Harlan C. Bridges, PMP

Introduction

As we continue to enhance our ecomm practice, we are using "virtual" teams more frequently. This working model will become more prevalent as we continue develop our web development activities. The Virtual team can allow us to use our resources more efficiently. However, leading virtual teams requires a different set of leadership skills and tools than the traditional "on-site" team. This paper presents a study of virtual teams, the challenges they present and attempts to provide some solutions to those challenges.

What is a virtual team?

What is a team?

A team can be described as a small number of people with complimentary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves accountable.

Teams normally have from two to twenty-five people. Larger groups tend to become sub-teams. Teams need complimentary skills or the right mix of skills to do the job assigned. These skills fall into three categories: technical or functional expertise, problem-solving and decision-making skills, and interpersonal skills. A team's purpose and performance goals go together. Both must clear or confusion will likely result. It is important that the team own and commit to the purpose and shape it if necessary. Teams must develop a common approach or method on how they will work together to accomplish their purpose. Finally, groups become teams when they hold themselves accountable for the success of the project.

What is a virtual team?

In addition to being a team, virtual teams have members that are physically separated from each other and that primarily interact electronically. Virtual teams have the following characteristics.

  • Members are mutually accountable for team results.
  • Members are dispersed geographically.
  • Members work apart more than in the same location.
  • The team solves problems and makes decisions jointly.
  • The team usually has fewer than twenty members.

Strategies for Virtual Teams

Leaders of virtual teams must be prepared to implement a clear strategy for leading the team.

Develop the relationship

It is important to build team comradery and spirit. Virtual teams do not have the opportunities that on-site teams use to build closeness. Use the following techniques to build and foster relationships between team members.

  • Hold an initial face-to-face meeting.
  • Establish an interdependency among team members.
  • For long-term or permanent teams, establish a schedule of periodic face-to-face meetings.
  • Agree not only on what, when, and how information will be shared but also on how team members will respond to it.
  • Establish clear norms and protocols for surfacing assumptions and conflicts.
  • Make explicit the need for virtual team members to nurture each other and create relationships.
  • Recognize and honor diversity.

Use technology efficiently to support the team.

Use technology appropriately. Support the team with the proper software and hardware for the tasks at hand. General hardware requirements include phones, PCs, and communication links such as local area networks (LAN) and wide area networks (WAN) and audio conferencing. Another very useful tool for virtual teaming is video conferencing. Software requirements include groupware products such as electronic mail (Outlook), meeting facilitation software (NetMeeting), and group project/time management systems (web based project management applications).

Effective Leadership

Effective team leaders earnestly believe that they do not have all the answers and they do not insist on providing them. They are comfortable with delegating and allowing others to make decisions. Strong leaders know they cannot be successful without the combined efforts and contributions of all the team members. These are qualities central to leadership of any team, but they are vital to the success of virtual teams. Keep these findings in mind when leading virtual teams.

  • Virtual teams work.
  • People can be trusted in a virtual environment.
  • Virtual teams can be used for a variety of situations such as product development, telecommuting, web development, and applications development.
  • Few teams are 100% virtual.
  • Reward and recognize people for their achievements.
  • Keep everyone informed.
  • Encourage everyone to keep everyone else informed.
  • Make progress towards goals visible.
  • Formative stages, conflict resolution, team building, and rich interactive communication is best done in a face-to-face mode.
  • Operational work can generally be performed in a virtual mode without much difficulty.
  • Base performance on results as opposed to "time spent in chair."

Ensure that team basics are well defined and agreed upon. These basics include meeting agendas, a team mission statement, well defined roles and responsibilities, norms or a code of conduct, a project schedule, and periodic assessments towards progress.

Leadership is about making things happen and getting things done. Leadership is about trusting your team members to do their job and allowing them to make decisions. Leaders must use information and communication technologies in addition to the traditional leadership skills.

Communications - The Essential Element

Four Key principles

Successful communications depend on the following four principles.

  • Defining and respecting standards for availability and acknowledgement
  • Replacing lost context in communications
  • Using synchronous communication
  • Prioritizing communication

These principles of communication are independent of the technology used in the communication process. Once team members understand these principles changes in communication tools or software releases will not create difficulties in performing good communication practices.

