managing virtual project teams a research project
TRANSCRIPT
MANAGING VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAMS
A research project submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree
Master of Business Administration
by
Bryan Rolf Trautsch
San Francisco, California
December 11, 2003
Copyright (c) 2003 by Bryan Trautsch.
CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL
I certify that I have read VIRTUAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT by Bryan Rolf Trautsch, and
that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a research project submitted in
partial fulfillment of requirements for the Master of Business Administration degree at San
Francisco State University.
________________________________________ Dr. Robert C. Nickerson Professor of Information Systems ________________________________________ Dr. Sam S. Gill Professor of Information Systems
ABSTRACT
MANAGING VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAMS
Bryan Rolf Trautsch San Francisco State University
Fall 2003
The purpose of the project is to explore the communications and collaborations issues
associated with managing virtual project teams. In order to establish a better understanding of the
problem, the paper evaluates virtual teams against more traditional collocated teams to provide
some background and depth to the research.
The method used in the research was in the format of a questionnaire consisting of six
questions. The questionnaire was delivered via e-mail to various project managers with virtual
project team experience dispersed through out the United States.
The outcome of this project is that due to the added complexities of virtual project teams,
project managers need to take a different approach to managing virtual project teams. Project
managers should adopt more of a leadership role than simply managing the project in order to
foster a team culture and facilitate communication and collaboration between team members.
I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the contents of this research project.
________________________________________ _________________ (Supervising Instructor) (Date)
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1: RESEARCH PROBLEM .......................................................................................1 RESEARCH PROBLEM ...............................................................................................................1 BACKGROUND .............................................................................................................................2 OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ....................................................................3 ASSUMPTIONS..............................................................................................................................4 SUMMARY OF THE REMAINING CHAPTERS......................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: TRADITIONAL PROJECT TEAMS VS. VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAMS......6 TEAMS AND PROJECTS.............................................................................................................6 TYPES OF VIRTUAL TEAMS.....................................................................................................7 COMPARISON OF VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAMS AND TRADITIONAL PROJECT TEAMS ..........................................................................................................................................12 THE PROJECT LIFE CYCLE ...................................................................................................12 THE ADDED COMPLEXITY OF VIRTUAL TEAMS............................................................14 VIRTUAL PROJECT TEAM – COMMUNICATION .............................................................18 SAME TIME, DIFFERENT PLACE COMMUNICATION ....................................................19 DIFFERENT TIME, DIFFERENT PLACE COMMUNICATION.........................................20 DIFFERENT TIME, SAME PLACE COMMUNICATION ....................................................21 VIRTUAL TEAMS – COMMUNICATION CONTROL ISSUES...........................................21 VIRTUAL TEAMS – COMMUNICATION CULTURAL ISSUES ........................................23 SUCCESSFUL VIRTUAL PROJECT COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES.......................25
CHAPTER 3: PRIMARY RESEARCH ANALYSIS................................................................27 DESCRIPTION OF PRIMARY RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .........................................27 PROPOSITIONS ..........................................................................................................................28 RESEARCH DATA AND ANALYSIS .......................................................................................29 SUMMARY OF THE PRIMARY RESEARCH RESULTS .....................................................37
CHAPTER 4: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION.....................................................................40 SUMMARY ...................................................................................................................................40 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS.....................................................................................43 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH .........................................................44
REFERENCES............................................................................................................................45
1
Chapter 1: Research Problem Research Problem
Virtual teams have a strong business justification. Virtual teams can be formed quickly
and are agile in nature. They can help organizations decrease their response time to
changes in today’s hyper-competitive markets. Organizations are also able to leverage
expertise that is dispersed over geographic areas that was previously left untapped.
Furthermore, virtual teams can also benefit employees as they lessen the disruption of the
employee’s life by requiring less travel time to meet with dispersed teams. Additionally,
team members have the opportunity to broaden their experience by working across
organizations and cultures. On the other hand, the ability for individuals to work together
over time, distance, and or organizational boundaries adds complexity and thus increases
the risk that the team will be unsuccessful in achieving its goals.
This paper investigates the challenges and current practices of managing virtual project
teams. More specifically, this paper will focus on the issue of communication and
collaboration on virtual project teams. In order to establish a better understanding of the
problem, this paper will evaluate virtual teams against more traditional collocated teams
to provide some background and depth to the research.
The research problem of this paper is to investigate how communication and
collaboration issues impact the way virtual project teams are managed.
2
Background
The trend is clear. The world is shrinking. Advances in technology are enabling a variety
of communication and collaboration tools that were previously unavailable or too
expensive for most organizations to implement. This has led to the increased use of
virtual teams by organizations for many reasons. Some reasons include the need to
quickly address customer problems, develop products, deliver services, and tap a more
diverse pool of employees across the organization. With the ability to form teams
virtually, teams are operating across the limitations of distance, time, and organizational
boundaries. Virtual teams use electronic collaboration technologies and other techniques
to lower travel and facility costs, reduce project schedules, improve decision-making
time, and communication. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 4) Furthermore, companies are
focusing increasingly on foreign markets as they look to expand their customer base.
Organizations can also look to lower costs or extract efficiencies by tapping into foreign
labor pools. Off shoring and outsourcing have become particularly prevalent in the
technology sector. Certain labor pools such as India, China and South Africa, for
example, have skilled labor forces coupled with relatively low worker salary
requirements (when compared to the wages earned by similar workers in the United
States). Additionally, efficiencies can result from the ability to have project teams
working twenty-four hours a day as developers in India begin testing code that U.S.
workers wrote over the course of their day, for example. This makes outsourcing and
investment in foreign subsidiaries or partners attractive for domestic corporations. The
result is that firms are able to achieve substantial cost savings and decrease their time to
market when building software solutions, manufacturing products, or offering services –
3
if the additional risks can be managed effectively. “Meta Group predicts that offshore
outsourcing will grow by more than 20% annually, pushing it from a $7 billion market in
2003 to a $10 billion market by 2005. The group also foresees all application outsourcing
services, including the offshore component, reaching $15 billion by 2007.” (E-Business
Strategies)
In addition to managements’ desire to establish an international presence, extract
operating efficiencies, and reduce costs through distributed teams, additional factors
making distributed teams more common in organizations include “…mergers,
acquisitions, downsizing, and technical specialization.” (Haywood 1998, 3) Assuming
these factors will never cease to exist, it will be important for managers to posses the
necessary skills to successfully manage distributed teams. In fact, it is conceivable that
organizations that do not begin to use virtual teams effectively will have difficulty
competing in the increasingly global, competitive, and rapidly changing markets of the
future. Organizations that will succeed in the future will need to find new ways of
working across all types of boundaries through systems, processes, technology, and
people. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 4)
Overview of Research Methodology
The primary research methodology used for this project was a questionnaire consisting of
six questions. The questionnaire was delivered via e-mail to various project managers
with virtual project team experience dispersed through out the United States. The
responses were grouped according to each question and analyzed qualitatively.
