Sunday, March 14, 2010

Virtual Teams - Love it or Hate it?


Hi all, hoped you enjoyed your spring break. I did, I slept 75% of the time, went nowhere and did nothing until now. Sometimes, it feels great to be a bum. Besides all that, I read the following articles: 6 ways to build trust with your virtual teams and Working Together...When Apart.

These articles provide generally accepted rules for making a virtual team successful. Though virtual teams may have some similarities, they differ by culture and dynamics. And I think that in order for a virtual team to be successful, is for the leader to adapt to the group's culture and work on enhancing their strengths.

Take me for an example, I prefer virtual teams. I'm flexible because I do agree that our first meeting should be personal where team members become familiar with each other. And I'm aware that circumstances may arise when the team has to meet face-to-face. But for some strange reason, all face-to-face interactions with my groups has always been a waste of time, for the most part. Actually, my groups have always been more productive when virtual.

For instance, I'm currently taking a class where the class meets once a week, we have weekly deliverables and due to conflicting schedules my team is unable to meet (EVER!). So thanks to Google docs, G chat, emails, texts etc. and all other available technology my team completes our deliverables on time. I really love technology!

6 comments:

  1. I do agree that many face to face interactions are a waste of time but i think that they do have some value because you are able to get a feel for the rest of your team and i think it helps build chemistry which is very tough to develop over gmail/google docs.

    I also agree that requirements analysis sucks.

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  2. I think the team leader has to have excellent people skills in order to build and maintain trust relationship among the members. Rather than adapting to the culture, he or she may have to develop a team culture that is necessary for success.

    In school, I have also experienced similar situations regarding face-to-face meetings being unproductive, while our team gets more done online via Skype and Gmail chat. Face-to-face interactions can be a waste of time when members get off topic or they disagree and start arguing about one issue.

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  3. I have to say that "da Boss" is a brave soul. Again, I agree but privately. I'm not that bold to say it out loud.

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  4. How did you survive in this boring DC?
    The idea of virtual teams is great and it's something that really makes us enthusiastic.In the real world meetings with classmates never works out because we are either not interested or not enthusiastic about it. The second life is a saviour..

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  5. Going to answer your topic question. I hate virtual teams. while it may be convenient, it always turns out that nothing gets accomplished during virtual sessions

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  6. I have never worked on a virtual team but I feel like there are instances where you can slack off. If I got an email asking where my part of the assignment is I can just ignore it, but in person I would have to answer.

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