A project is a unique undertaking where part of the uniqueness is the particular combination of people. They will probably have different understandings of how to run the project, different experience and different styles and the people need to develop into a coherent team.
Getting a project up and running is always a challenge. Ideally everyone understands the requirements and they bring their varying experience and styles to develop a solution.
In practice, the team will not reach the “performing” stage without passing through “forming” and “norming”. A project is not simply a collection of technical objects and processes, but a team effort of people who probably never worked in quite that configuration before.
One of the ideal ways of building a team is to provide the group as a whole training about the project, what is wanted and how it might be delivered. By adding some technical project management training, the team have to opportunity to share their competence and to support each other in a way not possible if the project is managed as if it were simply a technical undertaking.
Even before the term “virtual project management” came into fashion, many projects had team members in different places, multitasking and meeting only from time to time. This seems to work best when most of the team know each other. Similarly, if most of the team share something in common (e.g. the employer), the virtual training can also be very effective.
In reality all projects these days have members who operate individually and work in different places, maybe even in different countries. The term “virtual team” is effectively redundant but it is still not always easy to bring these people together for face-to-face training.
Virtual project management training has great advantages as the logistics are far easier than traveling to meet in one place. With proper organisation and infrastructure, the benefit:cost ratio can be better than face-to-face events.
Dr. Deasún Ó Conchúir (pronounce) is a Collaboration Consultant at Scatterwork, which supports Project Solutions for Virtual Teams.
Email: deasun@gd.scatterwork.com
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