The Virtual Project Teams And The Challenges That Companies Undergoing Before Embracing Virtual Projects

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.

In today’s modern company virtual teams are interacting in different ways tan with traditional physical teams. Bock lists three ways virtual teams are getting their assigned activities accomplished, and what the company must provide for them to be successful.

Lepsinger, R., & Derosa, D. (2011). Five Ways to Create Successful Virtual Teams. Baseline, (111), 12

In our current age of technology, societies have been given the opportunity and capability of connecting across distances in ways that were impossible not too long ago. With computer applications such as skype, people can connect from opposite sides of the world. This has created a unique advancement in the way that businesses are run. Handling business with others who are far away is now easier than ever. Curtis (2011) says virtual teams have become so common due to their "potential for flexibility, responsiveness, as well as for cost and production efficiency" (p. 97). Virtual teams are an effective way to bring employees of companies together within the comfort of their own office or home. .

The team that I would like to discuss going virtual would be the Academic Advising team at Baker College. The newly designed virtual team would be answering all student questions by email, phone or chat. Academic Advisors work from home; the position would be completely remote. An economic advantage of this virtual team for Baker College would be the decrease in office supplies (paper, ink, office space and shredding services).

This manual is intended as a reference for projects managers managing projects in a virtual team environment. Our company is moving towards a virtual organization setup. Current project managers who operate in traditional project management environment setup should be trained in aspects related to managing projects planned for execution in virtual environments. Projects that operate in a virtual team environment face

Although virtual teams can offer a lot of benefits, they face special challenges that hinder to realize their potential and effectively fulfilling their goals. There are a number of factors attributed to the challenges that currently managers are dealing with, related to global virtual teams; the different organizational setting, the fact that these teams work in different cultural and norms work in different time zones have greatly contributed. The main challenge, however, has evolved from the lack of physical interaction and the absence (or near absence) of non-verbal communication cues (Nydegger, 2009). Cultural alignment and shared goals can be easily lost as a result of a low degree of interaction. The absence or near absence of face to -face- interaction among team members reduce the important aspects of the team i.e. trust and communication towards achieving the shared common goals. Global virtual teams often suffer from poor performance achievement as compared to traditionally established collated teams. Here below are some of the challenges unique to virtual teams:

Robert Jones, Robert Oyung, and Lise Pace, authors of Working Virtually: Challenges of Virtual Teams (2005) state:

Due to the recent increased utilization of information communication technology in organizations, there has been a rising trend of the adoption of virtual teams. These teams have helped organizations conduct their businesses in a very effective way. In furtherance of that, these teams have also helped in enhancing the speed at which communication is carried out. For instance, team members in different countries or continents can actually contribute ideas for a project in real time via electronic means. However, these groups have faced some criticisms which have made them to be underutilized. Some of the issues raised against these teams include lack of involvement and inclusiveness, lack of trust, lack of employees with technical and interpersonal skills and lack of cohesion among others. Past research has revealed that virtual teams have proved to be effective, especially in

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

However, Resnick, M. L. (2011).discuss the roles of leaders and leadership style as it relates to Virtual Teams. When leaders attempt to manage virtual teams it could be difficult; because, team inaction is not necessary a co-located teams. According to the researcher, the lack of person to person communication is a major challenge for working effectively with virtual team. Because the leader ca not see the team members face to face so intuit motivation and voice tone become a major component in team management. An effective way to inspire teams is to

Virtual teaming has a number of potential benefits; not only in terms of human resources flexibility but it can also reduce the operating costs of one organisation. On the other hand, the challenges of such environment should not be undermined. Many scholars have attempted to analyse the impact of virtual work in a number of factors such as communication, leadership, trust, decision-making and productivity (Symons and Stenzel, 2007),

Virtual teams are groups of dispersed individuals who rely on communication and information technologies to interact. These teams exist solely because of the technologies that support their interactions. However, they are an interesting organizational form as they allow organizations to connect disparate experts and key employees without the related costs in travel and disruptions to business. Much research has examined the nature of virtual teams, with a major interest in improving virtual team interactions and subsequent performance. Virtual teams are somewhat unique in that the very technologies that support their existence are often the same source of

One of the fastest-growing, high-tech office trends today is ‘virtual teams’. These teams cross time, space, and cultural boundaries and do so effectively with the use of technology.

Global Project Management is one of the most important topics when dealing globalization of an organization. It is the most significant part when trying to accomplish a goal or build a strategy for a new product or service in a new region. There are many characteristics for Global Project Management. Some of those characteristics will lead to advanced achievements. Global Project management can be defined through a framework that will simplify all negative indicators and will help lead organizations to achieve maturity in the field. This framework can help global managers to focus on the advantages of international teams, presenting innovative solutions for collaboration over a distance, and addressing the challenges of cross-cultural and virtual communication.