Managing Virtual Teams in an Agile World Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from Professional Project Managers

Transcription

1 Managing Virtual Teams in an Agile World Best Practices, Tips and Tricks from Professional Project Managers John G. Stenbeck, PMP, PMI- ACP, CSM, CSP 1

2 Managing Virtual Teams in an Agile World Best Practices, Tips, and Tricks from Professionals Project Managers John G. Stenbeck, PMP, PMI- ACP, CSM, CSP Published by: GR8PM, Inc El Cajon Blvd. #N- 326 La Mesa, CA USA (619) All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission by the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. Copyright 2014 by GR8PM, Inc. 1 st edition. Printed in the United State of America. ISBN Edition: This book includes material based on the Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK Guide) Fifth Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc The book also contains many references to other registered terms such as PMP, PgMP, CAPM, PMI- SP, PMI- RMP, or PMI- ACP, which are registered marks of the Project Management Institute. This book expresses the views and opinions of its authors. The information contained in this book is provided without any express, statutory, or implied warranties. The author, GR8PM, Inc., its resellers, and distributors disclaim any liability for any damages caused or alleged to be caused either directly or indirectly by this book. 2

3 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Virtual Reality... 4 Time... 5 Distance... 5 Language... 7 Trust... 7 Interactions... 8 Teamwork... 9 Challenges Chapter 2 Virtualized Enterprise Principle 1: Virtual Value Principle 2: Team Success Principle 3: Team Setting Principle 4: Team Reliability Principle 5: Team Accountability Principle 6: Team Improvement Appendix A Best Practice Exercise Samples Exercise 01 01: Hopes, Fears, and Tears! Exercise 01 02: CB Radios Exercise 01 03: GPS Viewfinder Exercise 02 01: Obstacle Course

4 Chapter 1 Virtual Reality Modern organizations have become virtual work systems composed of complex, highly distributed, collaborative teams, that require greater connectivity and sharing among an increasing number of individuals and groups. Within complex organizations, and especially for virtual teams, knowledge and decision making is often distributed over many people who must coordinate the sharing of uniquely held information in order to achieve organizational goals. Virtual work increases the risk that decision-makers will not have critical knowledge to support good choices. Significant effort is required for the organization and teams to develop and maintain a shared perspective. It will not happen by accident! Virtual teams, like conventional ones, work on interdependent tasks to achieve a common goal. The big difference is that virtual teammates work in different places, and often in different time zones. Today, most virtual teams work on projects and their teams membership varies from relatively stable to constantly changing. Some times the nature of the project drives the need to work in a remote, distributed or virtual fashion. Other times it is a strategic business choice driven by expectations of competitive advantage. In either case, in order to work together successfully, a virtual team must become more than a collection of isolated individuals working to reach a business or project goal. In order to be successful they must connect at both the task and interpersonal level. They must connect for task-related requirements like planning, estimating and scheduling. But to be successful they must have a social connection that expresses trust or they will not maximize team performance. Recognize that virtual teams are an intentional organizational design choice intended to engage individuals with the best skills to develop a specific deliverable, or to provide around-the-clock support or to integrate resources in ways that save time and money. But those goals don t erase the challenges created by teams that must depend on technology to create the bandwidth needed to solve complex problems and collaborate when implementing solutions, both of which are activities that are difficult even when working face-to-face. So before you buy the hype of virtual teams and collaboration technologies it is crucial to understand the challenges of launching and sustaining effective virtual teams. While technology can do a lot to manage quantitative variables like time and distance, the qualitative variables that haunt virtual teams like language, trust, and behavioral norms, are amplified not minimized. That means specific leadership expertise is required to avoid falling victim to the old adage, Fools rush in where angels fear to tread! 4