Standards for availability and acknowledgement

It is vital for collocated teams to develop standards for availability and acknowledgement. These standards should be viewed as contracts among the members defining when they will be available and how quickly they will respond to communication. These standards may vary depending on the function each member has with the team. These standards should take the form of written contracts when the team is composed of members of different organizations. One successful technique consists of publishing members availability standards on a personal web page.

The system of personal web pages works best when all the members are linked via a department or team web page. If your team does not access to a web server, another technique is to create pamphlet detailing each member's availability standards. The tools for communicating the standards are not the important aspect of standards, but rather the mutual understanding of developing and respecting standards. It is also important not to overdo availability. Decide what is really appropriate and necessary.

Implementing acknowledgement standards is more challenging. When we are collocated, we use visual clues to determine acknowledgement. It is such a natural part of the communication process that we are not conscious of it.

When we communicate remotely, we must request and provide acknowledgement to ensure our messages are received and understood. We should set different levels of acknowledgement and strictly adhere to the standards. Without this acknowledgement process, we can not tell when communication has broken down. Virtual teams need to use "closed loop" communications. Closed loop communications consist of both the message and an acknowledgement to the message.

Replacing context

In order for us to understand information that is transmitted to us, we need to have a good idea of the sender's frame of reference or context. Most electronic communication is sterile of context. We must consciously build context in our electronic communications. Context can be divided into three different types:

  • Physical context
  • Social context
  • Situational context

Physical context occurs when you are in the same room or have the same field of view. An object being discussed can be seen by all participants. We can use words like "this" or "that" when describing the object. If the participants are in different rooms or countries, this dialogue will not lead to clarity. In communicating with team members in different locations, we must use language and examples that will replace physical context.

Social context refers to those societal norms and rules that help us communicate. We have definite social rules that govern how we interact and communicate with each other. When dealing with virtual teams, it is important to be aware of the cultural differences and how they can affect communication.

Situational context refers to the issues and events surrounding the people we communicate with. When we are aware of the situational context, we know when a person is in a bad mood and that this might not be the best time to ask for favors.

Synchronous Communication

Synchronous communication occurs when all the parties involved are communication simultaneously. That doesn't mean they are all talking at once, but that they participating in the same conversation. Face to face meetings, phone conversations and video conferences are examples of synchronous communication. Asynchronous communication occurs when there is a delay in the response. Email, voice mail, faxes and web forums are examples.

Synchronous communication is important because it tends to build relationships and trust more quickly. Relationships are important because we treat people that we have relationships with differently. We are more responsive, are better able to understand each other's point of view and generally work better together. This increases the trust among team members and team managers.

Prioritizing communication

Electronic communication has given us the unprecedented ability to communicate to many individuals quickly and cheaply. All of us have had the experience of being a distribution list that others use to broadcast every piece information about some aspect of their work. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to get off the list. As senders, we must learn to prioritize information that we send to our team members. Team managers must take on the responsibility of helping team members develop a method prioritizing communication. Team members must come to understand the process and adhere to it.

Application of the principles to electronic communication

The following paragraphs discuss the application of the four principles of communication. Understanding the principles is the first step to good communication techniques. Application of the principles ensure the success of your communication efforts.

Email

Studies in the 1980's established that more than sixty percent of communications in organization was informal. Hallway conversations, visits at the water cooler, a manager popping into your office, these are all forms of informal communication. Virtual teams lose this communication stream.

We need to replace the traditional water cooler with an "electronic water cooler." In order to do that, we must take the following steps.

  1. Create a symbolic name for the team.
  2. Train team members to communicate with the team, not just individuals.
  3. Use prioritization and filtering conventions to deal with "email overload."
  4. Email systems generally have the capability to create distribution list with symbolic names. Use this method to replace the water cooler and hallway crier. When members become used to communicating this way, the team will be better informed than they were with the informal process.
  5. Once we have established this process, we need to develop a method for dealing with email overload. Use the email filtering system and email prioritization to accomplish this. Use the subject field of your email to perform prioritization. By using the following convention to enter information in the subject line, emails can be quickly prioritized and filtered.
Example Subject Heading Conventions
mh-today comments on your document
mh today Comments on your document
Indicate the person or team the message is directed to. This convention allows you to determine whether the message is directed to you or whether you are just being copied. Priority level
read NOW
read today
read this week
read at your leisure		 A description or title of the document

Video conferencing

Video conferencing can be used to great effect in team building. It really makes no difference in the speed or quality of individual meetings. Use this medium to meet with multiple team members on a regular basis.