4
Assumptions
This paper will not cover specific communication and collaboration or groupware
technologies. It is assumed that the current penetration and utilization of the Internet and
technologies like e-mail, netmeeting, and tele- and videoconferencing (in addition to the
improvements in team collaboration and project management software) all seem to
provide more than adequate tools for enabling virtual projects to succeed when applied
appropriately. The systems and software that each team utilizes are unique to the project
requirements, team preferences and resource limitations.
Also, to manage virtual project teams effectively, many variables need to be taken into
account; communication and collaboration issues are only a small part of the overall
effort.
Summary of the Remaining Chapters
Chapter 2 provides some background on the topic of virtual teams. It will define and
discuss basic components of the topic such as what constitutes a team, the definition of a
project, what the differences are between a traditional project team and a virtual project
team, and why project management is important. It will also give a description of the
seven types of virtual teams. By establishing a foundation for the discussion of the topic,
chapter 2 will go on to evaluate virtual project teams against traditional project teams and
discuss the added complexity of virtual project teams. The chapter will then finish with
some suggestions for successful communication techniques for virtual project teams. This
5
chapter will provide the reader with an understanding of both the general topic as well as
specific issues regarding communication and collaboration between team members.
Chapter 3 will discuss the research methodology used for this paper. It will go on to
provide a qualitative analysis of the research data and draw general conclusions from an
evaluation of the questionnaire responses.
Chapter 4 will review the general findings of the research and provide some
recommendations to the reader with respect to managing virtual project team
communication and collaboration. This final chapter will also provide some
recommendations for further research on the topic of virtual project team management.
6
Chapter 2: Traditional Project Teams vs. Virtual Project Teams
Teams and Projects
A team can be defined as a group of people organized to work together to achieve a goal.
Teams can be collocated, meaning they are in the same physical location and team
members have the opportunity for face-to-face interactions on a regular basis. For the
purposes of this paper, a team that is collocated is considered a traditional form of a team.
Teams can also be dispersed or virtual, meaning that the team members are located in
disparate geographic locations. There can also be varying degrees to a team’s collocation
and dispersion. For example, a majority of a team’s members can be collocated in an
office with a few of the team members located in other geographic areas. It is possible to
have a project team that consists of groups of collocated members who are part of a larger
virtual project team. However, this paper will focus on the two extremes, the traditional
collocated project team and the geographically dispersed virtual project team with a
majority of the team members separated by distance and/or time.
A project is “a unique venture with a beginning and an end, undertaken by people to meet
established goals with defined constraints of time, resources, and quality.” (Baker and
Baker 1992, 6) As stated above, a project has a beginning and an end. Therefore any
repetitive activity is not a project. Some shared attributes of projects are: goals, people,
equipment and supplies, schedules, budgets, conflicts, and interdependencies between
other business projects and strategies. Some unique attributes of projects include:
projects are never identical in implementation, have varying end results, have different
personalities, and have problems that are unpredictable. (Baker and Baker 1992, 8-9)
7
In order to manage projects effectively and increase the chances for a project’s success, it
is important to employ a methodology for completing the project. Project management
focuses “the responsibility, authority, and scheduling of the project in order to meet
defined goals.” (Baker & Baker 1992, 10) Basically, project management results in better
control and coordination while reducing development time, lowering costs, and generally
producing higher quality results. It forces team members to both consider what needs to
be done to achieve project goals and work out how activities can be coordinated while
considering possible risks and trying to mitigate them.
Types of Virtual Teams
In their book Mastering Virtual Teams, Duarte and Snyder observe that virtual teams
have many different configurations and that they can be categorized into seven basic
types of teams: project or product-development teams, which are the focus of this paper,
networked teams, parallel teams, work or production teams, service teams, management
teams, and action teams. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 4) Duarte and Snyder also note that,
“what these teams have in common with all teams is that team members must
communicate and collaborate to get work done and/or to produce a product. Virtual
teams, unlike traditional ones, however, must accomplish this by working across
distance, time, and/or organizational boundaries and by using technology to facilitate
communication and collaboration.” (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 5)
8
A virtual project team or distributed project team is a project team that includes members
who are working together on a specific project where team member’s tasks are non-
routine, and the results are specific and measurable. For our purposes, vendors and
customers are not included in the definition of a virtual project team. If one were to
include these two categories of team members in the definition of a virtual project team,
almost 100% of project teams would be distributed or virtual. Virtual project teams can
be further characterized as having dispersed team members, knowledge, systems and
workplaces, and as having a charter to make decisions. (McMahon 2001, 4) In other
words, a virtual project team can cross time, distance, and organizational boundaries and
make decisions to meet task goals. Team members may rotate on and off a project as
their expertise is needed. This is often done in order to reduce project costs and
efficiently utilize employee time and skills across the organization. (Duarte and Snyder
2001, 7)
A networked virtual team is defined by Duarte and Snyder as consisting “of individuals
who collaborate to achieve a common goal or purpose.” (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 5)
Like project teams, networked teams frequently cross time, distance, and organizational
boundaries. Furthermore, the membership of these teams is frequently diffuse and fluid,
with team members rotating on and off the team as their expertise is needed. Thus, the
networked team is different from a project team in that the membership is not always
clearly delineated from the rest of the organization and a final product is not always
clearly defined and can often be a recommendation. Examples of the networked team are
often found in consulting firms and in high tech organizations. The benefits of this type
9
of team are that they can be assembled and disassembled very quickly. They are agile and
can often tap into a broad range of experiences, which can help to find creative and
innovative solutions to a problem quickly. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 5)
Duarte and Snyder define parallel virtual teams as teams that “carry out special
assignments, tasks, or functions that the regular organization does not want or is not
equipped to perform.” (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 6) They go on to characterize these
teams as frequently crossing time, distance, and organizational boundaries like project
and networked teams. A parallel team is similar to a project team in that the parallel team
has a distinct membership that identifies it from the rest of the organization, making it
clear who is on the team and who is not. Typically the members of a virtual parallel team
will work together on a short-term basis and have such goals as making recommendations
for improvements to organizational processes or addressing specific business issues.