5 Having the latest technology is far less important than ensuring teams develop the ability to comfortably interact, communicate regularly and successfully foster trust. Trust cultivated by effective communication will either propel the team forward or doom their potential for success. Complexity in this realm occurs concurrently at many levels magnifying the potential negative unintended consequences. That simple fact makes training in virtual problem solving and collaboration essential. To achieve real problem solving the team s idea transfer rate must be comparable to the rates enjoyed by collocated teams but that won t happen by accident. To collaborate effectively, decision making and communicating with true cultural awareness despite language barriers is also imperative. None of that will happen by accident. It will only occur by design which requires expertlevel virtual meeting facilitation. It also requires that problems like incompatible technology platforms and inadequate training be addressed before they cripple trust and create insecurity and skepticism. Time For virtual teams time differences create both advantages and disadvantages. For example, while it can be challenging to schedule meetings with a globally distributed team it is possible with careful coordination to create a twenty-four-hour work cycle by moving work from the United States to Europe and then on to Asia before returning it to the USA. Of course the obvious drawback is that when questions arise requiring answers from the other group the wait time for a decision can stretch to several hours, or more, and tension can rise as differing cultural attitudes about working outside normal office hours surface. The point here is complexity rises and won t be managed correctly without specifically designed processes, procedures, and systems. This book aids the reader by providing specific guidance, instructions and samples that can be used immediately. Distance For virtual teams distance also creates both advantages and disadvantages. Distance imposes barriers to the natural process of building trust and teamwork not present with face-to-face interactions. Because virtual teams do not share a physical work environment the subtle, often highly nuanced process forming a team identity where each individual's commitment to the goal is formed and reinforced by things like shared experiences, common jargon and even fashion norms, office location, and insignias or logos gets truncated. Nevertheless, virtual teams can create high levels of interpersonal connection related to goals and commitments when a sense of appreciating and caring for one another is cultivated using periodic face-to-face meetings and professional exercises whose purpose is to build and maintain a team identity that supports a social network. Creating 5

6 norms that build trust, support group norms, and reinforce work expectations is more of a challenge and requires diligent and disciplined effort. Again, the point here is complexity rises and won t be managed correctly without specifically designed processes, procedures, and systems. Exercise 01-01: Team Wordle One quick, relatively easy and painless way to begin planting the seeds of a team identity is by creating a Wordle. The Hopes, Fears, and Tears exercise in Appendix A provides very specific details for how to do it. Basically, you provide the team a list of Hopeful and Fearful words, such as the one shown below, and then instruct them to pick 5 words for each category from the list that express their hopes and fears about this being part of this team and project. You also direct them to add 3 words of their own for each category that are not on the list. You have them return their 16 words, compile a master list and use Wordle.net to create a Wordle for the team to print and hang in their workspace. Hopeful Teamwork Words Fearful Teamwork Words Admiration Afraid Anticipation Anger Assured Annoyance Challenged Bored Confidence Disappointed Courage Distressed Curiosity Doubtful Delighted Frustrated Determined Hostile Eagerness Irritated Energized Isolated Fascination Miserable Gratitude Nervous Inspired Sad Optimistic Scared Peaceful Stressed Pride Tense Respect Troubled Serenity Unhappy Thankfulness Upset Wordle.net will process your list and the most frequently used words will be the largest and the less used words will be smaller. You can adjust the color, direction, 6

7 and font settings to personalize it for the team. It helps anchor a shared identity for the team tied to their unique and shared perspectives. Language Both collocated teams and virtual teams include members with varying levels of command of their native language and industry jargon. Virtual teams however, often, have an added challenge created by the loss of visual cues and the use of a common language that is not a native tongue for many of the members, for example English as a second language. An interesting bit of evidence in this regard is that English has become the dominant language of business while simultaneously becoming the first language in human history to be spoken by more people as a second language than as a native tongue. The impact for virtual teams, quite often, is that while many of the non-native speakers have little trouble understanding native speakers or being understood by native speakers, when two non-native speakers need to collaborate they struggle to understand each other due to their varying accents. Trust The foundation of teamwork is trust period! Teams that are colocated develop trust more easily because informal, spontaneous interactions happen automatically. Alternately, virtual teams find it more difficult to develop trust because the normal human process of developing familiarity based on interpersonal interaction and time spent together are not available. That unavoidable reality means that the development of team identity which plays a crucial role in fostering the communication that is vital for understanding and interpreting the words, actions and styles of each other gets cut off. Without the cues acquired through informal social time subtle misperceptions spawn mistrust that quickly and negatively impact project results High-performance teams must be able to powerfully and constructively disagree over the content and context of data and information yet continue to drive forward to successful solutions. Doing so requires high levels of trust and strong relationships. Yet when communication passes through a technological intermediary, such as conference calls where the added variable of different languages can compound things, the risk that trust will be diminished and tension and uncertainty will increase becomes much higher. This can lead to unmanageable challenges for the team unless a consciously planned and managed process is used. Exercise 01-02: CB Radios One way to help the team build an understanding of these challenges is with the CB Radios exercise in Appendix A. CB Radios is an exercise that is done in 3 rounds. It is a lesson in productive conference call etiquette. In Round 1 the goal is for the team to count off in a race against the clock without two team members speaking over each other. For example, for a team 8 the goal is to count off from 1 through 8 without having two team members speak at once, and to do it as quickly as possible. If two team members speak at the same time, the 7