The major advantage of video conferencing is team building. It allows teams to build social context and to put a face and personality to a team member. It can be helpful in establishing shared physical content. Video conferencing allows me to see what you are talking about and to gauge, by observation, your levels of concern and understanding of issues.

Teleconferencing

Teleconferencing is one of the most cost effective means for meetings between virtual teams. However there are some basic problems that must be overcome. It is not a good medium for building physical, situational, and social context. In order to overcome these obstacles team members must actively engage in building context. It is the meeting leader's responsibility to make this happen. Teleconferences require a good meeting agenda. The agenda should include a background section summarizing events leading up to the meeting. At the initiation of the meeting, the meeting leader should go over the summary and get agreement from the attendees that everyone has the same situational context.

Because teleconferences are not the best for building social context, it is left to the meeting leader to use other techniques to build the social context. When attendees have not met before, the meeting leader should circulate an attendance list with short bios prior to the meeting. If the meeting is a kickoff meeting, it is a good idea to send resumes.

Much planning and forethought is required to establish physical context for teleconferences. Establish ahead of time what documents will be discussed or reviewed. Ensure that all attendees have these documents with enough lead time to study and become familiar with them. A half an hour before the meeting is not sufficient time. Whenever possible attendees should have a minimum of a full working day to study the documentation. The documents should have page numbers, paragraph numbers and all figures should be numbered. Without these guideposts, it is very difficult to discuss documents. Remember the attendees cannot see you pointing at a paragraph or figure. Leaving out these simple guideposts can increase review/discussion time by as much as 3 times.

The lack of physical context at teleconferences can make it difficult to tell who is talking and to whom the conversation is directed. The physical cues we take for granted in a face-to-face meeting do not exist. Attendees can't see gestures or see where the speaker is looking. During a teleconference, physical cues must be replaced with verbal techniques. The speaker should identify themselves and to whom the conversation is directed.

Document conferencing

Document conferencing (electronic whiteboarding) is a good idea that really has been technologically achieved. Though there are several software packages for holding document conferences, the speed of delivery generally leaves much to be desired. Unless all the attendees are connected through a high speed connect (at least 384 bps), the results will be frustrating and less than satisfactory.

Team Building

Team building process

Team building requires managers to create an infrastructure that supports communication and an efficient work process. Use the following techniques to faciliate effective team building.

  • Establish a shared vision.
  • Create an infrastructure (technology, policies, and processes which facilitate communication, workflow, relationship building and corporate memory).
  • Select and assess members.
  • Make the work experience rewarding and enjoyable for team members on a personal level.
  • Teams need to adjust to the goals, processes, tools and skills in order achieve high levels of performance. This requires managers to move through this process in the right order in order to create successful teams. Doing the wrong thing or the right thing in the wrong order can lead to less than desired results including failure.

Building team spirit/loyalty/cohesiveness

Another key to the success of virtual teams requires that managers make the work experience rewarding and enjoyable on a personal level for team members.

Building team identity

The most important thing a manager can do to build team identity is to formally give the team a name. This allows team members to think of the team as a real entity. Since virtual teams do not have a shared location, the only way to identify with a team by naming it.

Use the team name as an email alias. Create logos or symbols denoting the team. Use the logo or symbol on all correspondence, reports, and other communications. Build a team web page when possible.

Building trust and fostering relationships among remote team members

Managers must create an environment that allows team members to build trust and create relationships. The most effective way to achieve includes establishing and adhering to availability standards and using face to face meetings. The best times to schedule face to face meetings are:

  • At the beginning of the project;
  • When there are significant personnel changes;
  • When there are complex or sensitive negotiations.

If a good electronic meeting schedule is in force, teams should meet face to face at least twice year at a minimum. For teams that do not have a facility for regular voice or videoconferences, it is necessary to schedule more frequent face to face meetings.

Managers can also foster team building by using other forms of electronic infrastructure. Electronic (e.g. , web based) bulletins or newsgroups can serve as "local hangouts" where team members can get together to exchange information and ideas.