These teams serve in more of an advisory capacity in contrast to project teams that are
able to make decisions with respect to their goal. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 6) Duarte and
Snyder observe that in a general sense, “virtual parallel teams are becoming a fairly
common way for multinational and global organizations to make recommendations about
worldwide processes and systems that take into account a global perspective.” (Duarte
and Snyder 2001, 6)
In contrast to virtual project teams, networked teams, and parallel teams, virtual work
teams and production teams perform regular and ongoing work. Usually such teams exist
for one function, such as accounting, finance, training, or research and development. Like
10
the project team, these teams have a clearly defined membership and can be distinguished
from other parts of the organization. According to Duarte and Snyder, “many work or
production teams are now beginning to operate virtually and to cross time and distance
boundaries.” (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 7) Often team members do not see one another on
a daily basis. Many even telecommute. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 7)
Service teams can also be distributed across distance and time. An example of a virtual
service team is a customer support center that has operations in strategic locations across
the globe to take advantage of a “follow the sun” strategy. This means that each team
works during its members' generally accepted business hours and transitions work and
open issues to the next team, which is located in a time zone that is beginning its day
while the other team is ending its day. The desired result is to provide customers with 24
hour support service 7 days a week, while enabling employees to maintain their typical
working hours. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 7)
An organization’s management team can also be separated by distance and time. There
are many management teams today that are dispersed across a country or around the
world but work collaboratively on a daily basis. Although these teams often cross
national boundaries, they almost never cross organizational boundaries. Their purpose is
to collaborate on a regular basis to achieve corporate goals and objectives, and to deal
with any other topics related to the management of an organization. (Duarte and Snyder
2001, 7-8)
11
Action teams offer immediate responses, often to crisis situations. They can cross
distance and organizational boundaries. They are different from all of the other types of
teams in that they are usually formed only to meet a specific and urgent need. (Duarte
and Snyder 2001, 8)
Table 1 provides a summary of the types of virtual teams discussed above.
Table 1: Summary of the Seven Types of Virtual Teams* Type of Team
Description
Project or Product Development
Team has fluid membership, clear boundaries and a defined customer, technical requirement, and output. Longer-term team task is non-routine, and team has decision-making authority.
Network Team membership is diffuse and fluid; members come and go as needed. Team lacks clear boundaries with organization.
Parallel Team has clear boundaries and distinct membership. Team works in short term to develop recommendations for an improvement in a process or system.
Work or Production Team has distinct membership and clear boundaries. Members perform regular and ongoing work, usually in one functional area.
Service Team has distinct membership and supports ongoing customer, network activity.
Management Team has distinct membership and works on a regular basis to lead corporate activities.
Action Team deals with immediate action, usually in an emergency situation. Membership may be fluid or distinct.
*(Adapted from Duarte and Snyder 2001, 10)
12
Comparison of Virtual Project Teams and Traditional Project Teams
There are many similarities between virtual project teams and traditional project teams.
These similarities are the overall structure and methodology for managing teams as well
as the types of teams that are formed to achieve a goal. The seven types of virtual teams
discussed above will apply to any form of team, whether it is virtual or traditional. In
general, a virtual project team and traditional project team with a similar goal will still go
through the same project life cycle to produce the result. The project management
methodology for managing each team can also be the same. In other words, because a
project team is collocated or dispersed, this will not change the fundamentals of the
project. The goals are the same and the methodologies to achieve those goals do not need
to change either.
The Project Life Cycle
Even though projects in most organizations and industries will employ different
methodologies to manage their projects, there is a common thread between all projects in
that they follow a similar project life cycle. This is true for traditional and virtual project
teams.
A project life cycle is a series of stages that a project goes through to achieve its goal.
According to Baker and Baker’s generic project management methodology, the project
life cycle consists of four phases. These phases are the conceptualization phase, the
planning phase, the implementation phase and the termination phase. (Baker & Baker
1992, 6) Similarly, Jacobson, Booch, and Rumbaugh describe the common software
13
development methodology, the Unified Process, as consisting of an inception phase,
elaboration phase, construction phase, and the transition phase. (Jacobson, Booch, and
Rumbaugh 1999, 11) Both methodologies have four phases. In general, each phase
corresponds to the other’s project life cycle phase.
All projects start with a purpose or idea to accomplish something. This is the
conceptualization phase or the inception phase. During this phase the concept of the
project is refined and finalized, it becomes necessary to plan and define the architecture
or components of the project. This is the planning stage or the elaboration phase. During
the planning stage, tasks schedules, and budgets are completed. If the planned project is
approved, the project goes ahead. This is the implementation phase or the construction
phase. During this phase, the project is monitored, controlled, and adjusted to meet the
defined goals. Finally, the project is completed and its success is assessed. This is the
termination phase or the transition phase. (Baker & Baker 1992, 6) (Jacobson, Booch,
and Rumbaugh 1999, 12) Some may break the phases into several phases or they might
have different names for these phases as evidenced with the Unified Process, but the
basic concept is the same.
Thus, one can see that even though projects can be very different the life cycle that each
project goes through is very similar whether one is building a software application or
coordinating a public event. The same thing is true for a virtual project team and a
collocated team. The deliverables are the same. The project life cycle is the same. The
methodology employed for managing the project is the same. The difference between
14
these two types of teams is in how team members communicate and collaborate to
achieve their goal. Virtual team project managers must pay special attention to
communication and collaboration issues because team members are geographically
dispersed. It is critical to ensure that communication and collaboration methods are
agreed to, explicitly specified, and controlled. Furthermore, because virtual project teams
are likely to include members from different cultures it is important to address this
communication issue as well.
Because virtual project team members are often distributed across time, distance, and
organizational boundaries, this creates a complex challenge for managers responsible for
a team’s results. These challenges are found mostly in ensuring that communication and
collaboration between team members is clear, timely and adequate.
The Added Complexity of Virtual Teams
As stated above, the categories of virtual teams, project teams, networked teams, parallel
teams, and work or production teams, service teams, management teams, and action
teams are also applicable to traditional teams. Managing virtual teams can often be more
complex than managing traditional teams, however. This is most often the case for two
reasons. First, virtual teams primarily communicate and collaborate using technology
such as e-mail, and groupware, for example. This is often the case with traditional teams
as well. The difference is the degree to which virtual teams must rely on technology to
communicate and collaborate. Virtual teams depend almost exclusively on technology
and software tools to communicate and collaborate, whereas traditional teams can always
15
abandon technology and software tools in favor of face-to-face communication and
collaboration. Second, virtual teams cross boundaries related to time, distance, and
organization. This creates a need for increased attention to communication and
collaboration issues. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 4-5)
Interestingly, although the effective use of electronic communication and collaboration
technologies is fundamental to the success of virtual teams, virtual teams must often find
ways to overcome the limitations of technology for communication and collaboration.
