Virtual Teams

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the management of virtual teams in projects. He explains that this is a big trend in the business world and shows the benefits of leading a virtual team, as well as the major challenges that must be dealt with like cultural, communications and geographic issues.
Ricardo shows that technology is a major enabler for the project manager in this task and that the leadership style of the project manager while managing a virtual team is quite different from leading a face-to-face team.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five Minutes PM podcast today. I like to discuss with you the, a distributed team or fill 12 teams. This is a very big trend that we face in. Most of the projects it's the global and geographically disperse a Teams. So in the past, it was very easy to say, Oh, okay. I will have a team. And I will put everybody together in the same floor. Everybody will face, we'll meet face to face with orders.

And now we are looking a completely different challenge and change. It's a big trend to reduce direct costs. So I have a team based in India, another team babies, and in Poland and not our team based in LA Canada, and that you're working together in the same project. And sometimes this is a very big trend that will reduce direct costs. And that will help me to find the best expertise, no matter where is this expertise?

I'm not sure. Oh, where is the best software design in my city? No, no, where's the best software design normally or where they are. And this will increase dramatically. The flexibility. Imagine the veal big project so I can look the electrical parts of my big, big sheep. And I say, Oh, the people from Singapore, they are the best one to do that. So I will release this part of the project with them, the men mechanical areas.

Oh, I know that the people from Italy are the best one to take care of this mechanical part. Then I will release this to that. But the ship is only one, so they will need to work together. And this bring a huge challenge. First geographic dispersion. It's very hard. The communication, all the communication in this bring us together. What are also old, the cultural aspect to deal with a Brazilian people is different than to deal with Saudi people that is different to deal with Chinese people that is different with American people, the African people there different.

And we need to understand that sometimes the school pro aspects, they become a challenge in the communication process. Even more, if we are far away, what if we are using only a technologist O way of communicating? This is a very big challenge. So the communication comes with a huge challenge, very, very hard to control, extremely hard to control. So what I need to have a very mature team to manage them virtually because I'm not in front of them to manage them.

And it's very interesting. I saw an article from the lip neck and the stamps, two gentlemen, that proposal too, kind of obstacles, technical ones and non technical ones. The technical one's we'll cover. There's a lot of math works for architecture, lack of collaborative software. So this technology will robe. And a lot of people, most of them are based in very rich countries. They see all, this is not a problem. Intranet is not a problem in internet. There's not a problem when you are in us when you are in Europe, but when you are in Africa, this is a huge challenge is a huge, it's almost impossible to have a high speed internet.

I did many, many projects in African. This is infrastructure that seems to be flexible and to be easy, becomes a very, very hard and beat challenge. And then, and the order size, we have the known technical aspects. So if you overcame the technical aspects, you need to be aware that you must overcame also that nontechnical corporate cultural power shift, because it's a change in the power in the product manager role will change from a control role to a much more advisor role.

It's different because you cannot control people. If you are not close to them, you need to trust them. You need to work in a South develop work team. So its this is a very hard thing, its to build trust, to build trust among the team members in this is a key success factor for our kind of projects to be trusted. What do we invite the friends to have soccer game on Saturday or to drink a beer it's impossible to drink.

I have a Virtual beer and they say, Oh, but my project is not to have a beer. Okay. But your project is built and made by people and people must to have relationship. So we need to be aware of that and the what we need to do first in dance and intensify, the use of technology and why is there will be a, a success factor? What do I do influence the success factor.

First of them, neck tour off the work easily, easily. It's much easier to have a vertical team for a long time, more than a contract projects using technology in the ID field because I T people, they are much more user to this kind of technology. It's much harder. One I have for example, a new airport, Oh, I want to build in a virtual team. This is not easy, second critical supporting work process. So if I have a very strong and bureaucratic work process to it virtually it's very, very hard dirt organizational context.

I need to understand what is about this organization because sometimes organizations don't see the virtualization as a great tool, geographical context, it's different. It's different to work in the day, the East and West coast, all of us or to work in the East coast off us, West coast, all of us, China, Singapore and South Africa. It's different. It's different.

Imagine the time you will need to have a team working around the clock. And it, this is a big, big challenge. Communication support, language language is, is still a challenge to look myself. I'm not a native speaker in English. So to produce this, Podcast in English. It's even harder for me, it's even harder. So an English it's a global language, but most of the people in many different countries, they don't speak English.

So we need to be aware of that in the visual characteristics. So it depends. Some people are much more use it to work with is this kind of filter or environment or if there is no water or is, this will be a very huge wall to overcome. So we need to know well, understand that. So if we understand that so we can benefit of all this virtualization, this podcast is a way of doing and communicate virtually with all good things. And also all risks, maybe You that are listen to this podcast today can understand differently from what I'm saying now, but this is the risk that we need to understand.

And this is a part of the business. We cannot see only the good aspects of everything we need to make a much more broader evaluation to make our final decision. I'm sorry for this long Podcast this was supposed to be five minutes. I hope you enjoy this podcast and see you next week with another five minutes PM. Podcasts have a great week.

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