CURRENT TRENDS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

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CURRENT TRENDS IN VIRTUAL TEAMS

• April Reed
• DePaul University
• MBAA Conference
• March 2006
• areed7_at_cti.depaul.edu

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OVERVIEW

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

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What are Virtual Project Teams?

• A virtual project team is a group of
  geographically dispersed people working together
  on a one-time unique effort.

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Impact of Driving Forces on Virtual Teams

• Increased the usage of virtual teams
• New forces emerging
• Existing forces intensifying

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Top Driving Forces

• High cost of business travel
• Security concerns with travel
• Outsourcing and offshoring
• Desire to have a dream team
• Need for cross-organizational interaction
• Need for diversity of ideas and experiences
• Increase in number of tools for communication and
  collaboration
• Decrease in cost of tools

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Benefits

• Is it possible that virtual teams are more
  productive than traditional teams?

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Virtual Team Performance

• Virtual team characteristics leveraged to enhance
  team 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)

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Communication

• Methods, processes and procedures people use to
  transfer info back and forth
• Virtual teams are comprised of group members who
  collaborate from different locations using
  communication technology (Walther et al)
• Virtual team members need to work with a variety
  of communication styles

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Communication tools

• Low level of media richness (Malhotra
  Majchrzak)
• E-mail
• Conference calls
• High level of media richness
• Videoconferencing
• Web conferencing
• Virtual Workspaces

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Virtual Workspaces
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Virtual Team Composition

• Need assessment processes to determine
  suitability of team members (Stevenson and
  McGrath)

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Team Composition

• globalization of project teams has increased
  demographic and cultural diversity, which can
  create obstacles to the smooth functioning of
  team processes, but also can provide benefits in
  creativity, innovation and problem-solving.
  (Beise)

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Needs of Virtual Teams

• Software tools and hardware
• Training and development in virtual team
  processes
• Time to practice new processes (Kirkman and
  Mathieu)

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Conclusion

• Volume of recent literature on virtual teams is a
  clue to its degree of importance
• Key to virtual team success is adapting to take
  advantage of virtual team benefits

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References