Technology as a Change Agent
Posted by Brad EgelandA major feature of information technology is the changes that IT brings. Those who speak of a revolution from technology are really talking about change. Business and economic conditions change all the time; a revolution is a discontinuity, an abrupt and dramatic series of changes in the natural evolution of economies. In the early days of technology, change was gradual and often not particularly significant. The advent of personal computers accelerated the pace of change, and when the Internet became available for profit-making activities around 1992, change became exponential and revolutionary…eventually bringing us to where we are today. To a great extent, any study of information technology is a study of change.
In what way can and does technology change the world around us? The impact of IT is broad and diverse; some of the changes it brings are profound. Information technology has demonstrated an ability to change or create the following:
Project management – Online collaborative tools bring diverse and virtual teams close together for productive and team-focused activities. Electronic communication, videoconferencing, web-based meetings, etc. of eliminated distance as a factor bring teams and the customer together on a moment’s notice.
Within organizations – Creating new procedures, workflows, workgroups, the knowledge base, products and services, and communications.
Organizational structure – Facilitating new reporting relationships, increased spans of control, local decision rights, supervision, the formation of divisions, geographic scope, and “virtual” organizations.
Interorganizational relations – Creating new customer-supplier relations, partnerships, and alliances.
The economy – Altering the nature of markets through electronic commerce, disintermediation, new forms of marketing and advertising, partnerships and alliances, the cost of transactions, and modes of governance in customer-supplier relationships.
Education – Enhancing “on campus” education through videoconferencing, e-mail, electronic meetings, groupware, and electronic guest lectures. Facilitating distance learning through online courses, e-mail, groupware, and videoconferencing. Providing access to vast amounts of reference material; facilitating collaborative projects independent of time zones and distance.
National development – Providing small companies with international presence and facilitating commerce.
Technology has been changing the way we live and do business our entire lives and the change pace has stepped up significantly in the last 15-20 years. As project managers, we try to not only use this technology to our customer’s advantage on new engagements but also to our own advantage as we bring our teams and customers closer together in terms of communication, collaboration and overall project strategizing.
We all use web meetings, video conferencing, teleconferencing, and collaborative tools. If there’s anything truly unique that you’ve done or utilized as a project manager in moving your projects forward or bringing your team together, please share it here by commenting.
3 More Tips for Working with Virtual Teams
Posted by ElizabethYesterday I looked at the roles that a clear project vision, excellent communication, motivational strategies and recognising individual differences have on successfully managing a virtual team. To recap, a virtual team is one where not all the team members are based in the same location: a non-collacted team. More and more project teams are like this now, as we work in an global marketplace, and with third-party partners. Here are three more tips for making sure that your virtual team is as successful as possible:
1. Resolve conflict effectively
Encourage your team to talk to you, and to each other. One of the problems with virtual teams is that side conversations can take place, and a conflict could be brewing without you even knowing about it. It’s everyone’s responsibility to handle conflict professionally – and conflict isn’t always a bad thing. If two members of the team are having a difficult time, you can step in, but only if you know about it. Therefore, you should encourage an environment where everyone is responsible for proactively identifying and working to resolve conflict. Issues can be escalated to you where there is the need for more facilitation, but ideally the team can take some ownership for sorting out low-level issues themselves.
Conflict manifests itself in different ways depending on where you are in the project lifecycle. In the early days, the issue could be lack of cultural understanding or language problems. Later on, conflict could be caused by differing approaches to solving a technical or creative problem. The approach to resolving these conflicts is going to be different every time, but you should at least be aware of the possibility that these will happen – and even more alert to conflict than you would be for a collacted team.
2. Review performance continually
Just because things are going fine today doesn’t mean they will be tomorrow. You want to be a high-performing team, but that doesn’t happen overnight. And on a virtual team, it takes even longer. Think about how you are going to get to a high-performing state – and that means working out what ‘high-performing’ actually looks like. Chances are it looks like people working autonomously, referring to team members without having to go through you to open the channels of communication, but with regular progress reports and risk and issue reviews – and of course escalations up to you as the project manager. Discuss what a high-performing team looks like with your team, and then that gives you a starting point on how to get there.