Making sure team members have fun

Everyone likes to go to work when it's fun. By creating an environment in which it is fun to work, managers can go a long way to ensure cohesive and strong teams. Managers should make it a priority to praise and reward team members. In addition, managers should set peer reward systems so that team members reward one another. The hardest part of creating a successful reward system is knowing enough about remote team members to make the reward meaningful. As managers of distributed teams, we need to create a way for people to learn enough about each other to effectively reward one another.

Creating personal web pages with some personal information about each team member can be an effective way of learning about each other. Make sure team members understand that this information is used as a way of learning about each other. Managers should provide guidelines to team members regarding what is appropriate content for personal web pages.

The smallest reward or positive interaction can make a significant difference in people's behavior. Managers of virtual teams need to be creative when it comes to the small rewards that they bestow on team members. Be aware of differences in life style and culture. Most of us know how to make people feel good about their jobs, we just need to make it a priority.

Remote Management Skills

Being a member of a virtual team requires adjustments in work style by each team member. Managers will have the biggest adjustment. Most managers are used to working with collocated teams and have become adept at management by observation. Virtual teams require managers to make adjustments including the following:

  • Managing by objective
  • Mentoring and training remotely
  • Developing a shared process

Managers must learn to monitor projects closely. We are generally reluctant to do this for fear that team members will perceive us as controlling them. Monitoring a project does not mean controlling or micro-managing a team. We monitor a project to determine its status and to take corrective action when necessary. Detecting and correcting problems early is the key to successful on time completion of a project. The earlier a problem is corrected the less impact it will have on a project.

Monitoring versus Controlling

In order to effectively monitor a project, we often must inform team members why we monitor the project and distinguish between monitoring and controlling. Collecting adequate project status is not micro-managing. Participative decision making can and should occur along with monitoring performance. All teams learn and improve based on accurate performance information collected during a project. Use a commitment strategy versus a control strategy. This means that:

  • Team members participate in setting goals
  • Performance and productivity information is shared with the team members
  • Team members participate in decision-making and performance tracking

In order for this strategy to be effective, performance information must be collected. Team members acceptance of goals is a critical factor. Team acceptance usually requires that they participate when setting goals. Success depends on accurate project status and early corrective action. Successful managers use management by objectives and are able to create realistic project plans, performance metrics, and reporting mechanisms.

Managing by objective (MBO)

In spite of the constant discussion regarding managing by objectives (MBO), most firms due it poorly or not at all. We have developed our management skills around managing by observation. As managers, we spend much of our time observing our teams, looking for signs of trouble. Many managers have become so adept at this that the team members are not aware that is going on. While this will can work successfully for collocated teams, it will not work with virtual teams. It becomes imperative that we become as adept at managing by objective.

Managing by objective requires that we create clearly defined and timely deliverables. Monthly deliverables alone won't provide a project manager with adequate warning to make corrective action. This is especially true with most web and high tech projects that have very compressed lifecycles. These projects may require weekly deliverables and in some cases daily deliverables. However, MBO requires more than defining deliverables. Four keys to successful MBO are:

  • Develop practical metrics.
  • Refine estimating skills of both managers and team members.
  • Increase visibility with frequent deliverables, prototyping, and early integration.
  • Define project reporting mechanisms

Mentor and train remote workers

Mentoring and training can be done remotely in spite of what we often hear. The notion that people can only learn in a face-to-face environment is completely inaccurate. For technical skills, research has shown that the medium used for instruction has no bearing on the learning outcome of the student. Distance education has been proven effective for most types of learning. It is true that certain management and communication skills are better taught face to face, however most job skills can be effectively mentored remotely.

Team members can use web-based training, CD-ROM based training, videotapes, videoconferences, voice conferences, and instruction manuals. Mentors can respond to questions and requests for assistance via email, phone, and with other means such as NetMeeting.

Generally, mentoring should occur in these areas:

  • Technical Skills - involves increasing proficiency in core business skills, such as programming and web design and layout
  • Work Process Skills - involves teaching how business is done on the team, such as work flow processes and how submit an expense report
  • Communication Skills - involves instruction in how to communicate with other team members and possibly clients, such as email skills, videoconferencing, and writing reports
  • Leadership Skills - involves mentoring team members on how to motivate and influence other team members
  • Management Skills - involves self management skills such as time management and team management skills

Develop a shared process

In order for team to successfully work together, they need to have a uniform understanding of how work will be done and in what order the work will be done. To develop this understanding, we must create a shared process. One of the first steps in creating a shared process is defining and documenting your own process. Where possible, create a project lifecycle document. You should be able succinctly describe this process in two pages or less. Anything longer may indicate problems with the process. Develop a glossary of terms so that everyone has the same understanding of those terms. Where appropriate and possible, include team members in developing a shared process. Remember, they must accept the process and the best way to ensure this is develop a sense of ownership with your team.

