Management of Virtual Project Teams: Guidelines for Team Leaders

Abstract

This article offers a set of guidelines to assist project leaders when managing virtual project teams. The guidelines were developed as a result of a panel at the celebration of the 30 th anniversary of the founding of the MIS department at the University of Arizona. These guidelines include recommendations for addressing challenges that occur over the virtual team project life cycle, including identifying appropriate team members, establishing conventions and norms, and creating shared awareness. We also give practical advice on how to highlight successes and learn from mistakes to ensure ongoing development of leadership and participation skills that will enable project leaders to manage virtual teams successfully.

Towards a Design Science of Ethical Decision Support

“…When decision projects end, DMs should consider how the process might be improved (Beranek et al, 2005). Sharing these ideas will help people both inside and outside the group.…”

“…Remote DMs might be used to different norms. The greater the differences, the more important it is that team leaders continue to address norms (Beranek et al, 2005). F2F communication is generally better for this than CMC (Kiesler and Cummings, 2002).…”

“…Planning and preparation tools Team leaders must put together a group that can be effective (Beranek et al, 2005). This might be difficult.…”

The Organization's Role in Global Virtual Team Leaders' Possibilities to Successfully Lead the Team across Its Lifecycle

“…[29]) and virtual teams (e.g. [2][6] [9]), as well as on stages in creating and sustaining trust in virtual teams which show certain similarities to the overall virtual team lifecycle (e.g. [7]).…”

“…However, the creation of effective virtual teams represents certain challenges for the organization. These challenges include the creation of trust in a virtual environment [7], communication across time zones [14] with little or no face-to-face contact [7] and across different cultures with help of information technology, as well as the creation of team-spirit and motivation [2]. Previous research found that leadership is an important factor to virtual team effectiveness [14] [28].…”