Effective leadership of international virtual project teams

Abstract

Virtual team meetings offer unique opportunities to deal with project issues. When the project team is international in scope, virtual team meetings such as conference calls and web meetings are necessities. However, along with the advances in technology that allow such meetings, the workload demands on people have increased, and language barriers have grown in relevance. As a result, virtual meetings are increasingly vulnerable to multitasking, where participants do not pay attention to the meeting thread. In this paper, we review techniques that help project managers cope with this challenge. Using a complex IT project as a case study, we show the value of utilizing rich visuals, agendas, and auditory cues to manage the attention of participants and to resolve issues.

Introduction

Being an effective project manager in a virtual team environment requires constant attention to maintaining strong communications with stakeholders, including team members. To paraphrase A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide)---Third edition (Project Management Institute [PMI], 2004, p. 236), the goal of the project manager is to keep members of the team focused, facilitate their contributions, report on project progress, and make sure issues get resolved. To be successful, a project manager must be able to “reach” people who have only casual familiarity with project details and who experience communication barriers caused by language, distractions, inaudibility, boredom, and biases. For example, an area on which teams often waste much time is the discussion of project schedules, which are often complex, in small fonts, and hard to put in context of the “big picture.” When something is hard to understand or does not seem to apply to oneself, that person will tune out and will often shift attention to some other activity. Once that person has “left the meeting,” he or she may not “return to the meeting” when his or her knowledge or expertise is vital to the team’s success.

International Virtual Team Vulnerability to Multitasking

One recent survey (Gilbert, 2004) of 385 respondents reports that 90% of all conference call participants engage in multitasking during conference calls. Most project managers thus experience something similar to the meeting timeline shown in Exhibit 1. Intervals during which a person is paying attention are shown as blue bars. Intervals in which a person is multitasking are shown as yellow bars. Rarely is the entire team “tuned in.”

Christine Wasson, a linguistic anthropologist, has published a study (Wasson, 2004) that analyzes multitasking during virtual team meetings at a large IT services company. Her analysis shows that some participants often are able to make surprisingly strong contributions to the meeting even though they are spending substantial time doing unrelated work at their desks. However, other participants are quite unsuccessful at contributing while attempting to multitask. In other words, the ability to multitask without causing performance degradation is a skill that varies widely from individual to individual.

From our perspective, the reasons for widespread multitasking attempts are easy to understand, since we both have benefited from it. When done skillfully, multitasking can be beneficial for the individual and productive for the organization. People are pressed for time, have access to other tasks on their computer or PDA, and do not experience a need to pay full attention to speakers who are droning through PowerPoint slides or Excel spreadsheets.

Exhibit 1--Timeline of Participant Activities in Typical Virtual Team Meeting

However, unskillful multitasking is definitely harmful because it causes teams to miss opportunities to resolve issues. The following fictitious (but typical) transcript illustrates one such damaging scenario:

Ann [PM]: OK, then that solution won’t work. Does anybody have any other ideas on Issue 25?

Rod [coming off mute]: Oh, sorry, I had you on mute. What was the question?

The unfortunate impact of this scenario is that Rod actually knew something that would have led to the discovery of a workable solution to Issue 25 if he had participated in the exchange between Ann, Paul, and Liz. But because Rod was not paying attention during that exchange, the team missed the opportunity to make major progress.

Case Study on the “Tenderfoot” Project

To learn more about the effects of multitasking on project performance, we studied a large IT initiative at a Fortune 500 company. The code name for the project was “Tenderfoot,” and the final budget was approximately US $750,000. The objective of Tenderfoot was the introduction of a new product to increase revenues and improve the client experience. The project team was highly matrixed and included over 150 participants from 25 unique groups in eight different locations, some of which were on the other side of the world. The development methodology used was the IBM Rational Unified Process (Kroll & Kruchten, 2003, pp. 3-26), in which the team identified inception, elaboration, construction, and transition phases. We limit the scope of this case study to events that occurred during the inception and elaboration phases, where the big problems occurred.

