Seema Sonkiya: Managing Virtual Team

Article based on PMBOK 4 and agile methodology recommendation of project team management and challenges of Virtual team environment.

Human resource is very important aspect of project management on which project manager needs to focus. Most of the project management challenges generally come from this knowledge area provided professionally correct project management is going on.  Project manager is accountable to meet project objectives and key to achieve project objectives is that project team members are working as well organized unit. A happy team makes a tough work looks simple. If team member adjust behavior and habit to support the project and working in collaborative environment where team members can easily be confronted to solve project problems then we are in high probable environment in which everyone involved in project believe that project will achieve its objective.

As soon as project team members acquired, team building activities should be started to achieve team members in performing stage ASAP.

Developing team environment is an important human resource process; it involves work to increase competencies and interaction between project team members and to develop team environment.

For developing team environment, both agile and PMI recommend co-location as an important tool. But sometime virtual environment cannot be avoided.

In agile methodology project team members are involved throughput the project and involved in analysis, designing, construction and testing of all the releases. In case of virtual project environment Develop and Manage team processes becomes a real challenge.

Efforts should be made in direction of project manager to facilitate communication, sharing credit for successes, involve team members in decision making, developing protocol for resolving conflicts and setting clear expectations.

Most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within project team is face-to-face conversation so biggest challenge is to identify and implement solutions to facilitate communication with minimum loss of team member co-located environment benefits.

Major challenges of Virtual environment and possible solutions may include but not limited to:

1.     Time zone coordination:  this is one of major challenge when project team members are working in more than two countries. Different location team members may have different priority of availability. Scheduling of team interaction in virtual environment is a real problem to which a project manager needs to focus.  Problem become very critical specially during initial stage of planning for example during requirement workshop, sprint planning meeting, developing project scope statement which needs involvement of project team members especially in facilitated work shop. We can plan to schedule meeting during overlapped time, but in case if it has small window of overlap and we need time of team members for some continuous hours then we need to find alternate solutions. Normally this need advance anticipation of during which period we will need interaction in virtual environment for hours and team members official timing are adjusted accordingly. For occasional short duration meetings, we can manage in small window of overlapping i.e. during late evening or early morning. Some time working day difference is also create challenge, like in gulf countries people work Sunday to Thursday and work coordination creates additional problem we need to create team environment between non-gulf and gulf country members. In that case we need to adjust working hours, i.e. we had manage once this time coordination when we have to call Indian team members on Sunday for some hours. Of course there is lot of give and take in scheduling

2.     Developing team as well organized unit: We need to develop number of key traits among the project team members like project team should be competent to both the project processes and to project work, they should have common focus i.e. achieving sprint goal though each project team members perform different task and bring different skills to the project, team members should work in collaborative environment in which they assist without animosity, criticize without resentment, has the skill set to contribute, work as hard or harder as they do and communicate problems in such a way that leads to effective solution. Team members should be focus to their main work and all the impediments should be identified and resolved in timely manner. When team members work in virtual environment then getting all team members to form a well organized unit become challenge. . In the case of a virtual team, especially one that spans multiple countries, understanding how to bring individuals together to operate as a single team can be a major project task in itself. There is a lot we take for granted when we all sit face to face in a room or see each other every day for small talk around the break area. Each time we interact - either formally or informally - we allow each team member to get to know one another. With virtual teams we lose this "luxury" and have to work at ensuring that the team really understands its individual components and unique personalities. in complex projects with a lot of dependencies, if face to face meeting not feasible try at least an occasional video conference, maybe once or twice a month and at the begin and the project close out as per need of project. A person should be accountable for each location to identify and resolve impediments that prevent team to their common goal. In other words efforts should be made for easy escalation of problems and issues at each location. Yes it is true that nothing can really compensate the everyday face to face conversations we have with our colleagues / team members. Also, it is hard to try to be transparent, there might not be transparency and team members may not trust on project manager 100%. The personal connection is always missing. It is very important to develop environment in which each team member encouraged to communicate truth, it is only possible when we encouraged open and free communication and in case of virtual environment, set-up video conferencing among the members we need communication in timely manner. Handling project team problems and leadership skillfully mitigate problems of virtual environment. Sometime it makes sense to schedule some separate one-on-ones with team to talk about topics unrelated to work so that we get to learn more about them personally and establish a stronger personal connection.

3.     Intercultural differences: Cultural difference creates good challenge for project managers which may include, but are not limited to:

a.    Communication Style: We need to analyze communication style of different parties involved in different culture. For example Western cultures like America are very low context in its communication style. Western culture tends to focus on word while eastern cultures focus on so much more using high context communication styles (including stories, timing, tone, eye contact, etc).

b.      Power Distance: The West has evolved the "empowered organization," where individuals are motivated and rewarded for fast, brisk, direct communication, and for exposing problems (even confronting) to superiors. This is in direct conflict with Eastern culture, where hierarchy, saving face, and being respectful are so much more important.

c.      Concept of Time as a Resource: Again, the view of West and East time is very different. To many Western cultures, time is a resource that is managed and spent. In some Eastern cultures, it is viewed as plentiful. This translates into how we work, think, and behave in our work environment. Where an American sees someone that is late to a meeting, an Asian sees someone that gave the right consideration, time, and respect by not cutting one discussion short just to be "on time" to another meeting.