8 count automatically restarts at 1 with a different person and the clock keeps ticking. In Round 2 the goal is the same but the team is instructed to announce themselves by name and pause for radio clearance that is no interference from another teammate before announcing their number. If two teammates announce themselves at the same time they re- announce themselves until one of them has radio clearance and then they announce their number. In Round 3 the goal is for each team member to state a question any question they like, on topic or off, serious or funny as quickly as possible without two team members speaking at the same time. All the other rules stay the same. This time in addition to announcing and pausing for radio clearance they say, My question is and complete their turn by saying, Done! Afterwards they discuss several questions that expose how it felt in round 1 to try to communicate without any standards for conference call etiquette as well as how vagueness impacted the difficulty level and how multitasking can create parallel challenges. They finish by discussing the benefit of agreeing to give each other respect by focusing their attention and using communication standards. Since regular and frequent communication is key process element for success effectively communicating common content and managing routine complexity is important. Frequent communication creates the expectation of a low stress, collegial exchange of timely, useful, high quality information. And since more communication can typically be correlated to greater trust, the team tends to perform better, be more positive and experience mutual respect for one another s expertise. Equally important is that an inherent sense of accountability to follow through on agreements perceived as promises grows. Interactions Both collocated teams and virtual teams must deal with factors best characterized as behavioral norms. Behavioral norms are driven by both organizational standards and cultural conditioning. So it is not the behaviors or behavioral norms that create the challenge. The challenge is created by misinterpretation of behaviors due to expectations and assumptions derived from the composite of norms in each team member. Examples include individual performance and recognition in the United States versus team performance and recognition in Japan. Or extended midday meals and rest periods in equatorial countries versus monolithic workdays in more temperate climates. And generational differences in the expectation of formal or informal language or signs of respect or esteem. Any and all of these can be misinterpreted raising communication challenges. Virtual teams however, typically, have an added challenge created by the loss of visual cues and the addition of more of the factors that can be characterized as national or regional customs, traditions, and expectations. As noted above, the point is that complexity rises as background differences increase, and 8

9 that will impact the team as it works to deliberately create its own culture and transcend future problems before they occur. Teamwork Effective teamwork occurs when (1) individuals work together toward a shared goal, (2) depend on relationships and (3) are committed to one another's success. Achieving effective teamwork requires intentional and disciplined communication to create and sustain a shared and energized vision of the goals that can be achieved. It also requires durable relationships focused on the team s purpose so team members believe they can depend on highly committed coworkers to sustain momentum toward purposeful, rewarding outcomes. The by-product is the commitment to one another's success acting as an agent to break down misunderstandings about behavioral norms and a catalyst to foster interpersonal comfort and commitment. Virtual teams must define a system that enables effective idea generation and sharing so that the use of their expert knowledge can combine to overcome obstacles. But the team s legitimate need for communicating beyond typical boundaries in order to acquire resources and knowledge in order to solve complex problems the mandate for the team often gets impeded by self-imposed assumptions and limits. One way to get at the root of those self-imposed assumptions and limits, so they can be removed, is to have an exercise that identifies them. Below is one example that you use. Have your team complete it and send it back to you so you can collate the results for discussion during your initial team meeting. Exercise 01-03: GPS Viewfinder It can be very insightful and helpful for the team to have clear understanding of areas where early team maturity is high and also where it is low. With the GPS Viewfinder exercise in Appendix A team members complete a quick survey and the results are discussed at the kickoff meeting or an early team meeting. Each member of the new team completes a non- scientific, anecdotal survey the combined results provide a GPS Viewfinder of the team s starting maturity. It should be fun and only take a few minutes for each of them. When they re done they send it to the team leader and forget it! Thanks! Abe Lincoln, PMP For various statements they rate their agreement or disagreement using the common 5- level scale from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree. Then the team leader collect the responses and enters the data in the GPS Viewfinder.XLSX that can be downloaded at GR8PM.com. The spreadsheet creates a spider diagram showing team maturity level on each of five variables: Goal/Objective Understanding, Role Clarity, Team Creative Capacity, Product Completion Power, and Process Improvement Aptitude. The overall team maturity score is also evaluated using a modified Tuckman scale (Bruce Tuckman, 1965) with levels defined as Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Innovating. By sharing the Team Score and 9