There were several fundamental issues that had to be addressed on project Tenderfoot. The business domain was very complex, and changes in services were under scrutiny by regulatory bodies. The participation of 25 separate groups in a highly matrixed team structure presented challenges. These were compounded by the international nature of the team and by the varying degree of participation of various groups over the project duration.

Project Communications Elements

Communications Planning

A communications plan document was created and shared with all members of the project team. This document elaborated on how the team was expected to communicate with each other:

• Individual, small group, and project team meetings
• Daily and weekly virtual meetings (the dominant form of communication)
• Virtual QA review sessions throughout project life cycle
• Monthly progress reporting (CA Clarity for Monthly Progress Reviews)
• Key review sessions in person when possible and when needed
• Document collaboration (Microsoft® SharePoint)
• Risks, issues, change requests and escalations---CA Clarity web software tool
• Instant messaging (IM)

Information Distribution

A kick-off meeting was held with the extended team (known team at the time) at the beginning of the project. The purpose of this meeting was to share the vision for the project, enlist the support of participants, and show the value that would result from the project.

The project vision document was reviewed with all project team members and made accessible on the collaboration site. The purpose of this document was to connect the day-to-day team activities with the creation of value and of an experience that positively impacted the firm’s clients.

A web-based collaboration tool was implemented on this project: Microsoft® SharePoint. This allowed team members to access documentation without the need to e-mail various versions of documents to each other.

Performance Reporting

Reporting was done primarily with CA Clarity, in which a monthly progress report was created and published on an internal web page. Monthly steering committee meetings added depth to this information. Both were supplemented by ad hoc virtual meetings with stakeholders who needed to know more about issues and anomalies. CA Clarity was also used to document risks, issues, escalations, and change requests.

Management of Stakeholders

The project had a steering committee of 12 people with a strong guidance role. Monthly meetings were held with legal executives, the compliance team, the business sponsor, the responsible executive, and key business partners.

The Project in Action

The project kick-off meeting went well. The required attendees were present on the call, and many optional attendees joined as well. Because this project was of high importance to many people from multiple groups, the project manager preinterviewed key stakeholders to make certain that their high priority items would be addressed.

The next 2 months of the project went relatively smoothly. The project was a high-priority project, was interesting and challenging, and had the attention of most participants during the meetings. The project timeline was estimated at 4 months, with a total cost of approximately US $150,000. There was a phase/gate review meeting scheduled for the end of each month, and the project was to go live by the end of month number four.

Trouble in Paradise

After a period of time, however, “Murphy’s Law” crept into the project. The inception phase lasted much longer than expected due to the constant discovery of additional dependencies and requirements. By the end of the first full month, it became clear the first gate review would be missed, leading to a request for an extension of the review. It also became apparent that the project budget would likely increase over the initial estimate.

The main indicators of trouble were the numerous unanswered questions. In addition, the final decision on how to handle certain legal and compliance aspects of the project had not been agreed upon yet. Each week a new detail was being uncovered, and this frequently meant working with another new group and multiple people in that group. This lasted month after month, and the schedule had to be revised several times. There were times when the schedule was revised each week. These difficulties in uncovering important details at the team meetings strongly suggested that some team members were not as engaged in the team’s business as they needed to be. Multitasking was a large presence at the virtual team meetings.

The business sponsor was having difficulty understanding how something that was estimated to be relatively simple, inexpensive, and quick to develop could be running into such problems. The responsible executive had to devote valuable time absorbing frequent project updates because of constant changes and uncertainty.

