Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Summary of literature
A review of the literature on learning in virtual teams reveals three
explicit themes learning communities, collaboration, communication
and co-construction of knowledge as well as and two implicit
characteristics. These implicit characteristics included, learning in
virtual teams is hegemonic and the cognitive learning aspect is
sufficient to explain all of the learning that occurs within these
environments. The virtual teams created learning communities in
which a shared or social construction of knowledge occurs. These
characteristics seem a natural fit for learning in virtual teams. Close
supervision, or a learning environment in which the learners did not
have much of the control over the learning process would be
prohibitive of team processes. Additionally, communication in these
environments makes them unique learning opportunities for learners
since the majority of it is text. Text based communication is missing
non-verbal social cues that can prove to be problematic for the
learners. Robey et al. (2000) concluded that learning is an ongoing
and dynamic process thus what was learned about learning situated
in the virtual team is that it continued to evolve. With this in mind
our understanding of learning in virtual teams is continuously
evolving.
In conclusion additional research is needed in all aspects of learning
in this environment. The research primarily consisted of pre-
selected case studies. Few of the studies were conducted in naturally
occurring settings. There were few empirical studies including a
small number that utilize adult learning theories even though they
were studying adults. More importantly, only a small segment of the
studies attended to the emotional or affective aspects of learning.
Finally, literature that highlights the differences of learning
experiences between members in the workplace and the educational
environment, as well as how learning experiences of virtual
members add to the knowledge we have concerning traditional
cross-functional teams can be the focus of future research efforts.
Lack of Accountability
Out of site, out of mind! When a team member does not have a PM
around to make sure a task is completed, sometimes tasks do not get
finished.
Missed meetings/deadlines
Sometimes team members don’t show up to meetings or miss
deadlines on their assigned tasks. There are also times, due to other
priorities, team members will miss multiple project meetings leaving
the PM not knowing what is happening with their piece of the
project.
Lack of communication
Sometimes team members do not communicate enough with the PM
and/or the rest of the project team. This lack of dialog will become
an issue when something goes wrong and you are unable to solicit
any help from that team member.
Training Issues
How does a PM handle the situation where the virtual team member
is not capable of handling the assigned task? This is not just a
situation with virtual employees; it occurs with onsite staff as well,
but the situation is more serious when the virtual team member is not
on site and cannot easily be helped or trained.
If the virtual team member has all three of the above qualities, the
PM should have very few problems working while they are working
together on their project(s). If any one of these is missing, it could
lead to some serious issues for the PM and the project as a whole.
Communicate
Communication with your virtual project team member has to be
well documented and occur frequently throughout the project. When
working with virtual team members, it is a good idea to establish
communication guidelines. Those guidelines could include,
maximum amount of communications per day, standard times to
communicate…etc. However, a PM should not be afraid to call,
email, or do whatever you have to do to understand what is
happening on your project, if your virtual employee is able to
provide that information. When team members are remote, quite
often they tend to forget that they are accountable to your project.
This is where good communication skills, established guidelines, all
play an important and critical role on projects.
Team meetings
The PM needs to have mandatory recurring team meetings
(scheduled per project requirements), regardless of the size of the
project. The PM must make sure there are open communications
between all team members at those meetings. When the team is
virtual, there are tools such as Net meeting or Video conferencing
that could be used to help bring the team together. If that is not
possible, try to schedule a meeting room and bring the team
members who do sit onsite into the same room, to allow some
“face��? time between the onsite team members. This will go a
long way to team building on your project.
One Team
The PM has to treat their virtual team(s) as they treat a “one-
location��? team. The locations of your team members cannot be
a barrier to the success of the project. The PM has to do everything
they would normally do with the project team as if they were all
sitting one or two cubes away. If possible, if the entire team can be
brought together at a single location, do so. It will be a great way to
put a name, personality and face to each team member. This face to
face will also go a long way in building a great project team.
Ownership
All team members (on site and virtual) must have both ownership
and accountability on a project to make it successful. If either of
these qualities is missing, it is going to be very difficult to have a
success in the project. If the team member commits to a date to have
a task completed, then they must make those dates. If they miss the
deadline, then that team member is accountable to the project team
and needs to do whatever it takes to get the task done as soon as
possible. When having virtual team members, it seems that it is
much more difficult to get a handle on and put corrective action into
play when deadlines are missed. The PM throughout the project
needs to stay informed by each team member to ensure that dates are
not missed whenever possible.
Multi-Tasking
As the PM of a virtual team member, you need to be aware of the
multi-tasking that each of the team members will be involved in. The
PM must try to make sure that those “other" tasks do not get in the
way of completing the project. Multi-tasking is unfortunately a
reality these days, but if the PM is aware of this, understands the
impacts, factors it in, it should not affect the project deadlines.
References
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