VIRTUAL TEAMWORK

“What’s that you say? You say we’re going to create a brand-new,high-tech, cutting-edge website? And I’m in charge? Hot diggety dog! I’ll get right on that, chief!”

Tonight’s assignment is to describe what I would do if I were made project manager of a website development team whose members are geographically scattered. I guess the first thing I would do is get on the telephone and introduce myself to any team members I do not know already. There is certainly nothing better than a good old-fashioned conversation to establish a relationship with someone. Perhaps I would ask all team members to contact each other by telephone to introduce themselves. From then on most communication would be by email.

How would I help develop team spirit? Perhaps one way would be to establish a team wiki or ask team members to keep a weblog, as we do in this class. This would provide me with informal progress reports and would allow other team members to see how their associates are doing and get a sense of how the team is doing as a whole.

I would also keep a weblog in which I would post an overall progress report, highlights from team members’ weblogs (just as our teacher Kathy does) and my reactions to them. I would encourage team members to post any relevant pictures to their weblogs, including preliminary designs, pictures of themselves tearing their hair out, etc.

In a virtual team, as opposed to an actual team, communication is a little slower and a little more awkward, of course, but I think there are actually some advantages. Working with teams in the past I have found that a lot of time gets wasted with small talk, jokes and half-baked ideas. I think that the effort and concentration required to sit down and compose an email might filter out some of this noise and force team members to think more carefully about what they are communicating.

Of course the best teamwork comes from people who keep the group’s goals as well as their own jobs in mind at all times. Therefore, I think that this group wiki or blogging arrangement would work well to create a kind of public sphere in which team members could see the their own work alongside that of the rest of the team.