Taking Action on the Island

The project manager realized that he had to take action quickly or lose the commitment of key stakeholders. He recalled a course that he had taken on persuasion in project management (McNamara, 2006), which taught that leaders can help establish commitment by leveraging the following concepts:

• Increasing participation: include people in decision making and updates.
• Creating an atmosphere; create a sense of belonging where acceptance and participation are encouraged.
• Maintaining attention: communicate engagingly SO people do not get bored and tune out.
• Using the art of questioning: people like to hear themselves speak. This inherently keeps them attentive.
• Telling interesting stories: people who are the most engaging are those who tell the best stories.
• Repeating and repackaging: repetition increases awareness, understanding and retention.
• Generating competition: Establish a sense of team purpose. A sense of team unity and urgency can be developed by identifying a threat and by communicating the value of the business opportunity.

Applying these principles, the project manager quickly organized meetings with subgroups of the overall project. Most meetings were virtual since the project manager was the lone participant in Denver, Colorado. Leveraging conference calls and web meetings, the project manager presented an agenda in advance of each meeting along with visual aids to facilitate understanding. The participant experience for a typical virtual meeting is shown in Exhibit 2.

Exhibit 2---Postcrisis virtual team meeting experience for the Tenderfoot project

To address the need to continuously bring new project participants up to speed, the Microsoft® SharePoint collaboration site was leveraged. Common documents were referenced and ultimately a “welcome package” was created with quick links to the project vision, business requirements, workflow diagrams, and related documents.

To engage the team in addressing risks, issues, and dependencies, the project manager started using a custom one-page schedule summary to keep discussions focused on the key questions and potential solutions, rather than on specific details of a hard-to-read MS Project schedule. Exhibit 3 is one such OnePager^™ graph¹ from the project. This type of visual map kept the virtual project team “out of the weeds” and focused on issues that required their attention.

Exhibit 3---Issue-focused schedule snapshot created with OnePager™ from Chronicle Graphics

Successful Resolution of the Troubles

As a result of discoveries early in the project life cycle, the schedule increased from 3 months to 18 months, and the budget increased 500%. The project manager obtained approval for these changes and maintained support for the project by incorporating fact-based reasoning and revalidating the business case with the project sponsors. Part of this effort was the production of a Chronicle Graphics TimeArrow^™ movie showing the evolution of the project and its dynamics. The project manager successfully engaged over 25 groups and over 150 individuals required to complete the necessary work by using their respective project request processes, following up on all requests in a timely manner, and obtaining sign-off and commitments on deliverables.

Further, by grounding the project in facts, a high degree of confidence for total project costs and timing could be shared with the project management office, the business sponsors, and executives. All project deliverables to date have been completed on time and on budget. However, this would never have happened without the project manager’s ability to effectively manage the attention of team members in dozens of virtual meetings with participants from around the country and the world.

What Was Learned on the Island

General Observations

In studying the Tenderfoot project, we observed that many people were required to create and agree on key aspects of the project requirements and frequently were needed only for short periods of time. It was difficult to maintain a sense of engagement over a long duration when participants had brief tactical involvement or were required for issue-level resolution. Visual aids were helpful for ensuring common understanding and helping people to engage when they were needed during meetings. On this project, easy re-engagement was particularly important since there were many people with differing levels of familiarity with the project. In addition, the use of powerful visual guideposts helped the project manager look prepared and authoritative, which contributed to his success in leading the team through difficult times. The professionalism of these “media props” helped team members feel more confident that the project had strong and clear direction. The project was able to recover from its difficulties in no small part because the project manager was able to skillfully engage the attention of team members when it truly counted.

Multitasking Revisited

It is impossible for project managers to remove the underlying pressures and temptations that lead to multitasking. Nor is it very effective for project managers to lecture, cajole, or threaten team members to give their full attention to virtual project meetings. Most project managers get things done by leadership, planning, and persuasion, not by exercising raw power. Furthermore, the unmonitored nature of virtual team meetings means that project managers cannot easily determine who is paying attention. Lastly, some degree of multitasking is not always detrimental to a meeting, and can benefit the participants and employer by allowing more work to be done in a given amount of time. Therefore our experience is that virtual-team project managers are most effective when they follow the principle:

Project managers should accept that team members often need to multitask and should adjust their plans accordingly. The best project managers lead meetings designed to encourage participants to stay “tuned in” when they are needed but allow them to “tune out” when they are not needed. The more interesting and easy-to-follow they make their meetings, the more effectively they can manage the participant attention necessary to resolve issues.

