Tom Nelson
January 4, 2007
Managing virtual
project teams presents a host of challenges. But remote project managers who
trust their people, establish solid processes and make the most of technology
often can be more productive than their on-site counterparts.
Instant
messaging chat is the 21st century version of the water cooler. An intranet
portal replaces the white board. A video-teleconferencing area takes on the
role of the traditional conference room.
The vast
array of technological tools available today — most of them literally at our
fingertips — can bridge the geographic gap for those working with virtual
project teams, allowing people to be completely accessible without being in the
same building, the same country or the same continent.
But just
because they are accessible via technology doesn’t mean they are moving your
project any closer to completion.
Leading-edge
technology, while essential, is not enough by itself, according to Husam
Sha’ath, who is currently managing development and implementation of a project
management system for the Ministry of Works and Housing in the Kingdom of
Bahrain. Sha’ath is based in the Persian Gulf island nation as the client
team’s on-site contact, while many of those producing deliverables on the
project team are at SPM Group’s Toronto headquarters nearly 7,000 miles to the
northwest and eight hours behind Bahrain.
“The
working day starts in Canada two hours after the work day officially ends in
Bahrain,” Sha’ath says. “So, generally, I start my work day at 7 a.m.Bahrain
time, and I finish work at around 3 p.m. Then I start my calls and e-mails with
Canada at 5 p.m. and that usually takes me to 9 p.m. or 10 p.m.” That the
Bahrain workweek, like that of many Persian Gulf countries, runs Sunday through
Thursday only adds to the complexity.
Clearly,
the challenge of distributed teams requires much more than the ability for team
members to IM one another. Jon Hughes, who works exclusively with distributed
teams as director of IT solutions for Robbins-Gioia, believes the success of
managing a distributed project team comes down to three keys: people, process
and tools.
People
Hughes,
who most recently managed a software project that involved team members in six
different locations in the United States, says the first step to a successful
distributed team is getting the right people.
“Not just
anyone can do this,” says Hughes, a 10-year veteran of project management based
in Washington, D.C. “Distributed projects are often
very complex. You need the best of the best to help you run these projects.
Hopefully, project managers will personally interview and recommend members of
the team because you have to have the right people on the team.”
Getting the right people at the start, Hughes says, allows project
managers to trust their employees, which is vital for virtual teams. “You can sometimes overcompensate
and end up with extra checkpoints while working remotely. You can end up on the
phone too much or on an aircraft too much. I once got off a plane and had a
project manager tell me to go back to Washington. The person said, ‘Trust me.
You gave me this job. Don’t be so worried.’”
Bryan Vermander, the vice president of SPM Group who is working on
the Toronto end of the Bahrain project, advises that cultural differences
between team members should be addressed upfront. “One of our advantages is that our
project manager truly does understand the culture, because he has lived and
experienced it,” Vermander says of Sha’ath. “Even as early as putting our
proposal together, we were asking him about cultural expectations. Frankly,
that has assisted us greatly and is one of the reasons we got the work to begin
with.”
Clearly
communicating roles, responsibilities and expectations — important for all
work environments — is even more crucial when key personnel are split between
North America and the Middle East. “A challenge for any project is team
building,” Sha’ath says. “Now try that with thousands of miles of separation.
But even if it is just a conference call or videoconference, such a call, if
handled correctly, can give the client team and the project team time to meet
each other and know each other.”
While it
may seem to be a small point, the inability to call a working dinner for key team
members without going through a travel agent illustrates why distributed teams
must have processes, protocols and procedures spelled out well in advance of
project launch.
Process
Building
a communication plan that takes into account the needs of a distributed team is
perhaps the most important procedural item for a project manager, according to
Robbins-Gioia’s Hughes.
“Nothing can hurt a distributed project more than an issue coming
up in one location where no one knows where to take that problem,” he says. “So
you want to start with a policy on the tools that you will use. You need a
communication plan distributed to the entire team. The plan should make clear
how everyone contacts their leadership and how to raise issues up the chain.
