The trend of software development companies to outsource their development oversees and create global teams causes many additional challenges for virtual teams.
To work effectively virtual teams need to overcome different types of barriers: technical and non-technical. Key technology barriers include underdeveloped IT infrastructure and telecommunications services. A number of technical problems range from unreliable systems, traffic congestion on the network during certain time of the day. Virtual team would benefit from the adopting of a full range of real-time multimedia communications and collaborations: voice, data, text, shared whiteboards, etc.
For decades most of equipment and software was design for use in the conventional office. More and more office software providers started to provide collaborative features, but adoption of these versions requires a significant organizational changes and dedicated resources. Additionally, these tools are evolving too and add complication in their adoption. An example is a beta version of Microsoft Office Live Workspace now is becoming Windows Live SkyDrive. A productivity booster can come from the adoption of another Microsoft product - Team Foundation Server (commonly abbreviated to TFS). This product offering source control, data collection, reporting, and project tracking, and is intended for collaborative software development projects. But again, switching from previously used tools requires good planning of the organization change. To increase the virtual team's effectiveness the adequate technological support is a must to have.
Working in virtual teams poses problems not usually encountered when groups of people work in the same building. Compared with the technological barriers, organizational and cultural barriers are probably more serious impediments to effectiveness of the virtual teams. The successful management of the virtual teams requires trust. Developing trust, a shared team culture, and agreed procedures for effective communication - the essential "common ground". Other examples of barriers include constrains and advantages of the time zones, lack of non-verbal cues during communications, and problems of identity. Physical meetings of the team members can provide a better image of identity between people and sometimes help to understand and accept some other differences.
The emergent electronic space significantly increases the complexity of the business environment and the geographical flexibility of organization and individuals. Understanding the challenges and aligning the efforts to help the virtual teams to increase their effectiveness is an essential way of moving an organizational maturity to the higher level.
Resources: Chris Kimble Research paper: Effective Virtual Teams through Community of Practice.