10 Team Spider Graph as PDFs the team can discuss observations and suggestions with each other. Challenges Some time ago W. Edwards Deming, father of Lean principles and the Quality movement, said, Any time the majority of the people behave in a particular way the majority of the time, the problem is inherent in the system the system that you the leader own and are responsible for! More recently Rick Howard and Ian Heiman published a Gartner report, Using Failures as a Catalyst for Change in which they identified the hierarchy for success as, People, Process, Data then, Technology. That hierarchy defined people as the organization, process as program and project management, data as information management, and technology was any appropriate platform being used by the people. And in their book, The 4 Disciplines of Execution authors Sean Covey, Jim Huling and Chris McChesney share research that would seem to validate what Deming said. They explain that their first survey included over 13,000 people in 17 different industries from over 500 different companies. Three interesting points for that research were: 65% of initiatives require significant behavioral change at the front line 81% of those surveyed said they were not held accountable for regular progress 87% had no clear idea what they should be doing to achieve the goal Their book focuses on the rules for executing in the midst of the whirlwind of daily obligations. It argues convincingly that there are four interlinked rules, or considerations, that must be address simultaneously in order to execute effectively. First, one must focus on the single most important goal, which aligns with the Agile practice of maintaining a prioritized Product Backlog. Second, one must act on lead measures, what Agile identifies as Potentially Shippable Products. Third, work must be measured with a compelling scorecard, similar to the Agile practice of publishing information radiators. And fourth, there must be a a cadence of accountability, achieved in Agile with timeboxed work periods called iterations or sprints. Considering and combining the ideas from all three sources it is obvious that for both collocated and virtual teams success is a mater of creating and maintaining a system that surrounds, supports and reinforces the team, as a team. The fact that creating and sustaining that system in a virtual world is much more difficult can hardly be denied. It is equally clear that it won t happen by accident. It will only happen as a result of careful design and persistent effort from a committed leader you! This book will show you what to do, how to do it, and when to do it, saving you an immense amount of time figuring out how to create your system. You will, however, have to apply your expert skills and judgment to edit and nuance it for your teams and their environments, resources, and constraints. The outcome will be much higher levels of team performance and project success than you have enjoyed in the past! 10

11 Exercise 01-04: Identify Self- Imposed Limitations Identify self-imposed assumptions and limits that may affect your organization s ability to working in a virtual team environment. Have several members of your management team choose any 7 of the following items and describe their impact in the space provided by asking themselves questions such as: How would this boundary affect team collaboration? How would this boundary impact achieving our goals? What could aid the team in overcoming this limitation, or make it easier? What can the team do to reduce this barrier? INDIVIDUAL FACTORS: Gender or Age of Team Members Personal and Cultural Backgrounds Native Languages Contributing Ideas and Sharing Hunches Varying Levels of Experience/Expertise ORGANIZATIONAL FACTORS: Departmental Politics Intellectual Property Restrictions Varying Seniority of Team Members TASK-CENTRIC FACTORS: Differing Task Definitions Fractionalized Over Multiple Projects QUANTITATIVE FACTORS: Different Technical Platforms Different Technical Responsibilities (hardware, software, support) Time Zones Geo-political Constraints OTHER FACTORS (Please name and describe): YOUR DESCRIPTION Afterwards meet with the other participants and discuss parallels and divergences in your opinions in order to expose high probability challenges and plan next steps for mitigating risks and maximizing opportunities. 11

12 Chapter 2 Virtualized Enterprise Virtual collaboration that is robust, reliable and consistently helpful to the team requires purposeful design. It will not happen by accident. It must produce a clear shared vision of the goals, boundaries, resources, and constraints. It must also explicitly define working agreements that guide the team at times when issues that were not seen, or perhaps not even known, impact producing desirable deliverables. The very nature of the virtual world requires teams to have enterprise-level standards that foster the conditions required for success. Virtual collaboration requires that: Each team member recognize and accept that they have the autonomy and power to choose, or to refuse, to collaborate effectively, and personal responsibility is attached to that freedom and power. The negative consequences of choosing to not collaborate effectively are both clear and significant. The consequences of choosing to not collaborate connected to the perception that enforcement of sanctions and penalties is highly probable. Each team member recognizes and accepts that desirable results are heavily dependent on mastery of their subject matter area in collaboration with the other subject matter experts (SMEs) on the team. Everyone understands that the challenging conditions inherent with being a virtual team raise the baseline expectation for contributing individual creativity and reliable performance, especially in communicating adequate, accurate and timely information. The link between the team s work and organizational success is consistently overcommunicated to the team and all stakeholders. Local leadership be effectively shared and transferred as needed in order to manage the collaborative work environment. Principle 1: Virtual Value Technological change in the last 20 years has been breathtaking but it is a dim reflection of what is coming on the horizon. In the past virtual or distributed teams were treated as inescapable, second-best options that were used when it couldn t be avoided. Today the improvement of technological capabilities combined with a major shift in how we think of basic work processes has altered the very DNA of organizations and teams and the competitive landscape. Virtual value means harnessing the intellectual power of the best and brightest wherever they are located and linking them to the correct capital resources to create innovative solutions as quickly as possible. In doing so organizations create the agility required to strategically meet customer demands in better, more profitable ways. Today the best and the brightest enjoy the freedom to connect across continents, cultures 12