Influence management

Influence management becomes a necessary skill when you have a matrixed organization. In other words, when not all the team members report directly to you. This can create situations that will require extra effort because you must convince rather than control.

There are several types of authority you may have when you are dealing with matrixed teams.

  • Direct authority: you have the authority to hire, fire, and reward and penalize team members.
  • Expert authority: you have more technical expertise than the team members.
  • Referent authority: you have excellent relationships with the people in direct authority and are known to be regular and respected reporting channel.
  • Personal authority: you have the ability to influence team members actions because of their personal relationships with you.

If you don't have direct authority, you will need to use some combination(s) of the other three types of authority.

Virtual Team Organization

An organization's maturity level often determines a virtual team's organization. The lower on the maturity level an organization is, the more dependent on co-location it will be. Organizations at the upper end of the maturity level will generally function well with virtual teamwork. These organizations can implement location independent organizations adeptly.

Partition and locate work

In order to successfully partition work, managers of virtual teams must take into account time space considerations and work flow.

Close collaborators should occupy the same time space. Close collaborators are those team members who must communicate several times a day. It is more important that close collaborators be working at the same time of day (time space) than in the same area. This allows them to maintain a high level of availability to each other. Project managers need to identify close collaborators at the beginning of the project and determine how they will shift into a mutually acceptable time space. This means they should have the same core working hours. Core working hours should involve a four to six hour crossover per day.

Project managers should keep in mind any requirements for access to special equipment. Be sure team members of "acceptable" access to equipment.

Use time zones to your favor. Where possible, match the work flow to the time flow. Ensure that team members on the east coast are not waiting for work being on the west coast. You can effectively increase a work day with the proper matching of work flow to time flow. For instance, set up the test department on the west coast and the development group on the east coast. Thus a project finished at noon in the east could be delivered to the test group in the west at 9:00 AM. That's an effective gain of three hours.

Physical deliverables and time delays

Be aware of how physical deliverables will impact the work flow. Physical deliverables are work products that are not information based, in other words, any thing that can not be sent by email, file transfer protocols (FTP) or fax. If certain work requires repeated transfers of physical deliverables, make sure those collaborators are in the same physical location where possible. When physical deliverables require two or more days to be transferred back and forth, it can easily double project time.

Hidden physical deliverables

Another form of physical deliverables may not be obvious at first. Hidden physical deliverables are those deliverables that should be electronic deliverables, but are not because of incompatibility issues. Different operating systems, different software, files to large to transfer through email are examples of hidden physical deliverables. Mismatches in processes and workflow can also create hidden physical deliverables.

Take a close look at the pert chart for the project. Look for areas where transfers of information will occur. Examine the process, toolset, and skills of your team members. Find and deal with the mismatches at the beginning of the project.

Technology

This is subject is worth an entire paper in itself. There are many ways to support virtual teams with today's technology. The most common methods include some method of networking. These methods include:

  • Local Area Networks (LAN)
  • Wide Area Networks (WAN)
  • Remote LAN Access
  • Virtual Private Networks (VPN)
  • Telecommunications technologies
    • ISDN
    • Frame Relay
    • DSL

Networking technology is a crucial part of the infrastructure needed to support virtual teams. Poor understanding of the technology, inadequate support, poor implementation of the technology can assure major challenges to the success of the team. Managers must ensure that the tools for the job are in place, supported appropriately, and team members have the necessary skills to use the tools. Develop the requirements needed to support your team. Spend time with your IT manager and make sure the IT manager understands those requirements and can implement the technology required to meet the requirements.

Conclusion

Creating a successful virtual team requires commitment from all the team members. Be prepared to devote time to building relationships and trust within the team. Team members new to virtual teaming may experience a drop in performance and feel frustrated with the new environment.

Create appropriate project plans, develop and stick with processes. Align those processes with work flow and time space requirements. Use management by objective and communicate. Build relationships and trust among team members. Make sure the team has fun. By following the techniques described here, developing successful virtual teams will soon be second nature.