David Coleman, President and founder of Collaborative Strategies a collaborative technology analysis and consulting firm, spoke at our April 2006 Tertulia. His topic: Virtual Team Spaces – What are they and why are they important?
David reviewed some of the research literature on virtual teams and highlighted the critical steps required for a successful virtual team (leadership, understanding the stages of team development and the project life cycle, understanding roles and responsibilities, handling meetings effectively, using technology to enhance team collaboration, establishing the right climate and assessing performance).
Collaborative Strategies conducted a survey on organizational use of collaboration technologies in January 2005. The respondents came from all sectors and organizational sizes. Over half of the respondents were company officers or executives. Sixty-two percent reported working on a team over 50% of the time. Seventy-two percent were not sure how to apply collaboration technologies and sixty-five percent said they had a fear of collaboration technologies.
The bulk of his presentation centered of virtual team spaces (VTS), which David defined as “a secure and persistent virtual environment that allows team members with various roles to interact with each other around team or project content and process.” He also discussed an emerging technology, “On Demand Collaboration” (any time any place collaboration). Finally, he described a few case studies, including the Congo Dam Project, where a large, cross-cultural, distributed, international team used VTS to manage the project and a Wiki-based VTS solution used by buyers at Target Stores.
You can find a PowerPoint of David’s presentation at: http://www.newwow.net/members/node/56
A podcast is also available at: http://www.newwow.net/members/node/266
