CURRENT TRENDS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS April Reed DePaul University MBAA Conference

2 OVERVIEW  What are virtual project teams?  Driving forces  Benefits  A few emerging themes virtual team performance communication virtual team composition Conclusion

3 What are Virtual Project Teams? A virtual project team is a group of geographically dispersed people working together on a one-time unique effort.

4 Impact of Driving Forces on Virtual Teams  Increased the usage of virtual teams  New forces emerging  Existing forces intensifying

5 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

6 Benefits  Is it possible that virtual teams are more productive than traditional teams?

7 Virtual Team Performance  Virtual team characteristics leveraged to enhance team effectiveness  Focused communication  Rigorous planning  Organized meetings “…our view of team virtuality challenges managers to consider how virtuality can be leveraged to enhance team effectiveness…” (Kirkman and Mathiew)

8 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

9 Communication tools  Low level of “media richness” (Malhotra & Majchrzak) Conference calls  High level of “media richness” Videoconferencing Web conferencing “Virtual Workspaces”

10 “Virtual Workspaces” Table 1: “Virtual Workspace” Features[9] #Name of FeatureDescription of Feature Electronic whiteboardsOnline whiteboards for posting short messages or bulletins Collaborative document editors Tools to allow editing of documents by multiple team members Instant poll capabilitiesA tool to gauge member opinions on issues under discussion Instant messagingPop-up messaging tools for immediate access to team members Calendars for joint schedulingCommon team calendars showing team member availability Project repositoryCommon repository for sharing project documents Discussion threadsAny tool that enables threaded discussions, i.e. blogs, for conflict identification and resolution Embedded linksLinks to referenced documents included in documents and discussion threads to facilitate easy retrieval of documents Annotations to identify ownersLocated 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

11 Virtual Team Composition  Need “assessment processes to determine suitability of team members” (Stevenson and McGrath)

12 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)

13 Needs of Virtual Teams  Software tools and hardware  Training and development in virtual team processes  Time to practice new processes (Kirkman and Mathieu)

14 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