Managing Projects in Virtual Environments – Lessons of Experience
By Robinson I. Akiri, PMP

Organizations are taking advantage of the benefits of information technology and distributed communication systems to pull together global resources to focus on important projects. Design jobs and knowledge-laden projects are prime candidates for implementation in virtual environments. However managing projects in such virtual environments poses unique problems. Most significantly are time zone differences and the inability to have zero or few in-person meetings. As a project manager, your primary resources are emails, person-to-person telephone calls, teleconferencing, and Internet based audio and video based meetings. Effective project management may be further constrained if members belong to different organizations, and their contributions to the project are voluntary. In a recent such experience, the most important issues encountered were: how to keep focused and motivated faceless – voluntary, culturally divergent specialists with varied industrial experiences, in different locations and time zones – to effectively address project issues. Others issues were how to continually build consensus on project issues among team members, maintain alignment around the project objectives, and minimize conflicts and frustrations. Certain actions were right, some were wrong, but in all lessons have been learned for the future.

Managing projects in virtual environments demand the same capabilities as in physical settings involving collocated teams. It requires commitment to intense communication, building committed teams and positive interpersonal relationships, offering technical guidance, planning and controlling implementation and providing effective leadership. Leading projects to success in the virtual environment involves effective project management (life cycle process) and employing standard project management procedures, tools and techniques though, there are some unique features. In a virtual environment, the project manager will gain team support and commitment to the project by engaging in the following step-by-step procedure:

1. Review/prepare the project charter; and ensure agreement between the project team, the sponsor, and key stakeholders on project objectives and other key variables.
2. Request team members to formally introduce themselves (posting their bios and resumes (even with photographs) in a designated Internet project site could be included). This will form a basis for determining areas of strength and potential roles on the team
3. Define project scope to enable the team to agree on the boundaries as well as detail components of the project.
4. Prepare and agree on project implementation schedule with key milestones and progress reporting plan.
5. Define resources and secure team members expected weekly/monthly time (hours/days) commitments to the project. Use this as a basis for future allocation of tasks.
6. Specify subject matter related roles in the same way required in regular teams. In addition, identify among the team the major software application (e.g. MS Word, Excel, etc.) specialist, multimedia specialist, technical support specialist in order to effectively control virtual technology-related problems. Also, needed is a knowledge archivist to ensure adequate filing of primary information and reference materials generated by the team members.
7. Report progress preferably in short intervals, e.g. Weekly Status Reports, such as three-quarter page long, highlighting key results, issues agreed upon, constraints with suggested solutions, and immediate next tasks. Issues of contention likely to breed conflict and frustration should be identified and put in the “parking lot” to be addressed at a later date as more information is acquired. This minimizes dysfunctional conflicts and keeps the team energized, focused, stimulated and committed.

Communication is more critical in facilitating virtual than collocated teams. In distributed teams the project manager’s key communication objectives is to achieve project results with minimum conflict, frustration, and expenditure of mental effort and electronic costs. The key to achieving these objectives is promoting cordial interpersonal relationships among team members. Members must recognize that each subject matter contribution by a member is an embodiment of a member’s knowledge, experience, ego, and prestige and as such must be treated with empathy. Therefore, outright condemnations of presentations without consideration for feelings are bound to push members into defensive or attacking roles, none, which breeds productive interpersonal relationships. Members must read/listen with understanding, avoid premature judgement, and perceive the expressed views and associated feelings from the presenter’s perspective – this is the key to productive virtual intra-group relationships. The project manager must encourage free communication between team members and avoid polarization of the group. In times of conflict, brief telephone discussions, rather than counter-emails have been found to diffuse tense situations.

The project manager must avoid the temptation to contribute rather than guide technical inputs. He/she must concentrate on promoting team focus and continually build consensus around project objectives, by crystallizing discussions and key agreements, and sharing with the team. Leadership is not an exclusively role for the project manager, therefore, he/she must encourage members to amplify understanding and crystallize member contributions, when possible, to focus team effort. The project manager must control (facilitation and direction) the pace of communication within the team. Since members often access the virtual environment at different times and frequency, there should be agreed to procedures and rules for email communications and the project manager should ensure that they are enforced and updated as necessary.

Volunteer team members are assumed, invariably, expected to be highly motivated otherwise; they would not have signed in to contribute to the project. Nonetheless, team members have their individual and organizational commitments separate from the project, which often have priority over the project work. Therefore, the project manager must devise effective ways to deal with the problem of inadequate member participation the project manager and keep members focused and committed to the project. Suggested ways include ensuring that all members receive all communications. Also, separate emails should be sent and telephone calls made to encourage delinquent members to make inputs.

The techniques of project management in a virtual environment, using dispersed teams, in varied time zones are not different from when managing in a physical setting and using collocated teams. Nonetheless, communication is more intense and attention must be paid to building positive interpersonal relationships among team members to avoid conflicts, frustrations, and consequent project failure.

Robinson I. Akiri, PMP