When virtual teams and their leaders are asked about successes and failures, they rarely
mention technology as a primary reason for either. (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 9) Project
managers can quickly run into trouble if they believe that a tool will help them solve any
problem. Tools are not the solution to a problem; they enable workers to complete tasks
with greater efficiency, speed and ease. Ideally, motivated and focused teams will
overcome the limitations of the technology available to them. However, the effectiveness
of a team can certainly increase with the usage of appropriate technology. (Hayward
2001, 1)
“Teams typically use two types of products: those that are specific to the function of the
team (e.g., a customer support system, a design system, an accounting package) and those
that are general purpose (e.g., e-mail, document preparation and storage, instant
messaging, videoconferencing).”(Hayward 2001, 1) The selection of tools for the specific
functional needs of a virtual team is an important consideration for the team. A tool that
is too complex for a project can result in unnecessarily high project costs, wasted time,
and team member frustration. It is important for those making decisions to make the right
16
choices regarding technologies and tools for virtual team communication and
collaboration.
In order for the virtual team to communicate effectively the team must have a common
set of tools to work with. This is usually not an issue with collocated teams because the
organization will already have a common set of tools for employees to work with. These
tools might include e-mail, word processing, spreadsheets, development and project
management applications, to name a few. With distributed teams, there can be many
different tools and even operating systems that do not necessarily work well together. For
example, if half of the team is using Apple computers and the other half is using PCs,
sharing even a simple word document can become a problem for some members of the
team. This can lead to inefficiencies and a breakdown in communications as team
members ignore certain documents produced by team members because they cannot view
the contents of the file. This issue is becoming less relevant as software manufacturers
account for document incompatibilities in the latest versions of their software. It is still an
important risk to be aware of though. The project manager should make an effort to
standardize the tools the team uses and ensure that all team members are trained and
comfortable with the tools selected for the engagement.
Project managers of virtual teams must also plan for the team member’s technical support
needs. If a team member’s computer malfunctions or if software configuration issues
arise, team members should be able to resolve their issues quickly. If a team member is
unable to work because of technical issues, the project could come to a halt quickly due
to the dependencies of critical path deliverables. The project manager must ensure that
17
resources are made available to support distributed team members as soon as possible. A
well-conceived plan to solve technical issues can add to team member’s commitment to
the team because they feel as though they are a priority. If a technical problem is not
resolved in a timely manner, the effects can be extremely damaging to the moral of the
team making it hard to recover lost ground and return the team to it’s previous levels of
operating efficiency. Technical support issues are not usually something a traditional
project manager is concerned with because it is part of the IT department’s function.
However, with team members dispersed over time, distance, and organizational
boundaries, technical support issues become very important to the team’s success.
At the same time, communicating and collaborating becomes more problematic for
virtual teams the more dispersed they are. This is because the chance for team members
working in different time zones becomes greater the further apart the team members are.
Working across national boundaries complicates communication and collaboration
further by adding the challenges of working with team members, who speak different
languages, are culturally diverse and use different technologies. (Duarte and Snyder
2001, 8)
As the membership of a virtual team begins to cross organizational boundaries, the
integration of work methods, organizational cultures, technologies, and goals increases in
complexity. It is frequently the case that suppliers and partners have conflicting goals and
organizational cultures. To a lesser degree traditional teams can also face this same
challenge of different work methods and organizational cultures all within the same
18
organization between different functional areas. For example, the marketing department
in an organization will most likely have different work processes and ways of thinking
about organizational issues as well as a unique subculture when compared to a more
technical area of the organization such as engineering or information systems. (Duarte
and Snyder 2001, 9)
Finally, complexity is increased by the limited ways for team members to communicate.
Traditional teams typically have the option to interact face to face, if not on a daily basis,
then at least on a regular basis. Virtual team interactions, however, are almost always
mediated by electronic communication and collaboration technology. According to
Duarte and Snyder, “Interactions fall into four categories: (1) same time, same place (like
face-to-face meetings); (2) same time, different place (such as an audio conference or
video conference); (3) different time, different place (such as exchange of e-mail or voice
mail messages); and (4) different time, same place (such as using a chat room or a shared
file on a network).” (Duarte and Snyder 2001, 9) Same time, same place communications
will not be addressed in this paper, as it us not a common form of communication
between virtual team members.
Virtual Project Team – Communication
Because team members on virtual teams are not collocated, communication becomes
more difficult. Body language is an integral part in human communication. Without it the
receiver of the communication is only getting a part of the message that is trying to be
conveyed. Birdwhistell claimed that up to 65% of a message’s meaning is communicated
19
through non-verbal clues. (Birdwhistell 1970, 1) Today, some researchers put the amount
of information being transmitted non-verbally even higher. For example, Fromkin and
Rodman claim that up to 90% of the meaning of a message is transmitted non-verbally.
(Fromkin and Rodman 1983, 1) So when an individual is reading an e-mail, they are
really only getting a small part of the message that was being transmitted. Therefore, the
potential for misunderstanding and confusion between team members is greater the more
they rely on communication methods that do not allow for face-to-face interactions.
Similarly, within organizations informal communication is often a key source of
information and knowledge transfer. McMahon writes “think about the information that
today is conveyed through unplanned meetings in hallways, at lunch, casually in cubicles,
and over the tops of cubicles.”(McMahon 2001, 27) This rich source of knowledge
transfer is lacking in the virtual space. Virtual team members do not go to the coffee shop
on the corner together. They cannot turn to a team member and ask them how they have
done something in the past; they must try to contact the team member by sending them a
message or calling them on the phone, which isn’t always as efficient or effective as
casually asking a teammate a question in passing.
Same Time, Different Place Communication
Synchronous communication is communication that occurs at the same time. Phone
conversations, instant messaging and video conferencing are examples of synchronous
communication that occur in different places. The sender and receiver are engaged in the
conversation at the same time, but they could be located anywhere. With communication
20
methods such as e-mail, there is often a significant delay between the time the sender
transmits a message and when the receiver receives or responds to the message.
Synchronous communication is effective because the loop between the sender and
receiver is closed immediately with a response and it is the most natural form of
communication, because these methods of communication are variations of face-to-face
communication, which is the most complete and natural form of communication.
Different Time, Different Place Communication
Asynchronous communication or communication that does not happen at the same time
will increase as a virtual team becomes dispersed over a wider geographic area. Time
differences will often leave only a few hours in the day where certain team members are
able to communicate synchronously. This creates a great risk because if a message is not
communicated properly, a simple miscommunication can result in slow progress as
communication is stretched out over several days. Over time this can lead to serious risks
as task deadlines are missed due to inefficient communications.
Another factor that makes asynchronous communication between team members in
different locations challenging is that the sender is not only unsure of whether or not the
recipient understood the message properly, but there is also uncertainty on the sender’s
part, whether the intended recipient even received the message. For example, if an
individual sends an e-mail to a teammate, how can she be certain that the message was
received? Furthermore, if a voice-mail is left with a teammate, how can the sender be
sure that the voice-mail will be herd? Often days go by without a response or an
21
acknowledgement of the message being received. This uncertainty can lead to increased
levels of confusion and frustration for virtual teams. With a collocated team the sender
can easily follow up an unacknowledged message simply by seeking out the receiver and
asking if the message was received. This is not the case with a virtual team.