This involves the customer as well.”
Such a plan is especially important for intercultural operations,
says SPM’s Vermander, who points out that the comparatively flat org chart of
his Toronto operation is vastly different from the more hierarchical operation
in Bahrain. Vermander adds that a communication plan should also define common terms,
abbreviations, acronyms and project management slang.
“Terminology
issues with customers come up to a degree no matter where customers are
located, but when you are going across cultures, the challenges can grow
exponentially,” he says. “You need a lot of clarity in that area, and we knew
that. But even now as we have gone forward with the project, there are new
terms coming up that are used and that we need to ensure are clearly
understood.”
Before
work began in Bahrain, SPM put together a detailed plan that included regularly
scheduled virtual team meetings and conference calls. It also dictated that
Sha’ath would regularly travel to Canada to spend two out of every eight weeks
of the estimated 18-month project face-to-face with the Toronto team.
Hughes says one easily overlooked part of a communication plan is
an electronic archiving process that defines how and by what method e-mails,
copies of soft faxes and other documents are saved. “That might seem a little
silly, but it is very important -- especially when working with the
government,” Hughes says.
The good news is that a project manager can write a virtual
project team communication plan one time, and then apply the key parts to
almost any distributed team.
Tools
High-tech
tools are the most high profile aspect of virtual teams, and therefore need to
be acquired and thoroughly tested prior to launch. “When
I first started working remotely, I told my supervisors, ‘I need access to all
the servers and all the source-code servers,’” Hughes says. “The code
repositories need to be able to be accessed by all team members. People need to
access the same information at the same time.”
Most virtual team members constantly use chat or instant messaging
software throughout the day. E-mail is another heavily used application, and
phone contact generally takes place daily. Video-teleconferences are typically
scheduled weekly.
Hughes highly recommends a voice-over IP phone system that fully
integrates e-mail, fax and voice-mail functions because it simplifies the issue
of archiving.
A recommendation from Vermander is a so-called “portable phone
number,” which he acquired for Sha’ath. It allows the Bahrain-based project
manager to use a Toronto 416 number and make calls via his laptop as if he is
in Canada.
With all
the tools available, however, it is easy to cross the line and overcompensate
for a lack of in-person interactions. “I encourage all team members to really
think before they send an e-mail,” Hughes says, “because sometimes you can get
stuck in chat or spend all of your time answering e-mails.”
Payoff
With the
challenges that virtual project teams present, it is easy to see why some might
shy away from them. After all, those who manage remote teams such as Sha’ath,
Vermander and Hughes face all the pressure to produce a quality product as
their counterparts who work with on-site teams without the face-to-face
communication that drive traditional projects.
But for
those who focus on hiring and supporting the right people, who clearly
establish and fine tune their processes as a project goes forward, and who
embrace the latest technological tools, the payoff can be immense. Virtual
project managers can:
> Hire the best people for the job regardless of geographic
proximity.
> Cut overhead related to brick-and-mortar office space.
> Increase a project’s pace by allowing team members
clocking out in one time zone to pass pieces of the project to those arriving
at the office in another.
“There
are some real virtues to the whole process,” says Vermander. “For example, the
Bahrain-Toronto time difference allows us to sequence work so that our project
manager can send us an e-mail and go to bed in Bahrain and when he wakes up the
next morning and logs on, the response is waiting there.”
*****
People, Process and
Tools: The Breakdown
Jon
Hughes of Robbins-Gioia believes the success of managing a distributed project
team can be categorized into three buckets: the people on and near the project
team, the processes that the team has in place; and the tool sets being used to
enable the processes and improve communication.
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
distributed team.
__ Define an electronic records archiving policy.
__ Establish an electronic communications standard.
Tools
__ Use collaborative workspaces to manage project content.
__ Deploy
and use an online “chat-like” capability.
__ Use Internet-based meetings with both voice and video.
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