d.      Change Management: In the software industry, a new project is mostly a “change” to existing processes within the organization. As humans, we all react to change but there’s a difference in how we show the reaction. Some cultures inspire vocal / direct presentation of the reaction while some cultures are a bit coy and the reaction is presented passively or at the eleventh hour. Any project manager would want to address all pain points in the Change Management Plan but the cultural differences may not let us uncover those points in time. So this added to cooperation issues in some cases because the new system was not perceived the same way the management thought it would be. (The management tried its best to address concerns but none were reported initially.)

e.      Decision Making: Decision-making also found to be rooted with local practices. There are regions where it is easy to get everyone on the table and make decisions within a few weeks or few days whereas some regions being heavily quality-process conscious would take months in making a decision. In some cases, we have bottlenecks because decisions are not made on time and that caused delays in implementation.

But the lessons learned during the process are very helpful and instrumental for the overall success of the project.

f.        Procurement Challenge: Negotiation, managing expectations, understanding the "hidden messages, dealing with cultural sensitivities and protocols would be one area of cultural differences.

g.      Social Side: It includes appropriate greetings, and setting the right first impressions.

h.      Overcoming Stereotypes: All of us have pre-conceived notions of what others are like. This comes from TV, movies, the media - so we tend to focus on differences, not on what we have in common. Overcoming stereotypes is a major hurdle.

i.         Ethics: Business practices are different around the world. What is common practice in some places is unethical in others. These differences bring lack of trust, which leads to a breakdown in communication.

j.         Social Gathering: There may be difference in social events from cultural point of view. For example, birthday celebration in office, work-area is one issue where work-cultures could be differentiated. It is a common practice back home, but is a taboo in another country, unless a masculine personality decides to celebrate own or a lady secretary's birthday, but not at office, outside, after working hours.

k.       Another area that may be worth discussing is the challenge of working with a diverse team where there is conflict between team members who reside in countries that have a long history of tension, disputes, and occasional violent flare ups. (Becoming politically astute may be the correct way to describe this). 

My recommendation is that those organizations that take the time to properly assess the impact of culture, and work to develop a cross-cultural organization, succeed. Those that do not are constantly running into problems that are rooted in culture... how people view time, schedules; how an organization is structured, and who should be talking to whom; and of course, lack of communication. But this latter one is a tricky, because it's not easily solved by putting a "system" in place, or having more meetings. That just creates more miscommunication. The teams must become aware of how different cultures communicate so that they can communicate effectively. Once that is achieved, it leads to fewer meetings, not more.

I believe it's critical to have culturally aware individuals on the team, so that the differences can be compensated for, and the likenesses can draw the team together. In terms of cultural alignment, it would be interesting to look at a framework that teams can utilize to identify cultural differences within organizations/ geographies and a method to address the differences positively.

My experience shows that most people working in global projects were born in a country, studied/worked/lived/visited other countries, have family members born or living in other countries, and in many occasions their cultures is rather mixed. Perhaps one can get to the conclusion that this mix of cultures is very important to build resiliency in today's world - in the individual and team level, and even in the society.

4.     Misinterpretation of communication: Misunderstanding in communication is the one of biggest frustration even though we have various means of talking to our stakeholders in this world; nothing can really compensate the everyday face to face conversations we have with our colleagues / team members and other stakeholders.  The language barrier is also a big hurdle; One way to mitigate these problems is to summarize conversations in writing after a meeting or a phone conversation (i.e., through email), and using fairly simple “jargon-free” language if possible to make sure that the message isn’t too confusing. Clarity of understanding is very important, ambiguity of the spoken word; particularly where the word is in a second language should be taken care of. Documenting what we think has been agreed, giving opportunity for individuals to correct misunderstanding, is an essential discipline. Sometimes communication is a hurdle - I have seen problems drag on for days with email exchanges resolved with a 5 min phone call (this is frustrating). Identifying right communication method is very important in these cases. In addition, if the project is technical in nature, we need that glossary of terms to level-set everyone on the team.

5.     Managing attitude and behavior: Ground rules should be established for the acceptable behaviors and attitudes. Following ground rule could be a challenge in case of virtual environment, though each team member share responsibility to enforce ground rules but a person should be accountable like for impediments to enforce ground rule to ensure professionally correct attitude and behavior for each location. Attitude of helping each other bound by common sense of purpose should be encouraged.

6.     Discovery of risk and issues: Open and free communication is very important for the discovery of risks and issues in timely manner. Online meeting should be scheduled and encouraged among team members for the identification of risks and issues.

7.     Delay in exchanging information: If proper communication plan and method has not been established in virtual environment then delay in exchanging information becomes high-quality hurdle in project management.

8.     Effective Utilization of resources: Sometime project team members could not be assigned in other activities if they have been assigned in a task which has positive float values due to virtual environment. We need to take care of this fact while assigning resources to activities in virtual environment.

We need to design proper communication plan and appropriate method of transferring information to eliminate or mitigate hurdles of virtual environment. Open and free communication is gateway to teamwork and high performance. Effective communication is a bridge between diverse stakeholders involved in project.

Seema Sonkiya