Understanding Decision-Making within Distributed Project Teams

Researchers from across the world and in a variety of disciplines have become interested in describing and understanding the phenomenon of distributed projects and teams. This study aims to measure the extent to which some dimensions of the decision-making process are valued and used by distributed teams, as well as the influence of certain contextual variables.

The proliferation of geographically dispersed teams is, of course, related to the explosive development of information and communication technologies (ICT), and particularly technologies related to the Internet. Now that these technologies are performing better and becoming more accessible, companies no longer seem to be challenged by the barrier of distance.

Working with dispersed teams remains a challenge for many organizations. Many empirical studies reveal that some of the barriers are related to both the execution of tasks and the relationships among individuals. There is, therefore, a need to better understand how to adapt project teams’ current practices to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of their work.

This report is divided into four major sections in order to examine the problem from several perspectives:

• Short summary of the literature on dispersed teams

• Short summary of the literature on decision making

• Empirical results from a survey conducted with companies in different sectors

• Empirical results from a web questionnaire distributed within the project management community

Project team members are required to make all kinds of decisions on a daily basis. These decisions could involve issues from methods and budgets to the team’s working conditions, all of which are important, given the inherent characteristics of a project. Because projects are often innovative, one-time effort,s and relatively irreversible, these decisions are more sensitive than other organizational decisions which are made today.