current trends in virtual teams
TRANSCRIPT
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OVERVIEW
What are virtual project teams?Driving forcesBenefitsA few emerging themes
virtual team performance
communication
virtual team composition
Conclusion
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What are Virtual Project Teams?
A virtual project team is a group of geographically dispersed people working together on a one-time unique effort.
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Impact of Driving Forces on Virtual Teams
Increased the usage of virtual teamsNew forces emergingExisting forces intensifying
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Top Driving Forces
High cost of business travel Security concerns with travel Outsourcing and offshoring Desire to have a “dream team” Need for cross-organizational interaction Need for diversity of ideas and experiences Increase in number of tools for communication
and collaboration Decrease in cost of tools
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Benefits
Is it possible that virtual teams are more productive than traditional teams?
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Virtual Team Performance
Virtual team characteristics leveraged to enhance team effectivenessFocused communicationRigorous planningOrganized meetings
“…our view of team virtuality challenges managers to consider how virtuality can be leveraged to enhance team effectiveness…” (Kirkman and Mathiew)
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Communication
Methods, processes and procedures people use to transfer info back and forth
“Virtual teams are comprised of group members who collaborate from different locations using communication technology” (Walther et al)
Virtual team members need to work with a variety of communication styles
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Communication tools
Low level of “media richness” (Malhotra & Majchrzak)
Conference calls
High level of “media richness”Videoconferencing
Web conferencing
“Virtual Workspaces”
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“Virtual Workspaces”Table 1: “Virtual Workspace” Features[9]
# Name of Feature Description of Feature
Electronic whiteboards Online whiteboards for posting short messages or bulletins
Collaborative document editors
Tools to allow editing of documents by multiple team members
Instant poll capabilities A tool to gauge member opinions on issues under discussion
Instant messaging Pop-up messaging tools for immediate access to team members
Calendars for joint scheduling Common team calendars showing team member availability
Project repository Common repository for sharing project documents
Discussion threads Any tool that enables threaded discussions, i.e. blogs, for conflict identification and resolution
Embedded links Links to referenced documents included in documents and discussion threads to facilitate easy retrieval of documents
Annotations to identify owners Located within documents identifying the owners of particular perspectives
Versioning and change tracking
A method to record and control changes to documents and easily identify current versions
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Virtual Team Composition
Need “assessment processes to determine suitability of team members” (Stevenson and McGrath)
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Team Composition…
“…globalization of project teams has increased demographic and cultural diversity, which can create obstacles to the smooth functioning of team processes, but also can provide benefits in creativity, innovation and problem-solving.” (Beise)
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Needs of Virtual Teams
Software tools and hardwareTraining and development in virtual
team processesTime to practice new processes
(Kirkman and Mathieu)
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Conclusion
Volume of recent literature on virtual teams is a clue to its degree of importance
Key to virtual team success is adapting to take advantage of virtual team benefits