Different Time, Same Place Communication
Asynchronous communication in the same place occurs when team members use a tool
such as a chat room or shared files on a network to communicate. The fact that the
communication is not face-to-face adds all of the complexities of communication that the
other situations possess. For example, because this category of virtual team
communication is at a different time, the same risks as stated above of
miscommunication, lost time, and uncertainty apply. The location of the communication
is less relevant and can certainly be seen as a less complex form of the different time,
different place category of communication.
Virtual Teams – Communication Control Issues
One of the benefits of forms of electronic communication such as e-mail is that it gives
the sender the ability to communicate with a wide audience quickly and efficiently.
However, the speed and ease of these forms of communication have also created a
problem, information overload. Furthermore, there is not always agreement on which
forms of communication have the highest priority. To solve this problem of too much
information in undefined priority, it is helpful to come to an agreement on the priority of
the various forms of communication. For example, because face-to-face meetings are less
22
common between virtual team members, voice-mail might be agreed upon as the highest
priority means of communication. Voice-mail is useful because everyone has it and it can
be checked remotely and frequently. As a result, if there is an emergency or an urgent
communication requirement, team members will know to leave a voice-mail instead of
sending e-mail. Team members will know to check their voice-mail regularly and put the
highest priority on these messages. Prioritizing means of communication saves time and
makes team members more efficient because they are quickly able to distinguish between
urgent and important tasks and urgent and less important tasks. (Haywood 1998, 13-27)
Also, prioritizing communication media helps to prevent messages from falling through
the cracks, which can lead to the disintegration of team member communication and
ultimately to distrust among team members. (Covey 1989, 146-182)
The ultimate goal of the sender prioritizing team communications is to assist the receiver
in transforming his work. Instead of reacting to random messages, the receiver is
suddenly able to become proactive and manage his time better, because messages are
prioritized and the important and urgent matters are easily and quickly identified,
whereas the urgent but not important tasks present less of a distraction. (Haywood 1998,
33) Thus, a team that prioritizes its information helps others manage their time more
effectively leading to greater productivity and less stress.
Even if the above principles are used to increase the communication and efficiency
between team members, there are still other factors that project managers need to employ
to reduce the risk of a virtual project’s failure. McMahon suggests that it is important to
23
put things in writing. By doing this team members are given a structure that is lacking in
the virtual environment. Processes should be explicit and public, allowing any team
member to access information at anytime. All team members should understand not only
the rules of the team, but also how the team functions i.e. what team member’s roles and
responsibilities are within the team. This way, a virtual team is given structure and
transparency. (McMahon 2001, 27)
Furthermore, McMahon stresses the importance of the attitude of team members toward
the team. He writes “in a challenging virtual environment a 100% committed team
attitude is vital to project success. This means team members must be prepared to reach
beyond minimal levels of team participation.” (McMahon 2001, 59) In the more
traditional collocated team environment it is not always critical for team members to
commit themselves to the team. As long as the work is done satisfactorily and on time,
the commitment level is sufficient. This is not the case on a virtual team. Team members
must realize that they are operating in a more challenging environment and must increase
their level of commitment accordingly. Without complete commitment from even one
team member, communication problems can arise and the risk to the project can increase.
Virtual Teams – Communication Cultural Issues
Virtual team members are not only distributed, but they are also often working in
different countries. This further complicates the issue of team communication between
virtual team members. A common vocabulary must be defined and agreed on. Different
customs and ways of communicating must be taken into account. There are countless
24
stories of organizations and individuals making unintended mistakes because they did not
understand the cultural norms that they were dealing with. For example, when dealing
with developers in India, a project manager in the U.S. might understand a deadline to be
on a certain day, but the developers might have a different perception of what that
deadline actually means due to how deadlines are viewed in that particular culture. A
German’s perception of being on time is most likely very different from a Spaniard’s
perception of being on time. It is important for the project manager to try and understand
these cultural differences and try to eliminate any misunderstanding that might occur and
jeopardize the project. In a conversation that the author had with a CIO about this
problem, she expressed her frustration with this very issue. She described a distributed
project that was unsuccessful because of cultural differences with a Canadian
development team. Eventually the development was brought back in-house for
completion because of the U.S. team’s inability to communicate effectively with the
Canadian team. This is a striking example of how important it is for project managers to
take cultural differences into account and try to encourage effective communication
across cultures.
25
Successful Virtual Team Communication Techniques
In order to increase the chances of communicating successfully, Haywood provides four
principles that successful virtual teams have in common. They include:
1. Standards for availability and acknowledgement were defined and respected; 2. The team members replaced lost context in their communication; 3. The team members regularly used synchronous communication; 4. Senders took responsibility for prioritizing communication;
(Haywood 1998, 18-19)
By creating standards for availability and acknowledgement, team members define and
agree to specific times that they will be available to teammates and provide details such
as how soon they will guarantee a response to a message. This clarifies for other team
members when a team member’s normal working hours are and gives a window within
which responses to communications can be expected. This helps to solve the problem of
not knowing whether or not a message was received. (Haywood 1998, 19)
Replacing lost context within a message, effectively gives the receiver of a message a
frame of reference for the communication, which is not always obvious. (Haywood 1998,
24) Fussel and Benimoff have conducted extensive research in the area of interactive
electronic communication. Their general definition of context is “…all speakers and
hearers, attempt to construct a shared communicative context in which their messages can
be produced and understood…the participants in a conversation strive for shared
26
understanding of the situation, of the task, and of one another’s background knowledge,
expectations, beliefs, attitudes…”(Fussel and Benimoff 1995, 229)
Haywood concludes that it is easy to misuse many forms of electronic communication
and the result is often reduced, eliminated or distorted context. She writes, “By
consciously building context, we greatly enhance the receiver’s ability to understand our
message.”(Haywood 1998, 24) In effect this is an attempt to replace some of the body
language that is lacking in electronic communication. By describing the situation that is
relevant to the communication, the receiver is able to gather additional information with
respect to the intended message. Although adding context cannot replace non-verbal
communication it definitely helps to minimize misunderstanding.
27
Chapter 3: Primary Research Analysis
Description of Primary Research Methodology
The primary research methodology used for this project was in the format of a
questionnaire consisting of six questions. The questionnaire was delivered via e-mail to
various project managers with virtual project team experience. The respondents were
dispersed through out the United States. Eight responses were gathered from individuals
in organizations that varied from relatively small firms to Fortune 500 firms. The
responses were grouped according to each question and analyzed qualitatively.
