Virtual Teams are responsible for delivering software solutions, similar to collocated teams, however virtual team members are distributed across the globe, and rarely meet in person, and instead rely on chat, video, and voice technologies to enable their continuous daily collaboration towards delivering valuable software solutions.

The list of challenges facing virtual teams:

• Language Barriers
• Trust
• Team Intimacy
• Cultural Differences
• Differences in Work Styles
• Differences in Communication Styles
• Orchestrating Across Timezones
• Effective Work Distribution
• Effective Productivity Tracking

Language Barriers

In 2001, a team of us worked on a Java based content management system. The team consisted of seven programmers originating from four different countries including two from Italy.  The system was in production and the code was a mess.  Part of the reason was that the Italian programmers adopted an Italian variable naming convention while others used English.  The system became increasingly difficult to maintain as Language Barriers were introduced in code, resulting in lost time and semantics.

In other experiences, I found language barriers between virtual team members slowed the pace of communication, and in general, resulted in a reticence to speak up.   In particular, I remember a project where the team I was working with was forced to switch away from their mother tongue to english.  This completely changed the team’s dynamic.  Before the switch, individuals spoke up, addressed project issues as they arose, and were generally more engaged in their day-to-day work.  Forced to switch to English, their involvement dropped and their reticence to communicate with distributed team members rose. The banter stopped and responding to questions and providing feedback moved from real time communication technologies, such as Skype and chat, to asynchronous technologies such as email. This negatively impacted the team’s Trust and preferred Communication Style.

Trust

The distributed nature of virtual teams complicates the process of establishing trust and specifically the components of trust. In order to offset the ensuing challenges, teams should rely on occasional face-to-face meetings (see this NYT article) while ensuring geographic locations of all team members are fairly considered when scheduling the meetings.

Update August 1, 2010 – ODesk – the marketplace for online workteams has developed a software application called ODesk Team.  This application provides a showcase for the innovative features, such as Time Tracker and Screensnap, that may help build trust between virtual team members working together for the first time.

Team Intimacy

Intimacy is a good indicator to the strength and health of any relationship including professional ones.   For our purposes, I will borrow Rachel Davies’ definition of intimacy:

Clearly, this doesn’t refer to physical intimacy, it represents the degree to which another person cares about the others needs. Where we appear aloof and detached from the situation and our team mates, we find a lack of openness and trust.

It goes without saying that the distributed nature of virtual teams makes it hard to build this kind of intimacy.

Cultural Differences

While they affect collocated teams as well, Cultural issues are more pronounced with globally distributed teams. Consider and adapt to the cultural traits of each virtual team member without losing focus on the universal culture of satisfying customer demands.

Differences in Work Styles

Coming from New York City where working lunches remain a normal work style, I didn’t expect what came of working through lunch on a project in Rome, Italy. This was perceived by fellow team members as an act of competitiveness which ultimately required many group trips to the espresso machine to reestablish the Trust between us all.

Differences in Communication Styles

Many of today’s communication technologies address the different types of communications styles between team members. The key is to identify and apply the most effective technologies during the project lifecycle as I talked about in my own move to a virtual team.

The April 24, 2008 New York Times article on making long-distance business partnerships work confirms the importance of selecting the right technologies and managing the privacy issues that may arise.

The July 30, 2010 CNN.com article on telepresence robots hints at a new technology just around the corner that may just promote a new level of  communication between team members.

Orchestrating Across Timezones

The benefits of multiple time zones with virtual teams are well known and best captured by the expression “follow the sun” which implies a virtual team structure that permits continuous productivity by the seamless handoff of work between team members who are leaving for the day, and those coming online. The ability to orchestrate this handoff smoothly goes a long way towards ensuring virtual team members can work the traditional work hours in their timezone, instead of those of their fellow team members. In addition, failing to have Effective Work Distribution will also prevent efficient Orchestration Across Timezones.

Update June 30, 2010 – On a recent project,  a team member lived and worked in a timezone 8 hours ahead of ours.  Despite this we made the initial mistake of leaving some of his questions unanswered at the end of our workday.  The result was nearly a day of productivity lost because he would start his workday without the answers he needed.  The lesson learned is to not end your workday without addressing questions from team members about to start theirs.

Effective Work Distribution

Peter Drucker described the role of a good manager as one who creates productive work and assigns the most effective people to perform it.  In the context of virtual teams, managers must find new ways to determine worker effectiveness while ensuring the work is distributed evenly, fairly and avoids overworking  virtual team members.

Effective Productivity Tracking

How do you ensure all virtual team members are ‘carrying their weight’?  Traditional workplaces sometimes tend to sub-consciously perceive productivity through the daily movement and activities of team members in their line of sight.  Those who have worked in virtual team settings know full well the productivity benefits that come with this modern form of organization.  Defining and being held accountable to regular productivity measures can help ensure the teleworker’s production outside of the traditional line of sight won’t go unnoticed.

Update August 1, 2010 – ODesk – As I mentioned in the section on trust, ODesk has introduced a software application called ODesk Team, which for the purposes of productivity tracking, includes a feature to capture the contractor’s screen for every hour of work.   Arguably this feature could be demotivating for a colocated team member, but in the case of ODesk and the nature of online workteams, it can be an effective way to not only building Trust but tracking progress as well.