13 and time zones to solve the most interesting and often most profitable challenges facing industry and humanity. So the value of virtual has almost completely flipped the earlier characterization of second-best into one of a first-choice model preferred in many industries. The first step to realizing that potential, however, is ensuring the communication bandwidth required to enable idea transfer rates that support full scale problem solving. With the ubiquitous availability of WiFi and cellular networks innovative, creative problem solving has become people-centric not location-centric. That means effective leadership requires rethinking how distributed development can accelerate organizational learning by incentivizing knowledge sharing. Communication bandwidth pivots on two variables. First and foremost, the human relationships amongst the team members, whether they are internal to the same organization or collaborating across organizations. And second, the technology that intermediates the communication that fosters or inhibits the trust required for powerful relationships to take root. As technical boundaries have fallen the definition of work and how work gets done has not altered the human need to be connected. As helpful as team scheduling, project management, and electronic collaboration tools may be, fostering the human connection continues to be the key to success for virtual teams. To succeed an unavoidable, fundamental re-think of networks as a process not a technology focused on how teams form, knowledge is acquired and shared and complex work gets done in the context of uncertainty is required. Virtual teams succeed or fail at the intersection of human and electronic networks and enabling the very high bandwidth required for idea sharing is the determining factor. Isolation is probably the most subtle yet important risk factor for virtual work teams and organizations. Team members are isolated from each other by geography and time zones They become increasingly isolated from their organizations and customers when communication illustrating their role and its vital contributions aren t well executed. That communication must link virtual team members to a sense of purpose that is integral to their work, that fosters a sense of belonging to something greater than themselves, and provides opportunities to express meaning and significance at a personal level. On a practical level, virtual teams must have a clear line of sight between their work, the project s objectives, and the commitment of the organization to the overall business plan and strategy. Without a clear line of sight virtual teams have a much greater risk of becoming misaligned and failing to reach strategic priorities and the organizational mission. Exercise 02-01: Obstacle Course For most teams it is very helpful to clarify the areas where the risks and challenges of being a virtual team are most probable. With the Obstacle Course exercise in Appendix 13

14 A team members develop a list of possible challenges the team will face while working together, virtually, on their project. A list of root causes of potential challenges is presented and the team identifies two ideas that could be a possible solution. They also write one question that must be considered by the team in order to solve the challenge. The contrast of suggesting solutions and asking questions opens the team up to creative possibilities for mitigating risks. Principle 2: Team Success Effective leadership has always been central to success in any endeavor, and the importance of designing it into a virtual team s collaborative work environment cannot be over-emphasized. Today's virtual organizations have blurred boundaries across geography, time zones, cultures, supply chains and markets. In the process communication has become the critical leadership competency because without the capability to translate a compelling vision into an understanding that motivates people to embrace new actions, transforming that vision into reality will not happen. Virtual team leadership typically operates best in a shared leadership model because the work is usually knowledge work such as software development with intangible deliverables or activities such as engineering, design and analysis of tangible products before they enter manufacturing or construction (i.e., tangible production) where the emphasis or importance of a particular expertise rises, then recedes, and sometimes rises again. So leadership is passed, like a baton in a relay race, as the team s work progresses. Virtual leadership is described with names that range from facilitation to coordination to rotating to leaderless. What those names share in common is a sense of constant change throughout the team's time together. They imply that virtual team leaders will need mentoring or coaching in order to function effectively because leadership, as such, is not a core competency for many of the subject matter experts (SMEs) who must share it. When a team member assumes the leadership role, the virtual environment creates specific challenges where they will benefit from the presence and assistance of a mentor and coach. In addition to their core technical competencies they must manage the technology that intermediates communication, they must exercise sensitive cross-cultural awareness, guide remote team members into sharing information, and foster trust among all the team members. In some circumstances they will also need to network with customers and other outside stakeholders. The challenge of performing all these various leadership duties simultaneously can be overwhelming for a technical professional without the support of a mentor and coach. In order to position the virtual team for success the mentor and coach must model servant leadership that helps each team member rise to their potential, ensures consistent accountability, transforms the challenges of change into opportunities for team growth, shows how to acquire necessary tools, information, and resources, removes obstacles, and raises team performance with continuous improvement and celebration practices. 14

