There are advantages to establishing virtual project teams for remote project management. Some may include the following:
While these are definitely advantages, when it comes to knowing if remote project management is right for your company you should carefully vet several aspects. Below are some aspects that may impact an organization’s ability to execute a project successfully using virtual project teams, as well as some possible solutions.
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Productivity degradation. Even the most dedicated project managers and team members can at times lack focus and have trouble staying on task, despite their dedication to the project.
Possible solutions:
Location, distance or time zone issues. Project schedules can develop a bottlenecked when negatively impacted by the distance between team members, time zone changes that impact fluctuating work hours, and even remote locations of work where communication is limited due to telecommunication servicing gaps.
Possible solutions:
Cultural and legal differences. In today’s global business world, many organizations have projects that span across multiple geographical locations; sometimes creating cultural and legal challenges that must be factored into the success of a project.
Possible solutions:
Communication barriers. This is easily one of the areas most impacted in remotely managed projects because teams are not meeting regularly face-to-face, where it is easier to gauge facial expressions, body language and tone of voice simultaneously. As a result, effective and timely communication can be the most troubling for virtual project teams to achieve.
Possible Solutions:
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Technology, data access and security issues. Having the right technology and tools available to all members of a project team is essential in ensuring a project is on schedule and on budget. This is especially true in remote project management. Projects can easily fall out of scope if team members cannot access the data they need in a timely manner. Projects and organizations can also be negatively impacted by security breaches that can put the client’s or internal company data at risk. This is another area often highly underestimated and overlooked.
Possible solutions:
Remote project management can work; however, there are numerous factors that impact the success of a virtual project team, including the industry,project nature and complexity, infrastructure, communications, technology and team dynamics.
Take a close look at your organizational goals and resources.The success will depend on how well all issues are sufficiently and appropriately addressed in the initial stages and how well your resources, knowledge and tools are leveraged to avoid any pitfalls. This may require some specialized situational team training to help improve on schedule management, effectively utilizing collaboration tools, and improving communications, processes, and protocols.