The questionnaire was designed to get a broad sense of the issues associated with virtual
project teams and how organizations are dealing with these issues. (For a list of the
questions included in the questionnaire please see Table 2 below.) More specifically, the
questionnaire was designed to get a sense of the reasons organizations are using virtual
project teams, to confirm whether or not organizations use different methods for
managing virtual teams compared with more traditional collocated teams, to get an idea
of the communication and collaboration technologies enabling virtual project teams, and
to look for confirmation of the central issues of communication and collaboration.
Additionally, the questionnaire tried to get an idea of the impact of virtual project teams
on team member morale. With the responses to the questions it was hoped that a
determination could be made as to whether there were some fundamental or unexpected
differences between the secondary research data collected and the responses to the
28
questionnaire. This would then potentially lead to some interesting insights into how
virtual project teams might be managed more effectively.
Question Number Question
1 What are the main reasons your organization uses virtual project teams?
2 Does your organization have different techniques for managing virtual project teams compared with traditional project teams? If yes, what are the main differences?
3 Please list in order of usefulness up to 3 tools (technology, software) that you personally have found most useful in managing virtual project teams. Please briefly explain how you personally use each tool to mange virtual teams.
4 What impact do virtual teams have on virtual team members' morale? On in-house team members' morale?
5 What are the 3 most common communication problems you have encountered with virtual project teams?
6 What are the 3 most common control issues you have encountered with virtual project teams?
Propositions
The specific propositions that the data was to give some insight into are listed below.
• Virtual project teams are being used by organizations primarily for cost reasons.
• In many organizations today, the techniques for managing virtual project teams do
not differ significantly between virtual project teams and traditional project teams.
• Technology is an enabler of virtual project teams. It is not the solution to virtual
project teams.
Table 2: List of Primary Research Questions
29
• Virtual project team managers need to take a different approach to managing their
teams – less management, more leadership.
Research Data and Analysis
Question 1: What are the main reasons your organization uses virtual project
teams?
Cost and resource constraints were the main driving forces behind most respondent’s
organizations decision to use virtual project teams. With an increasing number of
organizations operating over geographically dispersed regions and continually looking
for ways to reduce costs, it is often the case that teams are made up of members from
different regions. Several respondents noted how costly it is to bring virtual teams
together for face-to-face communication. By doing this, the organization incurs travel,
accommodation, and other miscellaneous expenses for each virtual team member. This
does not even take into account the human cost of having to travel and spend time away
from family members, which could lead to decreased productivity and possibly even high
turnover rates as employees look to find organizations that do not require travel. These
factors can increase the costs associated with project teams for organizations in
immeasurable ways. Frequently organizations only consider bringing a project team
together as an option when the team is in the conceptualization phase of the project, when
the team is typically small and an exceptionally high degree of communication and
collaboration are required.
30
Furthermore, cost was a main factor for using virtual project teams. Cost was a factor in
that there exist pools of cheap, highly skilled labor in various locations around the world.
This cheap labor leads many organizations to offshore certain functions traditionally
performed in-house or by contractors. This is an appealing option to many organizations
looking to reduce project costs. By offshoring the development of an application to India,
for example, an organization can reduce the cost of a project. This is not always the case
however, in that often a project that is outsourced in order to take advantage of cheaper
wages can ultimately be more costly due to the lack of product quality and
communication issues related to culture in addition to other factors. Nevertheless, many
organizations are willing to take this risk.
Interestingly, several organizations seemed to use virtual project teams as a strategy for
building a culture within the organization of collaboration and innovation. It was the
norm for some organizations to operate using virtual project teams. In other words, it was
simply the way the organization was structured and operated. Others seemed to see the
virtual project teams as an opportunity to exchange ideas and foster innovation within the
organization.
Finally, some respondents noted that the ability to share team members between projects
added a great deal of value when a team member’s presence was not required consistently
throughout the life of the project. This ability to share employees between teams enables
an employee to work with several virtual project teams, thus increasing the utilization
rate for that employee while keeping travel costs down and employee satisfaction up.
31
Question 2: Does your organization have different techniques for managing virtual
project teams compared with traditional project teams? If yes, what are the main
differences?
Many respondents stated that they did not use significantly different techniques for
managing virtual project teams compared to more traditional project teams. This was
surprising because the added complexity of the virtual project team would seem to
require a different management approach than a more traditional collocated project
management approach. Changes in communication habits were the most frequently noted
change in project management technique.
Communication issues seemed to arise from many different areas. When teams consist of
members with different cultural backgrounds, it is important to be very clear about what
is meant and understood by the various parties. For example, one respondent noted the
difference in the meaning of the word “done” between a person from the U.S. and a
person from India. The team members first had to recognize that there were different
perceptions of what constituted work being “done” and then come to a common
understanding of what the entire team would mean when they said something was
“done”. Additional groundwork had to be laid in order to communicate effectively.
The difficulty with defining certain terms does not only lie with different cultures. It was
noted that within the U.S., different terms could be used for the same deliverable,
development environment or project phase. For example, one software development team
32
might perform testing called “User Acceptance Testing” to test their code, and another
team might use the term “End to End testing” when referring to the exact same
environment and testing techniques. This can lead to confusion and misunderstanding
about the development process in general and specifically where the various team
members are in the development process.
Additionally, it was noted that because virtual project teams are not collocated, they often
lack an energy that collocated project teams have. This energy was identified as an
urgency to accomplish the goal. Because virtual project team members are dispersed they
often have a more “laid back” approach to the team goals. One respondent suggested that
this is a key issue for project managers to be aware of in order to successfully achieve
project and task deadlines.
Another complexity that emerges out of virtual projects is the different legal requirements
with respect to each country. This means that project managers need to be aware of the
legal requirements of the countries in which team members are operating in order to
avoid breaking any laws when dealing with dispersed team members.
Question 3: Please list in order of usefulness up to 3 tools (technology, software) that
you personally have found most useful in managing virtual project teams. Please
briefly explain how you personally use each tool to mange virtual teams.
Most respondents indicated that they used a combination of phone, e-mail, project
management software, and groupware to help manage their teams. The groupware noted
33
included Internet-based document repository tools as well as calendar management
applications. There was nothing surprising about these responses but for the lack of
diversity in the tools being used. In other words, while there seems to be a wide range of
collaborative tools available on the market for organizations to use, most virtual project
teams seemed to prefer basic tools such as the phone, e-mail, and standard project
management software like Microsoft Project.
Although such synchronous communication tools as the phone would seem to be less
popular for project teams working across wide geographic distances, some respondents
indicated that the cheap and low-tech nature of this tool made it an ideal tool for
communicating with dispersed team members in order to get instant clarification of issues
and project status.
Question 4: What impact do virtual teams have on virtual team members' morale?
On in-house team members' morale?
