CURRENT TRENDS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

April ReedDePaul UniversityMBAA Conferenceareed7@cti.depaul.edu

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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)

E-mail

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