Advantages Of A Virtual Team

Virtual- teams that are separated by location, so they work together remotely using the internet and technology. The way that a team would need this would be if for example if a group needed to go to London and they had some of their members working in Wolverhampton then they would need to use the internet and things such as face time, skype etc.

According to Gibson (2012), Virtual Teams are defined as, “a team that relies on interactive technology to work together when separated by physical distance.” (p. 244) Ironically, I manage a virtual team and I wholeheartedly agree with best practices managing virtual teams. I have team members who support the same business unit, physically sit in an office but in various locations from Michigan to Florida. Most of my team I inherited but have done a decent job of following the best practices discussed by Gibson.

Derven, M. (2016). Diversity & inclusion are essential to a global virtual team's SUCCESS. TD: Talent Development, 70(7), 54-59.

Virtual Team on the other hand is a group of people working across time, space, and organizational boundaries which communication links are strengthened by the internet. It should be noted that virtual teams can also mean individuals spread across different cultures and languages. (“Virtual Team - Origin, Definition and its Scope,” 2016). More so, this team of geographically dispersed professionals working together as a unit despite distance are committed to achieving a single objective, holding one another mutually accountable.

Being a part of a virtual group brought along many new and different experiences. Along with these unique experiences I realized the advantages and disadvantages of working in a virtual group. My virtual group team name was the Hummingbirds and our assignment was to create a poster/banner/flyer for a nonprofit organization, of our choosing, to submit into a simulated grant competition. Overall I would say that working in a virtual small group was different than working in my face-to-face small group. According to our book, virtual small group communication is communication among group members who are not together in the same physical location. The major thing that was different for me was not getting to see my actual group members. Since we were not able to be there physically, communication was scares. Text messages and emails were exchanged, but not as often as verbal words would have been if we were all together. Some things that were similar about my two groups was our creativity

Virtual teams are also referred to as far-flung teams, which are teams that are tasked towards meeting a particular goal yet they are located in very different geographical location and are not able to meet on regular basis to carry out the task. This distance between the members of the group is a big challenge that has to be overcome in order for the group to reach their goal.

It has long been established by research that clinical internships and student teaching have one of the most profound effects in the preparation of competent teachers (Darling-Hammond & Baratz-Snowden, 2007). The research literature on virtual coaching provides evidence that virtual coaching is a promising method for providing teacher candidates enrolled in an alternative route teacher program with the support they need during their clinical internship to become effective teachers. Virtual coaching is cost effective option that improves clinical internships for all stakeholders, and enhances the systematic process of preparing future teachers by levering emerging technologies.

We were able to travel more efficiently with our teams all going to the same place and at each activity we had to split up into smaller groups so it wasn't entirely the same dynamic. I think that it helped people feel less hectic and more normal to travel around the room with our teams.

I work with many colleagues who work remote across the United States and I am constantly looking for ways to engage these employees on a regular basis. Through our discussion on virtual teams there were a few points that I think are useful when managing and engaging a virtual team. The first is making sure the team meets face-to-face in the beginning, this way team members view each other as people versus just someone they email. The second is taking advantage of video conferencing versus just using conference calls. This is something my company has the capability to do, but shys away from. This is one vehicle I think we need to become more comfortable using if we want to be successful as a remote teams. In addition, the video “conference call in real life” was a funny, yet realistic interpretation of exactly what happens during conference calls. It served as a reminder to be engaged and present in the now versus multitasking while on a call. Lastly, the role play we did on conference call I thought was particularly interesting. To be honest it was actually really hard to come to a decision as a team on the call without seeing the other team member’s visual cues. There were often awkward silences and people talking over each other as a result of not being able to read visual cues. It really showed how difficult it can be as a new team to try and accomplish things virtually.

Ebrahim, A., Shamsuddin, A. & Taha, Z. (2009). Virtual Teams: A Literature Review. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Science, 3(3), 2653-2669.

Global business, increased supplier involvement, network communications and pressure on travel costs have led to increased use of virtual project teams. In many cases the teams have little previous experience working together and no shared awareness of project assumptions, feasibilities, and risks. Traditional centralized and detailed planning is not an effective option for these projects. While some experts have proposed qualitative or "soft" recommendations for these teams, project managers need a pragmatic way to plan and launch projects with virtual teams. This paper describes the challenges of virtual teams such as cultural and linguistic differences, lack of communication, distance from the customer and why traditional approaches do not succeed.

The company who has multinational presence and the work is type of consulting, outsourcing, HR firms will get more benefit to be a virtual environment implementation. This will also take care of multiple time zones since there is no fixed time for office. If the cost of asset creation for a physical office is more than that of travelling of executives . If company needs to attract people across the globe without asking them to relocate. Software companies also can go for a virtual management since the instruction can be given on network and written instructions are more effective , they are more favorable for virtual environment.

Virtual teams are teams that work using the internet to communicate, using Skype for example. They are never in the same room to discuss issues.

The other issue was in having group(s) commit and follow-through with projects, which meant that an accountability needed to be established. Going back to the school project example, the way they made those students be accountable for the project was to give students for-credit approaches. Some schools made it a course requirement or registered the students in the course of the special projects all of which were part of the curriculum already. The other approach was to give them non-credit, which was less favorable with students and would not take the Global Virtual class serious. This resulted in less of an effort by the non-credit students and reduced the trust among team members. This proves a valuable point in dealing with virtual teams, in that all members of the team need a true sense of accountability in order to work on the project or have a breakdown in trust just like the students in

First, cross line, virtual organization/team is centralized with a few or without department. Business environment change makes a company or organization should be more flexible in doing its activity. When a company should produce a high quality product to meet their consumer needs, they could collaborate with other companies to determine consumer needs. In this case, virtual organization/team has an important role.