It seems that the isolation characteristic of distributed teams is the major contributor to a
decline in team member morale. There is also an “us versus them” mentality when the
team is separated but is still organized in small localized groups. The group that is
physically located with management or the team leader often has a greater amount of
influence on the project. This can be a source of frustration for the dispersed team
members.
34
Another issue impacting team moral is the frustration that results from delayed
deliverables. Because it is often the case that few personal relationships develop between
dispersed team members, patience is often short and understanding of the situation or
cause for the delay is limited. Trust can quickly erode and affect the way the team works
together as the project progresses. Often, a result of the breakdown of communication
between team members will result in less and less communication between team
members as frustration and misunderstandings increase. Some respondents indicated that
they felt that the project manager was responsible for building and maintaining team
morale; one way this was accomplished was with frequent conference call meetings
scheduled during a time when all team members would be able to attend. These meetings
would have to be scheduled when employees in different time zones could meet at the
same time where, for example, it might be evening in one area and early morning in
another. This way, team members are forced to talk to one another and the chances for
personal relationships to develop increased or at the very least team members were given
the opportunity to understand why certain decisions were made and why they were made.
These meetings also provide an opportunity for the project manager to identify team
members who are not relating to one another. As a result, project managers can focus on
reestablishing lines of communication that seem to be strained.
Question 5: What are the 3 most common communication problems you have
encountered with virtual project teams?
A majority of the respondents listed time differences as a common communication
problem for virtual project teams. This means that a question can go unanswered for
35
several days depending on where the team members are in relation to one another and the
time when the question is asked. Furthermore, because the communication between
virtual team members is often asynchronous the receiver of the message has control over
when the question is answered. If the receiver is being uncooperative, he or she can
choose to ignore questions from team members or only answer questions that are easy to
answer. This can lead to frustration and a slowing of the work pace, thereby leading to
increased stress and potentially higher risk as critical path tasks exceed their estimated
time to completion.
Difficulty understanding teammates because of accents, misunderstandings due to
cultural differences, sub-par written communication skills, and different meanings for
words were common communication problems reported by the respondents.
The most common issues associated with communication were time and language. Only
one respondent mentioned that tools were a limitation to communication and this was
with respect to trying to convey ideas graphically or diagrammatically. This lack of issues
with tools was surprising, in that it would seem that being able to communicate ideas
graphically while on a conference call would be a severe limitation to the team’s ability
to communicate. It would also seem that the limitations of tools and technologies would
be an issue with respect to the inability to brainstorm with team members and would
therefore be high on the list of communication issues. This, however, was not the case.
36
Question 6: What are the 3 most common control issues you have encountered with
virtual project teams?
This question generated an array of responses. Trust, responsibility, clarity of
communication, and keeping both calendars and team members informed were all
common control issues. All of these issues seem to focus around communication and
collaboration.
Trusting team members where there is little to no relationship can be difficult. Some
respondents noted that it was difficult to give up control (e.g. permission, access) unless
trust is developed first; a process that often takes time. It is easier for collocated teams to
build trust and bond. Others noted that not knowing where or what virtual team members
were doing made trust an issue. It seems that over time and with repeated communication
virtual team members have the ability to slowly build a sense of trust.
The responses indicated that defining team member responsibilities involves explicitly
stating who is required to complete each task. If task responsibilities are not explicitly
assigned to team members, unassigned tasks will inevitably be left undone. The task
deliverables must be also explicitly defined. If the quality of a deliverable is
unacceptable, then it can quickly lead to a crisis situation because dependencies can be
affected and the project could lose valuable time. This winds up being an issue of clarity
of communication and can be a major risk to virtual project teams.
37
Finally, several respondents indicated that a major control issue for virtual project
managers is keeping everyone on the same page with respect to the project schedule and
the calendar events. It was noted that dispersed team members required more information
and needed to be updated about the project status more frequently than traditional project
teams. It was suggested that this was because dispersed team members had a limited
ability to access information from a diverse and geographically dispersed team that had
little personal connection with one another.
Summary of the Primary Research Results
The data returned by the respondents provides some interesting information with respect
to the propositions that were made in designing the questionnaire. According to the
responses, the use of virtual project teams in organizations today is closely linked to cost
and employee utilization issues. Moreover, the techniques for managing virtual project
teams do not differ significantly between virtual project teams and traditional project
teams. This is surprising given the added complexities that these teams face with respect
to communication and team building. The respondents also confirmed that technology is
an enabler of virtual project teams, but not the solution to virtual project teams. A great
majority of the respondents seemed to prefer to use low-tech solutions in order to
minimize technology issues and reduce the costs associated with ensuring that all team
members have access to the same tools. It is also costly to ensure that all team members
are able to receive support when needed.
38
With the increased risks associated with virtual project teams, more frequent
communication between team members is necessary in order to reduce the chance of
miscommunication or misunderstanding. Additionally, frequent communications help to
create a sense of team. They foster a team culture, give members more of a connection to
one another, and enable them to have a sense of purpose.
Table 3, below, summarizes the results of the questionnaire.
39
Table 3: Summary of Research Results
Question Most common responses to questions Question 1: What are the main reasons your organization uses virtual project teams?
• Cost and resource constraints are main reasons organizations use virtual project teams
• A strategy for creative problem solving • Build a diverse organizational culture • Increase employee utilization
Question 2: Does your organization have different techniques for managing virtual project teams compared with traditional project teams? If yes, what are the main differences?
• Not significantly different techniques for managing virtual project teams
• Did change communication habits o Defining meaning of key terms o Finding a common language
• Awareness of different legal requirements • Create a sense of urgency
Question 3: Please list in order of usefulness up to 3 tools (technology, software) that you personally have found most useful in managing virtual project teams? Please briefly explain how you personally use each tool to mange virtual teams.
• Little diversity in types of tools used • Relatively low-tech tools preferred • Price and availability of tools are factors
Question 4: What impact do virtual teams have on virtual team members' morale? On in-house team members' morale?
• Isolation/ us vs. them mentality • Group members collocated with management get the most attention
and influence over project decisions • Lack of personal connection between team members
Question 5: What are the 3 most common communication problems you have encountered with virtual project teams?
• Time differences o Delayed responses o Short windows of opportunity to discuss issues
• Language o Accents o Sub par written communication skills o Different meanings associated with words
• Selective responsiveness to communications
Question 6: What are the 3 most common control issues you have encountered with virtual project teams?
• Trust – permissions/access • Responsibility • Clarity of communication • Updating calendars • Keeping all team members informed
40
Chapter 4: Summary and Conclusion
Summary
Not surprisingly many organizations use virtual project teams as a means to achieve
greater cost efficiencies and cope with resource constraints. It would be ideal if
organizations could bring employees from dispersed locations together for the duration of
a project, paying travel expenses, housing expenses, and miscellaneous living expenses.
However, these expenses quickly multiply as the number of team members increases.
