PowerPoint Slide
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Week4slides-AlDietz.pptxManagement – Local vs Virtual teams
Local vs virtual team similarities
Achieve a common purpose and goal – Project success
Defined roles and duties
Local and virtual differences
Leadership lines of authority can be confusing
Relationships can be challenging
Team trust and cohesion
Teams are simply defined as a group of individuals working together. Most of us are familiar with traditional or conventional teams. Conventional teams are those teams that have members within a boundary area or a physical proximity of each other. Virtual teams are geographically separated but are identified as a team because of a shared common goal. Traditional or conventional teams usually meet face to face in project meetings, executive meetings, risk meetings and so on. Virtual teams are usually geographically separated by location and time zones and require mediation and communication via collaborative communication tools. However, virtual teams provide readymade talent, in other words, talent that the current project does not have and in some cases a unique technical requirement or specialty. While there are benefits to both physical and virtual teams as this slide examines the difference and challenges between them.
Staff selection challenges for Local and Virtual teams:
Local project team staff are selected largely on their functional expertise. Virtual team are selected for many of the same reason but there are challenges such as:
Lack of face to face interaction can lead to loneliness
With virtual team members, you must assume they are proactive, exceptional time management and self-starters and the ability to communicate across cultural and geographic boundaries
Organization structure for local and virtual teams:
Local teams have a clear idea of organizational structure and boundaries. Virtual teams operate under later organization structures and even if the project has formal organization boundaries the perception for many organizational teams is that the authority is relatively flat. This perception is largely created because of a single intermediary that facilitates communication between local and virtual team staff.
Project leadership:
Virtual teams, project leadership cannot always control the day to day activities and tend to delegate a bit more. This give the project a little less control of the resources in comparison to local team resources
Knowledge exchange & Decision making can be handled formally and informally for local teams. Hallway communication and ad-hoc meetings to collaborate last minute thoughts and planning can be a tremendous asset to a project. This same dynamic is not as easily applied with virtual teams. Unless the communication tools are religiously used by all local and virtual team members, the subtleties of project communication and team dynamics get lost with virtual team mates.
Relationship building:
Social rapport and daily interaction are part of the fundamental attributes of team dynamics and while these aren’t obvious team building processes they are considered assumptions and foundational ground work for developing teams. Seeing someone each day gives familiar with project resources and tasks and creates a task to a face. This face to face dynamic is lost with virtual teams, as virtual teams tend to be more task focused since their geographic dynamics limit them to work related intersections only.
Social and emotional intelligence:
Trust, team cohesion and commitment are easily lost with virtual teams. The emotional contract we develop with team mates builds bridges and develops foundation layers of trust and team work as the project gains momentum and expands in time and resources during he later phases. Virtual teams have difficulty making up this important dynamic and many times limited to collaborative tools and immediate project tasks.
There are many challenges in working with virtual and local project teams. Its paramount to give extra attention to communication and collaboration issues. With combined local and virtual teams, focus on building trust and cohesion play a larger than traditional local teams and require special focus to take advantage of the specialize skill sets of virtual teams (MSG, 2017).
References
MSG Management Study Guide. (n.d.). Retrieved December 17, 2017, from http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-and-traditional-teams.htm
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Strategies – High Performance teams
Attributes of high performing project teams:
Prepare the project environment for success
Clear project expectations
Focused tasks
Onboard new project staff the right way
Empowerment
Project management is a widely accepted approach and profession supported by businesses globally. With an increase in organization project acceptance, refined project processes that support projects from inception to completion, limited effort has been given to team development and high performing teams. There is an abundance of information about teamwork and leadership but very little regarding high performing teams and project management. With a lack of information on project team development a case can be made for giving the area of project leadership and teamwork much more attention.
It is a generally agreed that the greater the importance placed in team development, the better the project result will be (Edward & Kinlaw, 2000). The underlying lesson is if you leave team performance to get created through an organic process then it’s unlikely high performance will emerge. It’s important that the project manager put the necessary time and effort into building cohesion between all member of the project it ensure the optimum presence of tools and ideas are at the forefront and that your project team is being heard.
Prepare the project environment – Projects become inundated with documentation but there should always be a clear vision and written mission statement that all team members can digest. As a project manager, it’s to the benefit of the project that each team member knows what the mission statements is. With all project members on board, and having the statement memorized, it create a galvanizing message through the life of the project
Three-five focused tasks - In line with the project vision and mission statement, understanding each members task provides additional project clarity and purpose
Clearly define task expectations - Once tasks are assigned, what is the expectation of those tasks? If you’re a member of the risk team, the risk team expectation would serve optimize the project if each member new exactly what the risk meeting was intended to do. This removes ambiguity and creates a sustained culture of excellence.
Prepare the project member - When onboarding staff, have an onboarding process. The onboarding process would cover the major facets of the project, the purpose of the project and why the new staff is important to the project.
Empowerment - High performance teams feel empowered. Research shows that projects that have a method of communicating ideas and having those ideas heard corollate directly to team performance (Grimes, n.d.).
In conclusion, we can surmise that projects that have clear goals, a clear understanding of project roles and responsibilities as well as an understanding of the projects purpose, are attributes to high performing teams as well as examples of projects that have an excellent chance of performing at a high level.
Edward J., Kinlaw, C. S., & Kinlaw, D. C. (2000). Developing superior project teams: a study of the characteristics of high performance in project teams. Paper presented at PMI® Research Conference 2000: Project Management Research at the Turn of the Millennium, Paris, France. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Grimes, R. (n.d.). Developing a High Performance Project Team. Retrieved December 17, 2017, from https://www.projectsmart.co.uk/developing-a-high-performance-project-team.php
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