15 Coaches and mentors managing virtual teams are most likely to be successful when their experience and attributes include: Curiosity that seeks learning far more often than it seeks root causes to assign blame. A primary, genuine relationship-based interest in others' success and a secondary desire to manage things. Credible levels of experience that enable finding alternate ways to succeed because results and innovation are more important that maintaining the status quo. A high level of emotional intelligence (EQ) demonstrated in mature, optimistic, and fair interactions with their teams as peers. Balanced perspective where the desire for process improvement and enviable results helps keep the team motivated and the project on track. The maturity to calmly deliver timely targeted feedback that is positive and constructive, and based on objective observations and data. Strong communicators who have demonstrated skill in giving recognition both formally and informally, whether the environment is face-to-face or virtual. Because the coach/mentor role is critical having a process for selecting and growing them that increases their reliability is vital. That means getting human resource professionals at the organization level involved with creating a structured interview process using multiple raters and behavioral anchors. The candidate needs to be evaluated in the virtual collaboration leader role and so the interview must simulate reality by, for example, giving them work samples they must organize and communicate to teams dispersed across geography, time zones, and cultures. One way this can be simulated is by providing an inbox where messages and content must be sorted, distilled and communicated to the virtual team. Then the candidate is measured for how well they create collaboration that supports high performance. One last point about positioning the team for success is to ensure executive management accepts responsibility for supporting the virtual work teams by: Clarifying the vision, business case and key outcomes that make virtual teams a compellingly good choice. Explaining where alignment with corporate goals and outside organizations is best leveraged. Selecting the right mentors and coaches to serve the virtual teams. Making executive-level decisions about matters important to virtual teams in a timely fashion. Endorsing learning from mistakes by rewarding fail fast outcomes when they occur. Ensuring that continuous improvement of processes and not just deliverables and outcomes are included in incentive and recognition programs. Virtual collaboration will not be successful when dictated from the top, but neither will it be successful with neglect even benign neglect from the top. Ideally the process will enable people with a stake in the outcome to determine their processes and become 15

16 personally invested in succeeding so their commitment and discretionary effort both rise. In order for that to occur the project champion and executive sponsor must justify investing in periodic face-to-face planning, design and learning meetings to increase the probability of success and bottom line outcomes. Therefore the project champion and executive sponsor must: Over-communicate the vision and business case and not assume the team sees the big picture. Give the team wide latitude to test novel ideas even ones that may seem questionable using Socratic questioning to accelerate team maturity and create understanding. Support investments that forge the initiative, creativity, and commitment of the team so they will overcome barriers like being distributed and perhaps not even speaking the same native language and still produce high performance results. Principle 3: Team Setting A core challenge for virtual teams is balancing or aligning collaborative activities and autonomous tasks without causing confusion or inducing risk or waste. That means it is very important to clearly define the interfaces where different roles share decision making responsibility. Along with defining the interfaces it is vital that standards for virtual collaborative decision making be established. To accomplish this the team must create a picture of decision making scenarios (hopefully aided by previously established organizational standards) to assist team members with understanding and interpreting when their roles and responsibilities intersect with others. Sometimes a simple deliverables map, such as Figure 2.1, can help. 16

17 For this Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Deliverables Map the team has defined three teams, White, Grey and Black, that have control of various phases of the project. They have also identified that there are interfaces between the various modules, such as GL, AP, AR and Inventory within the Accounting system as well as interfaces with the CRM, PO, and Service modules in the Operations system. Using a collaborative decision modeling tool, even a simple Johari window (see Figure 2.2), can support this need and extend it to achieve consistent process execution in a virtual context. The picture of decision making scenarios needs to link the various jobs or functions impacted by the solution being developed so that connections across systems, regions and other barriers can be seen. Then accountability for decision making can be modeled so team members see the whole process and understand when and with whom they need to collaborate. The decision model can identify examples of the various types of tasks and decisions that fall into each quadrant in order to help team members with determining where their work falls at any given time. It can also describe the kind of behaviors, for example Subject Matter Expert (SME), Senior SME, Coordinator, and Expert Facilitator, that are needed and appropriate during discussions and negotiations so well thought out results occur. Once the model is created it can be reviewed periodically during team meetings to check how well the roles are working and being supported. Then any needed adjustments to improve it can be made. Creating a shared decision making model helps focus and clarify the goals and objectives 17

