IT Project Management and Virtual Teams

Catherine M. Beise, PhD

Salisbury University Salisbury, MD 21801 USA 01-410-548-4034

cmbeise@salisbury.edu ABSTRACT
Project management methods and tools are increasingly relevant as todays globalized organizations accomplish more of their goals using cross-functional, and often cross-cultural, geographically dispersed, project teams. The increased diversity of skills, knowledge, cultures, and perspectives of these project teams can potentially have both positive and negative influences on group processes and outcomes. The question that this research-in-progress intends to address is: To what extent can and do project management methods and tools benefit diverse virtual teams while mitigating its challenges? In order to begin to answer this question, this paper presents relevant background, a research model, a methodology (currently in progress), and potential contributions. The initial methodology involves a study of IT project teams working on a common database design project whose members are using electronic tools to communicate, collaborate, and coordinate. The results of the study should provide useful information to practitioners and researchers regarding project management and virtual teams. Categories and Subject Descriptors: K-6.1 [Project and People Management] General Terms: Management, Performance, Design Keywords: Project management, virtual teams, software teams. At the same time, the globalization of project teams has increased demographic and cultural diversity, which can create obstacles to the smooth functioning of team processes, but also can provide benefits in creativity, innovation, and problem-solving. Project management methodologies are intended to maximize the benefits of teamwork (process gains) while preventing and addressing potential barriers due to misunderstanding, disagreements, even personality clashes among stakeholders and team members (process losses). Little research, however, has examined the potential effects of formal project management methods on diversity-related conflict, for example, particularly in a virtual team context. The aim of this study is to begin to fill that gap. The rest of this paper presents relevant background, a research model, the study methodology, and potential implications.

2. BACKGROUND / RESEARCH CONTEXT

IT projects have a long history of being late, over budget, and often resulting in less than high quality outcomes [2] [3]. Solutions to this problem have included the development of formal approaches to software process improvement [4] and the application of formalized project management (PM) methods to plan, monitor, and control cost, time, and quality [1]. Recent efforts have begun to integrate software process improvement methods with more generic PM methods [5]. The evolution of project teams to more diverse, global, geographically dispersed environments presents new challenges to traditional PM approaches [6] [7].

1. INTRODUCTION
Much of the work done in todays increasingly geographically distributed organizations is accomplished by work groups, often formalized as project teams. In order to achieve the assigned tasks and goals, a cross-section of skills, knowledge, and perspectives is often required. Thus, team members may be selected from multiple functional areas, from different locations, and often from diverse demographic and cultural backgrounds. Project teams are often managed using formal project management methodologies, such as those derived from the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) [1]. Such methods have evolved due to the need to monitor and control complex projects, and to maintain budgets and schedules while ensuring quality, which have all grown in importance as critical success factors in the competitive global workplace.
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2.1 Project Management

Projects are distinguished from on-going operational tasks in that they are temporary, have a unique and specific goal, have a specific start date and end date, and require a diverse set of human resources, each of whom brings specified needed skills and knowledge to the project tasks [1]. Successful project managers plan and implement formal communication and coordination processes that include both task-related and process-related information. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) [1] includes, in addition to cost, time, and quality, methods for managing integration, scope, resources, risk, people, and communication. These methods are integrated via five processes that apply to all the knowledge areas: initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing. The intent of the methodology is to acknowledge and accommodate the fact that projects operate within an organizational context with resource constraints and in response to multiple, often conflicting stakeholder demands. Little research has actually tested the effectiveness of these methods as a whole, particularly for distributed teams, although

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individual dimensions of the PMBOK, such as time, risk, and communication have been linked to project outcomes. For example, scheduled milestones and firm deadlines can positively affect team performance [8] [9]. Project teams with assigned roles and responsibilities produce higher quality deliverables than those without [10]. Communication and information flows must be more frequent, even continuous, in distributed contexts, in order to maintain commitment and build trust [11]. Risk management is often considered a critical success factor for software project effectiveness [12]. Development of a clear, measurable performance reporting system that links project objectives to critical actions needed to perform them can overcome culture differences and other barriers [13]. Thus, much of what is known regarding the effectiveness of PM methods comes from studies about these individual dimensions of PM, drawn from a wide range of reference disciplines [14], rather than PM as an integrated, comprehensive set of applied structures.

[27]. At the same time, however, CMC tools could potentially reduce diversity-related conflict [28]. Diverse groups may even become less diverse over time as they develop a team culture which gradually predominates in relation to individual cultures that the members initially bring to the team, which may also apply to virtual teams [29].

3. CONCEPTUAL MODEL
Project team success is contingent upon a variety of factors that interconnect in complex ways. These include the task, formal and informal team processes, individual team member characteristics and contributions, resource constraints, organizational context factors, and, in the case of distributed, or virtual, teams, ICT availability and use. Figure 1 represents a systems view (inputprocess-output) of group work supported by a number of research streams [30-32]. Inputs include task; individual characteristics; group characteristics, such as size and history; and technology, which broadly defined includes electronic tools as well as process methods (manual or automated). Project management methods fall under this definition of technology. Team processes include stages of development (form, storm, norm, perform, close) which often entails surfacing and resolving conflict, developing trust and cohesion, and creatively generating problem solutions. Team outcomes include performance (budget, schedule, quality) and member satisfaction, as well as emergent adaptive structures [33]. Finally, teams operate within an organizational context, which influences all three dimensions (inputs, processes, and outputs). Within this conceptual context, then, the research question asked in this study is: How do Project Management and team diversity interact to produce team outcomes? In order to address this question, this study focuses on and measures Project Management methods and collaborative tools (technology), diversity (individual characteristics), group processes (creativity, conflict, and cohesion), and group outcomes (performance and satisfaction, shown in gray in the model. Figure 2 summarizes the dimensions of the model and identifies specific measures that are used in this study to represent those dimensions. The initial hypotheses that this study intends to address are: 1. 2. 3. PM methods will reduce diversity-related conflict. PM methods will positively influence cohesion, regardless of diversity. PM methods will positively influence performance and satisfaction.

