What Is the Best Way To Build a Virtual Team? 175
stoolpigeon writes "The department I work in is growing and including new members that live quite far apart. Right now most people are in the same office but new members are in Singapore and South Africa, with more coming from other places. I would be interested in Slashdotters' recommendations for software, practices, services and anything else that can help build strong virtual teams."
Communicate. And not just about work! (Score:2, Informative)
I am in the UK, and work with a team in Finland, India, Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania and Sweden... I work with no-one else in the UK. Communicating regularly and often around work topics is a given, both in group meetings and just by following up with IM or a quick call. I make the assumption that you have an appropriate toolkit, such as Office Communicator / Lync, and LiveMeeting or whatever you prefer, but you need something to chat, speak, video call and conference with.
The real challenge is really getting to know someone virtually: by that I mean not just what they do, and what their work strengths and weaknesses are, but also what they enjoy away from work and what their personal situation is. This is the sort of stuff that gets discussed at lunch, making a drink, or whatever, that simply doesn't often get considered when working virtually.
It's difficult because you can't force it, but on the other hand it does pay dividends as you actually do end up building a real camaraderie. I end up just chatting on IM with colleagues to see if they had an interesting weekend, and take it from there.
I also like to be reminded of where the team is, and in what timezone, and what they look like: I have a world map printed on my wall with photos of the team pinned to it. (Well, a powerpoint slide printed!). It helps cement someone in your mind, I find.
One thing that helped put the icing on the cake is a one-off, physical meeting. Yes, this is expensive, and yet it takes a week out of everyone's schedule practically, but the value in building relationships with colleagues and making friends of colleagues really cannot be over-stated.
Another potential communication issue worth considering is that native English speakers tend to speak fast, and use odd colloquialisms from time to time. Recognise this, slow down, and explain colloquialisms: you'll find non-native English speaking colleagues greatly appreciate this, and will often start a chat to question word use, constructions, sayings, colloquialisms or whatever which is a great way to build a better relationship, too. It's also fascinating to find the literal translations in many languages as the expression for 'you're pulling my leg' in Russian translates to English as literally 'you are hanging noodles off my ears'.
Most of all, have fun, and built a relationship of trust.
Re:Keeping in touch plenty! (Score:4, Informative)
As somebody who's been doing this for over a decade, let me emphasise the importance of this. You will need a good travel budget, and you will need to be willing to make sacrifices in your personal life, in addition to ensuring other good and regular communication commitments.
I've just got off our weekly engineering call that went for the last two hours (10pm California, 6am London and 1pm Shanghai). Yawn. Somebody always gets the arsehole timeslot with this many timezones. We've managed to keep it down to one of these a week, with some extra duplicated two time zone meetings in between. Any less and things noticeably fall between the cracks quickly.