Managing Global Teams and Projects in the Virtual Environment: Meeting Proceedings

Study Overview

As companies continue to globalize operations to better serve customers, managing employees who do not work on the traditional corporate campus becomes increasingly difficult. The pervasivenss of virtual teams, which have become mainstays in organizational structures, raises the question of how to manage geographically-distributed individuals who must complete interdependent tasks and share joint responsibility for outcomes. Best practices, integrated processes and tools can be used, though, to optimize global teams and projects in the virtual environment.

This meeting report includes three-four page case study summaries from three organizations on how to optimize virtual teams. This was based on a meeting held in November 2005. It will benefit those who must manage, coordinate, and otherwise work with virtual teams.

Presentations

• IBM/Tivoli Software shared its perspective on effective virtual teams, enabling technologies and language issues faced by the global virtual teams in IBM’s Tivoli software division.
• Cisco Systems revealed Cisco’s paradigm-shifting perspective on trends in real estate and IT as they relate to an increasingly mobile workforce, pointing out that the only difference between an employee, a vendor or a customer is access permission to internal information.
• Kenan-Flagler Business School reviewed the practices of high performers, drawing from the quantitative survey results and qualitative interviews of far-flung teams at 54 companies.

If you purchase Best Practice Database document(s), you will have 30 days from the date of purchase to apply some or all of the cost of the document(s) toward the cost of a Full Access Individual, Pharma, Group or University Membership. Write us at DatabaseTeam@bestpracticesllc.com or call David Guinn at 919-767-9179 if you have any questions.