18 of the project so they are held in common across the team and act as an anchor when the inevitable storming stage of team development occurs. To be effective a virtual team and the organization it supports, must embrace the choice of being a fluid collection of human networks, cross-functional teams, and temporary work systems. In order to succeed the reliance on hierarchical control must be replaced by strong linkages based on common goals but this should not be seen as abandoning the control needs of the organization. Principle 4: Team Reliability As proven by the application of Lean Manufacturing principles in many other settings, continuous improvement can only occur when a base of reliable processes is first established. Because there are so many additional, often subtle challenges to creating an environment where teams can be predictably and repeatedly successful the need for continuous improvement is larger than ever. Therefore creating clear expectations via coherent and consistently applied practices and processes is essential to keeping the organization functioning in an effective virtual collaborative way. Involving representatives from all impacted stakeholders in the decision modeling exercise previously described means that the picture of the system can act as the basis for creating practices and processes. Those will be embraced as standards because ownership belongs to everyone and effort to uphold them demonstrates loyalty to the group. Once the principles of the collaborative decision making model have been expressed, it can be used to support designing the practices and processes for the team. Working together the group can choose specific areas, such as financial results, customer deliverables or product quality and brainstorm operating practices and processes. The results can be published on the team s website or wiki page or workspace environment for reference and reinforcement. They can also be reviewed periodically during team meetings to see how the processes are working and being applied. Some sample practices might include: To support accurate, adequate and timely sharing of information within the team brief written summaries will be ed to all team members at least 2 hours before the daily meeting. The collaborative decision making model will be used to guide when and with whom decisions will be discussed before they are made, to create clarity about local decision making authority, and to guide the timing for notifying others about the need for their involvement with decisions and issues. Teammate inquiries and questions will be answered within 1 hour, and if a group meeting of less than 15 minutes is needed it will be scheduled within four hours following any sleeping team members day start time. Comprehensive status reports, including updated metrics, will be uploaded to the team s shared environment by close of business Wednesday for the Project Manager. 18

19 Virtual team work processes typically follow a modular or iterative approach but not in a mutually exclusive fashion. Compartmentalizing work in a modular way supports independent work tasks and iterative processes keep that work integrated and aligned. During planning discussions team members decide what tasks benefit from being compartmentalized and then define where integration requirements demand incremental and interactive alignment before finalization and implementation. For the approach to work effective electronic communication must exist so team members can exchange ideas and information in a timely, adequate, and comfortable mode. Key considerations are how well the organization and product design can be developed collaboratively, and does the team have the expertise and experience to optimize design choices to successfully produce desirable collaborative results? Complexity in work processes is counterproductive. Establishing processes that are easy to understand and follow greatly increases the probability that consistent outcomes will occur. Documenting the processes facilitate continuous improvement reviews of the results so that improvements especially additional simplification can be identified and translated into improvement opportunities. For a work process to be useful it must be a valid reflection of how work is accomplished in the virtual setting of the team. Leaders must avoid the father knows best syndrome where the attempt to dictate in detail how teams will function and allow the team to be the design agent for it s own processes within any necessary organizational guidelines. The team can be helped with guidance from organizational templates because the process and flow of the team benefits from integration with other teams using similar approaches. Templates should show standards for issues such as the level of detail or format for reporting, references for describing goals and objectives, and the basis for metrics and continuous improvement reviews. They might also include suggestions for defining block time for work periods, check-in standards for continuous integration builds, a meeting process to keep team members synchronized, and ideas for information radiators that create a visible record that is open and accessible to all stakeholders. Because of the unavoidable isolation of the virtual team members it is vitally important to decompose the overall project work into independent tasks. Because of the complexity and uncertainty often present in the project this can be challenging. But if it the work is not adequately decomposed into independent tasks the work for specific team members may become impossible. During the discussion about the collaborative decision making model and operating processes the team must identify methods for detecting where interaction is necessary. The challenge is that real-world systems are seldom neatly divisible into independent tasks which is why team members must remain vigilant as situations where their decisions impact other team members. 19

