Think of People When Planning Virtual Teams

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February 5, 2001 (Computerworld) -- The number of home-based workers in the U.S. rose 20% last year to nearly 24 million, reports the Washington-based International Telework Association & Council. This growth, along with the pressures on organizations to expand globally, has prompted many firms to staff business and IT projects with geographically dispersed individuals, according to Jessica Lipnack, CEO of West Newton, Mass.-based consultancy VirtualTeams.com and co-author of Virtual Teams: People Working Across Boundaries With Technology (John Wiley & Sons, 2000).

Lipnack, who has helped Fortune 500 companies such as AT&T Corp. and New York-based Pfizer Inc. launch virtual organizations, recently spoke with Computerworld's Julekha Dash about her thoughts on the subject.

Q: What are some of the latest technologies that enable virtual teams?

A: Let's start with the Web. . . . The availability of the Web has made it possible for people to be anyplace and to be at work. Secondly, collaborative software, cell phones and e-mail.

Q: What companies have done a good job establishing virtual teams?

A: NCR did a fabulous thing by creating something called a "Worm Hole." They made it easy for four locations to feel like one. They used a switched T1 line—it allows you to have more than one video feed at the same time. [Workers] had to go to a conference room with three monitors set for sharing data. You had one [monitor] for sharing online data, one for overheads and one for videos. And the quality of the video is as good as Nightline.

Q: What other firms have implemented successful virtual teams?

A: Shell Oil, Sun Microsystems, Motorola. At Motorola, the next step is to have wireless access to wherever you are - taking pagers and turning them into full-bandwidth communication devices.

Q: What are some critical success factors for creating virtual teams?

A: Good "people" thinking. [Companies] are thinking about bandwidth and technology issues. They're not thinking about the carbon life forms that are using the technology. Anything that can go wrong with a face-to-face team can go wrong with virtual teams, only worse.
There needs to be alignment around purpose, dealing with conflict, sharing leadership. These are really significant problems with teams, and we've barely figured out how to solve them face-to-face, never mind when people are spread out around the globe.

Q: How can IT employees work on virtual teams?

A: In a way, it's harder for IT people. They know so much about the technology, it's difficult for them to put the technology aside and think about human issues. For IT people to get focused off the hardware and into the "peopleware" is the real challenge in design, implementation and participation.

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