Best Practices

Agenda

Have an organized agenda and stick to it. A brief, predictable meeting is a more attention-worthy than a long, rambling meeting. Regularly use an agenda and distribute it before meetings. Provide links to documents from within the agenda. This can keep individuals engaged by requiring them to click on links. It also clues them in to what is critical to pay attention to during the call. If possible, indicate on the agenda that specific people are needed for specific topics. (Tip: a great way to keep track of who is participating in your virtual meeting is to print an agenda and circle the names of attendees as they join the meeting.)

Courtesy

Be sensitive to time commitments. If there are individuals who have a limited role in the meeting, try to schedule those items first and then invite those individuals to leave the meeting early. People appreciate the extra attention of having their items reviewed first and of not having to sit through irrelevant discussions.

Be sensitive to the meeting time. Try not to schedule meetings immediately after lunch, at the crack of dawn or at bedtime for international partners. Poor timing for meetings can result in low participation quality.

Meeting tone

Keep the tone of the meeting friendly and information-rich. If you are comfortable using humor, use it to set a friendly, informal tone. Participants are less likely to tune out on conversations that make them smile. They are also more attentive to people who make them feel smarter, so try to inject useful information and insights.

Make clear distinctions between meetings that are purely status updates and those where active participation is required. Make status updates brief and consider not meeting at all and sending materials to participants and asking for feedback instead. We found this can have an interesting impact: when an actual meeting is scheduled people are less likely to multitask and tend to pay more attention. People will pay more attention to you if you demonstrate consistent attention to the time and availability of others.

Auditory Cues

If you know that there is a topic requiring attention from specific individuals, preface the topic with specific names. The PM might say: “I want to ask John, Ann and Sue for their input on the issue of….”

Keep track of people who have missed chances to participate and ask directly for their input when it is needed. This lets individuals know when their full attention is important to the team. However, be careful to not call on someone just to catch him in the act of multitasking. You cannot force people to pay attention.

Visual Media

Finally, it is very important for project managers in meetings to fill computer screens with intuitive, informative, and issue-relevant visual information. Since you can assume that each participant is looking at a computer screen, you can grab and hold their attention by using engaging visuals. Avoid displaying dull Word documents, unreadable charts, and endless tables of issues. Use information-rich charts and diagrams to lead participants through the issues. Many project managers use PowerPoint presentations in an attempt to accomplish this goal, but we have noted that a PowerPoint consisting of text and bullet slides accompanied by a monologue is a contributor to multitasking, not a remedy for it. The creative techniques outlined above (see Exhibit 3) are far more effective.

Conclusions

The goal of a project manager is to deliver results. In order to deliver results the project manager must obtain and maintain commitment from the project team. Stephen Covey (Covey, 2002, p. 74) states: “Without involvement, there is no commitment. Mark it down, asterisk it, circle, it, underline it. No involvement, no commitment.” Thus effective project managers use their virtual meetings to not only conduct project business but also to keep team members involved in the project’s important issues. To accomplish this, they must manage the forces that pull team members away from involvement, and multitasking has emerged as one of the strongest of these forces.

Effective leadership of virtual meetings requires the facilitator to master hard skills, such as the ability to use technology, and soft skills for working with people. It is more difficult to moderate a virtual meeting because people are not in front of each other, social standards of face-to-face conduct do not apply, and participants tend to multitask when they cannot be observed directly. The important techniques described in this paper for becoming an effective leader of virtual meetings are (1) agenda, (2) courtesy, (3) meeting tone, (4) auditory cues, and (5) project visuals.