New people joining the team creates an imbalance in skills and experience, so one of your tasks should be to bring new people into the fold as quickly as possible, so plan an induction process as soon as you realise you have a new starter on the way – or someone gives you a clue that they are going to leave!
3. Handle crises quickly
Projects have crises. That’s nothing new. But in a virtual team you have to act quickly to ensure everyone knows what is going on, and how the problem will be addressed. One of the issues can be ensuring everyone has the same information at the same time, for example, about a corporate strategy change, or a restructure. With team members in different time zones this can be difficult, and stopping the rumours can be hard. Virtual team members can feel isolated at the best of times, so you really need to consider getting everyone together for a briefing in these situations, even if it is only on the phone.
Crises and changes can have an impact on the project, and the team will need to work out together how to step up and meet the challenge. For example, if someone goes off sick and will not be back at work for a while, what impact will this have on the tasks that person will no longer be able to complete? Who can step in and do those activities, or if no one is available, what impact will that have on the project’s critical path? Understanding the issues gets you one step closer to being able to minimse the impact on the project delivery. And of course, make sure you add an entry to the issue log!
These tips are based on my notes from a presentation by Dr Ginger Levin, PMP, PgMP at the PMI Global Congress North America in October 2009, with some of my own thoughts thrown in. And there are more bits of advice for managing virtual teams in How to Manage in a Flat World, by Susan Bloch and Philip Whitely.
4 Tips for Working with a Virtual Team
Posted by ElizabethA virtual team is one where not all the team members are in the same place. This could be across several buildings in the same town, or across several timezones. The most extreme examples would be a ‘follow the sun’ type team, with team members in Australia, the US and Europe/Middle East/Africa. In this team example, you will find it difficult to get all the team members together as someone will be going to bed just as someone else is getting into the office! However, you can successfully manage virtual teams. Here are some tips.
1. Have a project vision
Discuss the project vision – that is, the goal, objectives, end state – with the team at the beginning of the project. This is so that everyone understands what it is that they are aiming to achieve, and can see how their part in the project contributes to the overall end game. This is a really key point: it is a huge benefit to a team to have a common goal, and having everyone pull in the same direction should not be underestimated as a great way to keep the project on track. Every time someone new joins the team, or if the project vision changes for any reason, have the discussion again to be sure that you are all still aligned. This is as true for a collacted team as for a virtual team.
2. Recognise individual differences
Not everyone communicates in the same way. And in a virtual team, you can guarantee that most of your communication will be in writing – email, fax, documents, IM and so on. Understand that people are different. Who is not so good in the mornings? Who doesn’t have English as their first language? Also take these points into consideration on conference calls, where you can’t see the body language of your colleagues. As the project manager, make sure that on a call you encourage participation from everyone.
3. Think about your motivational strategies
How are you going to keep this team together and on track? People partake in projects for various reasons, most commonly because they think it will be good for their career, or because they didn’t have a choice. Regardless, you need to consider how you are going to ensure that everyone gets the motivation they require to keep plodding on. Consider especially those people who find it hard to work in a virtual environment – in Myers-Briggs Type Indicator terms, these people probably have type ‘E’ in their profiles. If you gain your motivation and energy from being around others, a virtual environment is going to rob you of that contact with your team, so you should work out how else to bring that feeling into your day job to ensure your motivation doesn’t flag. Talk to your team about how they are motivated – together and individually – to establish how best you can make the virtual environment work for them.
4. Communicate effectively
This sounds obvious, doesn’t it? It should do. Communication across a virtual team is different to in a collacted team. You can’t just all up and go out for lunch, or sit in a meeting room for two hours thrashing out the finer points of your project requirements document. Think about the different communication tools that you use, and work out how best to adopt new ones to manage your non-collacted team. And review constantly: try something and if it doesn’t work, change it. For example, pick the best time for your weekly project progress calls, but if it doesn’t seem like the best time for everyone after a couple of weeks, open it up to the team and ask them to suggest a better arrangement. Then act on it!
Tomorrow I will look at three more tips for managing virtual teams successfully.
These tips are based on my notes from a presentation by Dr Ginger Levin, PMP, PgMP at the PMI Global Congress North America in October 2009, with some of my own thoughts thrown in.