The Peaceful Invasion of Virtual Teams

Most organizations unknowingly rely on informal virtual teams. Virtual teams are no longer reserved for global business. A new software revolution is changing the way distributed teams work together.

(PRWEB) December 6, 2004 -- If you have distributed workers, then chances are high that you also have virtual teams even if you don't realize it. Trends toward globalization, outsourcing and empowerment have left managers scrambling for interim ways to cope with chaos while their organizations lag behind. They are forced to coordinate major projects using rudimentary technologies such as email and chat programs.

The term virtual team" refers to one that uses technologies to overcome special communication challenges (such as remote team members or outsourced tasks). Despite recent software advances, there remains an over-reliance on email as the primary means for coordinating these disconnected team members and complex projects. Email isnt reportable and it scatters sensitive documents across thousands of laptops, which then get left behind in coffee shops; but at least everybody has it. If your distributed team collaborates over the Internet by email to complete a project or meet an objective, then you are already demonstrating some characteristics of a virtual team and you may want to consider a more structured program.

Virtual teams typically work together using a collage of communication technologies, such as those for project management, email, collaboration, live meeting, workflow, chat and document sharing. These technologies can be costly to implement due to their combined prices as well as the necessary technical support infrastructures. For that reason, the exact implementation varies dramatically from team to team, but they usually consist of piecemealed technologies managed procedurally.

More recently, enterprise teamwork portals are emerging, which were created from the ground up especially for implementing virtual teams. TeamLeader, by Virtual Global Technologies, provides an integrated virtual workshop, where managers and team members join forces to work on complex efforts in real-world ways. Managers can actively oversee employees and team members feel more integral to the overall team and projects. Decision-makers can apply the business intelligence tools to analyze performance trends and make better business decisions.

Whatever the case, there is no avoiding virtual teams. The world is not getting less global, and projects and teams are not getting any less complex. If you havent considered a formal virtual team program, then you may wish to consider an integrated solution like TeamLeader. Any organization that relies on remote employees, contractors, multidisciplinary talents and/or other external teams should look very closely at implementing a more formal virtual team program.

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