Due to rapid growth in technology and advancement in communication tools, companies are more focussed on using virtual teams to manage their projects. Virtual team management is an art and requires strategy and planning to manage Team, Project and Technology to deliver and progress. Virtual teams can involve teams which are locally dispersed and also teams that are geographically dispersed in a culturally dynamic environment. In my career i have managed some of the culturally and geographically dispersed team and have used strategies and lessons learnt to ensure the delivery is smooth. I would like to discuss some of the strategies and also welcome constructive comments for a mutually beneficial knowledge sharing.
Cultural Understanding: We should note that though geographically dispersed these teams may have culturally different members. Understanding of cultures can play a vital role in the management of these teams as some things that might feel right for us might feel unacceptable for others in their culture. Behaviours and gestures can be different and interpreted differently.
Understand the Organisation structure: As these teams are geographically dispersed in a project environment, it’s highly possible that you are in a matrix environment. Understanding of Organisation structure and escalation matrix could help the project manager to resolve conflicts and also aid the project manager and the team member to decide during competing priorities.
Team meetings: Communication and involvement is key to success of the team when dealing with dispersed teams. Team meetings should be scheduled to cover participants across geography to enhance team participation. However the meetings need to be more of interactive and focussed to encourage the team involvement, avoid distractions and foster common understanding. Team meeting should be followed up with the next course of action. While making decisions use consultation, consensus to arrive at a conclusion.
Mode of communication: It’s possible that all the team members might not be available for a meeting due to competing priorities. Other medium of communication needs to be supplemented for better team and time management like chats, emails, tele conference. This can save time and effort while gathering information across teams.
Informal Meetings: Apart from regular meeting its in the best the PM to offline connect with team members to understand their progress, conflicts or tap on problems with potential to prevail unnoticed into a issue in a log run.
Collocation: During the course of the project an opportunity to bring your teams together could provide value and understanding and increase in efficiency. The ideal would be during the kick off meetings, during the achievement of major milestone or project completion celebration. This might boost the confidence of the team.
Delegation: When teams are exceptionally large it is advisable to delegate task to senior team members and simultaneously enabling them to mentor junior team members.
Big picture: Team should be encouraged and inspired by showing them the big picture the team and the project. Team members can perform better if they see the value they get like skills, growth and recognition. While associating internal rewards for the career growth, it’s important to tag it to culturally accepted recognition and growth options.
Know your Responsibility: Working on technical projects its easier for a technical PM to encroach on the space of IT SMEs.However PM needs to provide guidance and recommendation and encourage SMEs to provide solutions and estimates for the work package.
Increase productivity by sharing the project documents: Project documents managed within central repository for easier access by team members enables team member to deliver project concurrently increasing productivity. This also helps provide accountability, access management and tracking changes.
The important aspect is to communicate and use the right medium to communicate along with effective risk analysis. These approaches would enable us to deliver projects better. Try these approached in your project and let me know your feedback.
Below is a video shared by on Project Lifecycle via Youtube.com
CREDITS:
Image: www.freedigitalphotos.net
Video: Shared by via Youtube.com
Continue Reading
