior team participation skills; team membership is fluid, requiring team members to who can quickly assimilate into the team (the responsibility for assimilation is primarily with the new team member) ⁽¹⁾. There are 5 key strategies to the success of a virtual team. They include making the whole visible to everyone by using group photos, maps, and virtual characters that can be involved in a virtual meeting. Creating lines of sight is the second strategy. This involves creating reports, acknowledging who is present in team meetings, creating outlines for team involvement. The third strategy is to “catalyze rich conversations” (“dinner teleconference, rotate responsibility to facilitate discussion on non-routine topics on the Intranet, invite experts to engage with the group, etc.) ⁽⁴⁾. Finding ways to spotlight where interesting things are happening in order to amplify energy is the fourth strategy. Finally, the making of memorabilia such as blogs and other ways to track projects is key to their success.

There are many reasons why virtual teams fail. The fail because of lack of identity, fuzzy deliverables, no short term goals, out-of-synch communication, used role definitions, boring meetings, no real interdependence, and missing social life. Informal interactions occur much less frequently, with the result that members may feel more isolated. Without trust, the management of a virtual organization would be impossible. There are also a number of technological problems that present a barrier to a virtual team’s success. “Virtual teams require multimedia communications incorporating voice, data, text, and video. This infrastructure is not always available in certain areas or is often cost-prohibitive to the organization.” ⁽⁵⁾. Managers are do not have frequent access to employees to ensure that the work that needs to be done is completed. Finally, managing the logistics of communication alone can take a substantial amount of time.

Description and Evaluation of Conducted Research:

All resources accessed Online on Saturday, October 18, 2008.

Slides:

http://www.slideshare.net/jvbree/critical-success-factors-for-virtual-teams/

This is a presentation from 2001 about the success factors for virtual teams, based on interviews in 12 multinational organizations. The information was accurate, came from an unbiased, IT professional (http://ynno.blogspot.com/). The slideshow was very useful, but I needed much more information for the paper.

Videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=F_gG1Sk08QE

Coach Maria Elena Duron reviews the “whys” of having a virtual team and some things to consider before launching into creating a team. The information was accurate and reliable. The source was a business coach featured weekly on CBS. She is featured as an expert author on ezine articles. The information was only marginally useful, and I needed more information.

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=n1NyIBiYuFQ

This is a great short video on virtual teams. The information was only a short summary and not very useful. The author was not an expert.

http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=B40WNlMIxY4

Darlene Lee, VP of marketing & strategic initiatives for Experian Research Services speaks about her experience with GlobeTask. This was only a glimpse into a particular virtual team. The information was still not very useful, and I needed more for the paper.

Works Cited:

1)http://www.managementhelp.org/grp_skll/virtual/defntion.pdf

This was a pdf file featuring a short summary on the key points of virtual teams. It was taken from Free Management Library: Copyright 1997-2008, Authenticity Consulting, LLC. The credentials for the firm included two associates and a member with a PHD. The information was reliable, very informative and concise, and encompassed most of the aspects of the topic. I found the entire article useful.

2) http://iit.bloomu.edu/Spring2006_eBook_files/chapter10.htm#h10_1_2

Vince Basille discusses some ways in which virtual teams can be successful. Vince is a physical therapist and instructional technology graduate student at Bloomsburg University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. He has a special interest in the development of training for the public in the prevention of common health and physical discomfort problems. To date, he has developed training modules on home neck massage and osteoporosis prevention. In his physical therapy practice, Vince focuses on the treatment of headache and neck injure. The information was useful and accurate. I do not believe that it encompassed the entire story.

3) http://www.mountainplains.org/articles/2000/general/mpa6.htm

“Virtual Teams in the Classroom: A Case Study” Nancy E. Landrum Morehead State University College of Business, Management Department. This article was very informative and good.

Only a small portion of the information was useful. The facts definitely verified the claim.

4) http://www.socialtext.net/ctc/index.cgi? effective_virtual_teams

Top 10 reasons why virtual project teams fail and 5 key strategies for success. Created by Dara Gray Tynefield on Jun 8 8:02am. These were notes on a conference session. I considered this information safe because Larry Cannell( http://larry.cannell.org/AboutMe ) corraborated it. It was a very useful and helpful outline of some of the key points of virtual teams.

5) http://www.newfoundations.com/OrgTheory/Geisler721.html

“Virtual Teams” �2002 by Barbara Geisler The information was very useful, complete, and cited in an extensive bibliography. She verified the claim with facts and gave all the indispensable information for the topic.

In conclusion, a careful review of the resources has led me to produce a new outlook on teamwork that ensures that I will be a better virtual team member in the future. I will need this skill later in life because of changing corporation structures. As one article stated:

The bureaucratic and hierarchical structure of most organizations today was developed in an industrial era where people had to be in the same region to work together. The technology of today’s organizations permits the refiguring of our organizational structures in order to meet the swiftly changing demands of the business environment. Virtual teams and networks of teams offer new solutions to organization problems (Lipnack and Stamps, 1999). The network, rather than the pyramid, becomes the conceptual model for how people work together to effect the goals of an organization (Lipnack and Stamps, 1999). ⁽⁵⁾

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