The Complexity of Virtual Teams
Posted by Brad Egeland
I’ve made no secret of my promotion of remote project management and virtual teams running project engagements. There are definite upsides to the remote project manager and the virtual team situation. When project resources are dispersed – as they often are these days – running the project remotely definitely promotes many green project management practices. It also allows for quick project action and decision-making, and can greatly reduce the cost of the overall project.
That said, running a project virtually is not without its own complexities. I’d like to dig a little deeper into these here for this article.
It is easy to characterize the types of virtual teams using the same categories as traditional teams. They can, however, be much more complex. The two primary categories of variables that make virtual teams more complex are: (1) they cross boundaries related to time, distance (geography), and organization; and (2) they communicate (share information) and collaborate (work together to produce a product) using technology.
As the distance between team members increases, so do differences in time zones. This can sometimes make communicating and collaborating at the same time problematic. Working across national boundaries complicates the situation because differences in language, culture, and access to technology impede effective communication and collaboration.
As members from different organizations join a virtual team, integration of work methods, organizational cultures, technologies, and goals make communication and collaboration more difficult. Partners and suppliers often have conflicting goals and organizational cultures. This even holds true when team members come from different functional areas within the same organization. For example, people from functional areas, such as marketing and human resources, frequently operate with a different set of processes than those from more technical areas, such as engineering and information systems.
Finally, complexity is increased by the number of different choices for team interaction. Ten years ago, traditional project teams typically interacted face-to-face most of the time. Virtual team interactions, however, are almost always mediated by electronic communication and collaboration technology. Interactions fall into four categories:
- Same time, same place (like face-to-face meetings)
- Same time, different place (such as an audio conference or video conference)
- Different time, same place (such as using a chat room or a shared file on a network)
- Different time, different place (such as exchange of e-mail or voice mail messages).
The selection of technology and choice of interaction vary according to factors such as the type of team, the nature of its task, and the members’ access to technology.
I’m still a strong proponent of virtual teams, remote project management, and the savings – both cost and time – that can be realized with this model. I understand, however, that we need to not go into this type of project management model with blinders on. We need to understand the limitations and possibilities for risk that it can invite into the engagement. These issues can be overcome, but we need to be aware that they exist.
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Tags: complex, project manager, remote project management, Resources, Technology, virtual team, virtual teams
5 Comments to “The Complexity of Virtual Teams”
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Elena says:
It is also true that time difference can be leveraged favorably by essentially creating a 24-hour operation.
Penny says:
Enjoyed your article and agree with the points you raise. For more, you and your readers might find the current Virtual Working Summit useful. Visit http://www.virtualworkingsummit.com
Jean Binder is speaking today.
Dr. Edward Wallington says:
Hi Brad,
As always a thought provoking post.
Having worked with a virtual team spread over distance, time, country, culture, language and 3 different companies, I can recognise and agree with many of your points.
My key comment would be that virtual/remote working can work very well, as the programme I ran demonstrates, but it must not be forgotten that a lot of effort (and time) is required to make the relationships and projects work smoothly – and this is not always visible by someone looking in on the projects.
I would say that virtual working certainly has it’s place, as long as the project manager (an parent organisation) is prepared to make the effort and commitment – in my view the benefits far out way the effort, and projects will be all the better for it!
Best regards,
Ed
Joe Garde says:
we are utilising a collaborative platform to gather people and debate / discuss issues of the day in relation to Ireland. As Dr. Wallington mentions it requires a lot of effort and time, I must agree with his statement. We also obviously record the discussion server side, we often have 25 or 30 people attending “live” and this is how we get around the time zone element (be recording the event). Good points made. thanks for posting.
Tony G. says:
Great points, Brad.
I think the perfect platform has yet to be developed. As it stands now, you need to use a combination of software tools to bridge the gap. We use basecamphq for project management, skype for chatting, and recently developed http://www.Peerdrum.com to monitor remote team member’s progress throughout the day.
There’s no denying that a distributed workforce is the the future and the sooner we get our arms around the processes, the better off we’ll all be.