There is also a human cost involved. When employees spend a significant time away
from family and friends they tend to become dissatisfied with their work. The result is
often a decrease in employee morale, which could affect the outcome of the project
negatively. This seems to be a loose-loose situation for the employees and the
organization. In the end, the costs often outweigh the benefits of such policies.
Yet, the benefits of bringing together employees from different cultures and backgrounds
often add immeasurable value to a project. Employees have an opportunity to learn from
each other as they work together. This can lead to personal growth and increase employee
satisfaction. Additionally, the solutions employees arrive at to the problems they face on
virtual project teams will often be more creative because employees are more likely to
think out of the box when the level of diversity is increased. Furthermore, by encouraging
employees from dispersed locations to interact with each other and build personal
relationships, the culture of the organization will often change to become more inclusive
and team oriented in contrast to an isolating “us versus them” mentality. In short, virtual
41
project teams are a cost effective solution with many benefits to both the organization and
the employee.
In order to manage virtual project teams effectively it is important to create a structured
and detailed virtual environment. Communication and collaboration are the means by
which this can be achieved. All process and procedures should be carefully detailed and
communicated to all team members. All documents should be accessible to team
members at all times. The responsibility of tasks and deliverables needs to be explicitly
documented and communicated to all team members. Deliverables need to be defined
along with key terms. Schedule updates and key decisions need to be communicated to
all team members in a timely fashion. Nothing should be assumed in this environment.
Too much communication is better than not enough.
Communication issues between team members frequently arise from differences in time
and language. Team members dispersed over wide geographic areas often only have a
small window during the day to communicate synchronously with other team members.
If this window of opportunity is missed or if a question arises outside of the window,
progress can slow and frustration levels invariably will increase. Difficulties also arise
when team members are not native English speakers; if the team is based in the U.S.
Ways of expressing oneself is very different across cultures. This can lead to confusion
with respect to the meaning of certain terms. It was reported by some respondents to the
questionnaire that team member accents also pose a problem when communicating.
Communication issues are not only associated with team members from different
42
cultures, however, they can also arise between members from different functional areas
within the organization or even between individuals with different terms for identical
processes. The team must address all of these issues in order to increase the effectiveness
of their communication and collaboration through out the life of the project.
Control issues also center on communication according to the data collected. It is often
difficult for team members to trust each other because they do not a have a personal
bond. This issue can be overcome through frequent communication over time.
Finally, managing a virtual project team is not only about the traditional process of
managing a project, it is also about facilitating the creation of a virtual community.
According to the data gathered from the questionnaire responses, some project managers
recognized the need for the project team members to feel like they are a part of something
bigger than themselves. Team members will often go through some discomfort and pain
to arrive at their goal. In order for teams to overcome such challenges they must work
together and build on each other’s ideas and experiences. Thus, the role of the project
manager seems to shift from being primarily a manager and taskmaster to a leader.
Leaders have the ability to inspire and energize their followers to accomplish a goal.
Leaders foster a certain sense of excitement and they help people feel as if they are a part
of something bigger and more important than themselves.
43
Conclusion and Implications
The research problem in this paper is to investigate how communication and
collaboration issues change the way virtual project teams are managed. Surprisingly, the
data did not show that there was a significant change in the way virtual project managers
managed their teams. This is unexpected because the nature of the virtual team is very
different compared to a more traditional team. Virtual project teams are more complex to
manage because they span time, distance, and organizational boundaries. The
environment that employees must adapt to is significantly different from more traditional
team environment. Aside from putting the appropriate processes and procedures in place,
virtual project managers need to also focus on high-level issues such as; building team
spirit and moral, getting team members to overcome distance and cultural issues to work
together to develop creative solutions, and facilitating communication so that there is
more of a personal connection and commitment among team members.
It seems that virtual project managers might need to think of themselves more as a mix
between a manager and a leader. Typically a manager is concerned with the day-to-day
operations of a group. Project managers specifically are concerned with tracking the
progress of tasks and making sure employees are doing what they should be doing to
accomplish the project objectives. Leaders are typically focused on providing direction
and purpose with respect to a goal. Virtual project managers are physically unable to
monitor team members’ daily activities and must relinquish a certain amount of control
that they are accustomed to on traditional projects. In order to overcome this challenge it
44
would seem that virtual project managers should focus on being the facilitator of
communication and collaboration and less of a manager of activities.
Recommendations for Further Research
The topic of this paper is focused on the communication and collaboration issues of
managing virtual teams. There are many other areas to investigate with respect to the
general topic of managing virtual teams. For example, one might want to look at other
key issues related to virtual project management such a building the right team. Another
interesting topic of research might be an investigation of personality types to determine if
there are certain types of people who do better than others in the virtual team
environment. Similarly, one might ask the question is any experienced project manager
capable of transitioning to a virtual project manager or is additional training needed to
prepare project managers for the transition?
45
References Baker, Sunny, Baker, Kim, On Time/ On Budget: A Step-by-Step Guide for Managing
Any Project, Prentice Hall, 1992. Birdwhistell, R. L., Kinesics and Context: Essays on Body Motion Communication,
Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1970. Boar, Bernard, The Art of Strategic Planning for Information Technology, John Wiley &
Sons, Inc., 2001. Covey, Stephen R., The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Simon & Schuster, 1989. Duarte, Deborah L.; Snyder, Nancy Tennant, Mastering Virtual Teams : Strategies,
Tools, and Techniques That Succeed, Jossey Bass, 2001. E-Business Strategies, “Offshoring Statistics – Dollar Size, Job Losses, and Market
Potential”, <http://www.ebstrategy.com/BPO/offshore_out/statistics.htm> (November 18, 2003).
Fromkin, V. and J. Rodman, An Introduction to Language, CBS College Publishing,
1983. Fussel and Benimoff, “Social and Cognitive Processes in Interpersonal Communication:
Implications for Advanced Telecommunications Technologies,” The Journal of Human Factors and Ergonomics, June 1995.
Gruhn, Volker, Schope, Lothar, Software processes for the development of electronic
commerce systems, Information and Software Technology, Elsevier Science B.V., 2002, 891-901.
Hayward, Simon, “Technology For Virtual Teams”, Gartner Research Note, May 24,
2001. Haywood, Martha, Managing Virtual Teams, Practical Techniques for High-Technology
Project Magers, Artech House, 1998. Hull, M.E.C., Taylor, P.S., Hanna, J.R.P., Millar, R.J., Software development processes –
an assessment, Information and Software Technology, Elsevier Science B.V., 2002, 1-12.
Jacobson, Ivar; Booch, Grady; Rumbaugh, James, The Unified Software Development
Process , Addison-Wesley, 1999. McMahon, Paul E., Virtual Project Management: Software Solutions for Today and the
Future, St. Lucie Press, 2001.