Developing Virtual Teams

Virtual teams are making it possible to bring together experts from remote locations so that they can work together electronically as though they were in the same room. This paper discusses the virtual team concept, keys to implementing it successfully, specialized software that can be used to support it, and suggestions from some managers experienced at using it.

Virtual teams are justifiably one of the most lauded new approaches to team collaboration in recent history. Bringing together experts across a distance used to involve a great deal of unproductive time: travel time, briefings at the meeting site to bring everyone to "the same page," and complex data exchange among software packages that were not designed to communicate with one another. It was difficult to keep team members synchronized, so completed work often had to be modified or completely redone when discrepancies were identified.

Virtual teams eliminate those problems by bringing people together electronically, often via the internet. Rather than trying to work in isolation from each other and only meeting periodically, team members can stay in close contact and work together as effectively as if they were in the same room.

The technology used to support virtual teams varies. Virtual meetings can take place via video teleconferencing, where the team members can see and talk to one another remotely. More commonly, though, conference-type telephone calls are used in conjunction with some medium of exch

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ment virtual teams in their workplace need to understand the unique challenges they will have to overcome to make virtual teaming a success. According to William R. Pape, "The best virtual meetings treat remote participants as if they're in the room." (Pape, 1997) Pape emphasizes that technology is essential to accomplish this illusion, but that the technology has to be "so unobtrusive that people forget it's there and can concentrate on the business at hand." (Pape, 1997). He advises combining "meetingware" with some type of communication technology, such as teleconferencing or videoconferencing. He also warns against trying to set up virtual meetings on the cheap, recommending an insistence on sound quality and good acoustics. It costs more to buy a speakerphone with full-duplex capability, but that capability allows people at different locations to speak at the same time and still hear each other, enhancing the illusion of being in the same room. If videoconferencing is to be used, Pape specifies that the largest possible screen be used(large enough to convey body language. The software he has used most successfully is GroupSystems for Windows, from Ventana Corporation. It facilitates team interaction and allows users to s

Category: Science - D