“Go West, young man,” wrote Horace Greeley.
I live in the west. Smack dab in the middle of the Rocky Mountains. I don’t tote around a six-shooter, but I do drive a Jeep, like to go camping, often wave a fly in the air trying to catch fish and otherwise enjoy playing in the mountains or the high deserts of Southern Utah.
After you escape the bigger cities and get off the Interstate, there’s a lot of wide-open country—towns are about thirty miles apart. It’s the distance a buggy or a horse and rider could travel in a day (and the distance I can cover in my Jeep in about 30 minutes). My world is a little smaller than the early settlers in Utah.
However, organizations doing project based work have a world that has become even smaller. The vast array of technological tools available today are getting better and better at making virtual project teams effective, allowing people to be accessible without being in the same building, the same country, or even the same continent.
Some of the benefits of building virtual teams include:
- Organizations can hire the best people for the job regardless of geographic proximity
- The overhead expenses related to brick-and-mortar office space can be reduced
- Global project teams make it possible for work to be virtually done around-the-clock
The benefits of working with virtual teams can be pretty substantial, but there are some considerations that need to be taken into account before jumping in with both feet. If you’re considering working with virtual teams, let me suggest the following regarding people, process, and technology:
People:
- Trust yourself and your employees
- Clearly communicate roles, responsibilities, and expectations
- As a team, understand how productivity will be measured
Process:
- Build a communication plan that takes into account the diverse geographical relationship of the team
- Define an electronic records archiving policy
- Establish an electronic communications standard
Technology:
- Use collaborative workspaces to manage project content
- Deploy and use an online “chat-like” capability
- Use Internet-based meetings with both voice and video
Project management solutions have come a long way in the last few years, making it possible for organizations to manage projects and teams from anywhere with an Internet connection. When looking for a technology solution, it’s important to consider a few things like foreign language capability, platform independence, collaboration and communication capabilities, as well as scalability of the network and online access. The right solution will help address many of the people and process requirements of working with a virtual team.
Do you have experience working virtually with a project team? Please share what you’re doing to promote efficiency and effectiveness with a global team.
6. Have a clear understanding of what you do
10. Have a plan
From the airplane window…
In my dad’s mind there was only one football team: the Green Bay Packers, one quarterback: Bart Starr and one coach: Vince Lombardi. 
Executing the play well required everyone on the field to work together for the same strategic objective. "It’s my number one play because it requires all eleven men to play as one to make it succeed," said Lombardi, "and that’s what ‘team’ means."
Completing projects on time and on budget has proven to be a pretty valid measure of IT project success—but should it be the primary measure? I believe that pushing a project to completion on time is not the only objective—ultimately the project also needs to deliver business value. Along with the worthy objectives of finishing projects on time and within budget constraints, here are some other objectives that should be considered:
So why is it that 90% of the time its confined to just the IT department or Project Management group? I’ve heard many reasons, none of which I agree to be limiting factors for not going company-wide… "IT guys are the only ones that will pick it up"… "nobody else really does project management in the company except IT or the PMO"… "the IT department are the only ones looking for better ways of working"… "I only interact with people within my own department"… add you own to the list.
From 1967 to 1976 East Germany’s Roland Matthes dominated the 100 and 200 meter backstroke setting nine world records. In 1976 when John Naber won four Gold Medals, a Silver Medal, and set four new World Records (including a new record for the 100 and 200 meter backstroke) at the Montreal Olympic Games, I was on my high school swim team and John Naber became a personal hero.
Matthes held the record for the 100 meter backstroke of 56.30 seconds and the 200 meter backstroke of 2:01:87, which he set at Munich, Germany in 1972 and Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1973 respectively. As Naber described it, he was several seconds slower than Matthes, which in swimming terms might as well be minutes among Olympic athletes. Undaunted, Naber set his sites on winning the Gold and setting a new world record at the 76′ Games. Doing this required setting goals that would push him to stretch, but were also realistic and attainable. In a nutshell, this is what he did:
Naber’s story is meaningful because it demonstrates that sometimes, in my opinion most of the time, gradual and steady progress contributes to monumental outcomes. I believe the same is true for project based work. Project management tools, including PPM software enable project managers and teams to make efficiency improvements that impact project success. Although there are some immediately apparent and substantial gains that can be achieved with the right project management software, there are many small and incremental efficiencies that can provide exponential gains in productivity.