2.2 Diversity
Dimensions of diversity studied by a variety of researchers in a wide range of fields include demographic factors such as race, sex, ethnicity, and age. These diversity dimensions are what the management literature categorizes as high visibility, whereas low visibility dimensions include values, attitudes, education, functional experience, skills, and knowledge. Other terminology used to characterize these types of diversity include less highly and highly job-related [15], surface-level and deep-level [16], and observable and non-observable [17]. Most researchers agree that more visible dimensions are likely to correlate with less visible dimensions, and two theories, the trait model and the expectations model, support this contention, although in different ways [15, 18]. Several comprehensive reviews indicate mixed results regarding effects of diversity on work group processes and outcomes [15, 17], concluding that their interaction is complex and mitigated by organizational and social contexts. Diversity may increase conflict and thus result in process losses [19]. However, conflict, when surfaced and resolved, can result in greater creativity, more learning, and better decision-making, through generating more and better alternatives and through greater external communication [20] [21]. Increasing some types of diversity on IT project teams, specifically diverse perspectives in terms of technical versus social, may reduce project risk [22]. Little is known regarding computer-mediated communication (CMC) and effects of diversity on team outcomes. Cultural diversity is frequently cited as a barrier to team, especially virtual team, performance [23] [24]. Reliance on electronic tools such as e-mail may increase conflict due to limitations of such communication channels [25], and the lack of face-to-face contact could reduce individual team members identification, trust, and commitment to the team, resulting in reduced performance [26]

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Organizational Context Task:

Individual Characteristics: Diversity

Group Process:, Conflict, Cohesion

Group Outcomes

Technology PM

Group Characteristics

Figure 1: Research Context - Conceptual Model

Concept Task

Technology

Organizational Context Group Characteristics Individual Characteristics Group Process Group Outcomes

Meaning/Dimensions Generic: Brainstorming, Problemsolving Domain: System design, product innovation Project Management Individual and Group Tools ICT Infrastructure, access, training Culture, Structure, Resources, Management History, Size Skills, Knowledge, Personality, Demographics, Cultural Background Conflict Cohesion Trust Stages of Development Performance (Quality, On-time, Within Budget) Satisfaction Emergent Structure Figure 2: Dimensions and Measures

Measures in This Study

Formal methods re: PMBOK e.g., Agenda, Schedule, Milestones, Role Definitions, Group Contract

Demographics Conflict, Cohesion, Stages of Development Performance (Deliverable Quality), Satisfaction

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4. RESEARCH METHODS
The first phase took place during Fall, 2003. Twenty-two student project teams from three universities across North America participated as distributed teams working on a semester-long database design and implementation project, using only electronic forms of communication (Yahoo groups). In this study, the organizational context is a university database class. Team size was initially 5 (although a few teams experienced shrinkage when students dropped the class) and none of the teams had worked together before (that they knew of). Finally, they all worked on a common assigned database design task. Thus, in Figures 1 and 2, organizational context, group characteristics, task, and ICT tools are treated as constants. PM methods serves as the predictor; team diversity and group processes of conflict and cohesion are mediating variables, while group outcomes of performance and satisfaction are dependent variables. An initial survey collected demographic information about the teams. Content analysis will be applied to a substantial collection of electronic communication within each team, captured via a shared workspace. This data will be reviewed for evidence of team processes and demonstration of project management activities, by examining the these records and looking for evidence of planning, agenda-setting, scheduling, role assignment, and other possible indicators based on the PMBOK. Finally, quantitative data about PM methods will be gathered in a final survey via questions, also derived from the PMBOK, regarding these same indicators, for example, To what extent were roles assigned to individuals? Phase Two of the study is in progress during Spring, 2004, in which a similar research methodology is being used with co-located teams also using CMC tools. Preliminary results will be presented at the SIGMIS/CPR conference for the purpose of constructive feedback aimed at the design of an extension to this first study, focusing on distributed global teams in industry.

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5. POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTIONS
Results of this investigation should benefit researchers, practitioners, and instructors. An important contribution to research is the comprehensive approach taken toward project management as a formalized group of integrated methods and tools, and considering its influence on team processes and performance. Further, these factors are placed within a distributed team context, which is increasingly relevant. The research should provide IT project leaders managing diverse distributed teams in gaining a greater understanding of project management and its role in team processes and outcomes. Finally, results of the study should provide guidelines to faculty as facilitators and students as users of PM and CMC tools and methods for enhancing the benefits of teams while minimizing potential group process losses.

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6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to Traci Carte, Laku Chidambaram, and Chelley Vician.for including me as a collaborator on this project.

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