20 Many times the mistaken belief that technology systems will ensure needed interaction leads to problems because one team member assumes what another one knows or has done. Daily synchronization has proven to be one of the few models that reliably triggers interactions at the right time. When it is obvious a task has unavoidable predecessor dependencies then the best solution is to divide the work into dependent tasks that explicitly call out the required individuals and interactions. While complexity is not reduced because each person is alerted to the required interactions the risk of focusing solely on his or her tasks and failing to included the required input before task completion is greatly reduced. One advantage of this approach is that it avoids the common mistake of thinking that giving everyone access to more data, or a more global view of the project, means they will have the time and resources to monitor and evaluate information changes without overloading their capacity. In the high complexity development context of most virtual teams this can be particularly important. It is tempting to expect every team member to monitor all information resources but it is more effective to assign the duty of notification to the individual who will be handling the task. Principle 5: Team Accountability Once a full picture of decision making scenarios and a collaborative decision making model have been created linking them to accountability at the level of team roles and responsibilities becomes key to achieving consistent process outcomes. As noted earlier, Sean Covey, et al, in the 4 Disciplines book noted that 81% of those surveyed said they were not held accountable for regular progress and 87% had no clear idea what they should be doing to achieve the goal. For virtual teams it will be 100% in both categories if careful structuring is not applied. One approach is to create a Traceability RACI (TRACI) Chart (see Figure 2.3). Because information about generic RACI charts has been widely published elsewhere we will not replicate it here. Instead we will assume that a baseline of reader experience with RACI charts exists and develop the additional thinking of making it traceable. 20

21 In the sample TRACI shown, the senior level RACI assessments are traceable to various features, functions and capabilities expected as outcomes from the project. While this is a high-level example it shows how easily it can be created. Using a high-touch, low-tech approach, such as sticky notes on a wall or index cards on a large whiteboard, works very well if the team can be collocated for a planning session. If not, it is also doable using a variety of remote planning tools, even an Excel spreadsheet. Working together the virtual team identifies the key functions at a high-level, or alternately specific development units at a lower level, and records who needs to be included in decision making and to what degree (RACI). Be careful to ensure the team carefully identifies all the stakeholders who need to included in reviews and approvals. Overlooked stakeholders are problematic for every project and can easily become fatal for projects being delivered by virtual teams. Principle 6: Team Improvement When the team actively participates in defining the process they will use to manage the project they become intimately familiar with it and that familiarity breeds commitment to applying it and valuing the feedback from it. For virtual teams the ideal process allows the team to work in small groups or individually as they approach the deeply technical parts of their work while creating a larger group interaction where challenges can be shared in an environment of personal safety. The combination of working privately and airing results publicly creates an operational norm that supports both the immediate team and the larger network of virtual teams in an integrated fashion. 21

22 That context means team review meetings can be optimized and facilitated using questions, checklists, information radiators, scorecards, and dashboards that standardize key activities and tasks according to agreed upon principles and published reporting norms. Thereby information exchange is improved and decision making overhead is reduced. Another big benefit of this approach is that it promotes the ideal of self-directed, highly committed teams where leadership naturally passes between the various SMEs in an appropriate dynamic fashion. The combination of formal structure and nearly informal discussions between team members does more to amplify continuously improving team performance than almost any other tool available to the organization. Issue management standards should be defined. They can include, for example, a statement that clarifying process expectations or standards will occur on a same-day basis whereas decisions on more complex issues or emerging opportunities will occur with five days. The standards should also include an explicit statement on the frequency, intensity and duration of communicating results. Maintaining future performance on a continuously improving curve also requires a strategy to encourage a curious learner culture. Team members need to be inspired to embrace information sharing and avoid information hording. Peer-to-peer education sessions, like lunch and learns, as well as more formal training need to be used to support the team. Including acknowledgments, recognition, awards, and incentives for contributions will support a consistent virtual education process and heighten the team s commitment and involvement. An interesting and often overlooked opportunity is holding sessions where executive leaders discuss and explore with the team how strategic and corporate goals are set and their important connection to the virtual team delivering the product or service well. When it can be integrated with a team member sharing how executive decision making impacts the team it becomes doubly powerful. The more the work model or result of the virtual team s project represents the ending of an existing way of doing business the more important it is to discuss and explore how it is also an opportunity for future opportunity. Beyond merely discussing the operational changes explore the new business model and identify specifically how stopping, starting, or changing the current approach ensures future shared success. One key objective to developing a knowledge sharing culture is to move tacit knowledge into tribal knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the personal expertise any team member exercises in their role. It is the stuff of experience and the reason someone with a lot of experience is generally paid more than someone who is brand new. The paradox is that tacit knowledge is both an asset and a liability. It is an asset the team member brings and the organization benefits from. It becomes a liability when the team member s behavior restricts the organization s potential or when the team member leaves voluntarily or due 22