It seems that at the inception of every new project must also come the inception of a new team or system, followed by a brief period of somewhat chaotic group restructuring. Even seasoned project managers and Internet-enabled professors note that the "whaddayawannado blues" inevitably happens at the beginning, whether team members are physically present to one another or geographically dispersed.

An engaging variety of working scenarios for virtual teams is growing from the grassroots. Four possible scenarios follow.

Virtual Team Scenarios

1. The financial analyst in a telecom company was trying to put together a business case proposal process for managers spread across 18 states. The analyst was tasked with teaching business case development, as well as with tracking the progress of cases from every unit of the company.
   
   With the help of the communications department team, a Web site was developed to manage directed e-mail, forms, schedules, projects and training. Please see Teaching Value-Based Management to Colleagues. The managers were able to attach links to intranet documents, citing specific policies, contracts, or proposals under development. Today, building an online business case is routine at the telecom company, and managers are even able to tie data to budget reports and outcome measures.
   

2. Another approach to virtual project management is being used by a team of HR managers to prepare new-hire orientation for a financial consulting firm. So far, they have surveyed by e-mail all those who attended orientation over the past two years. They attached a link to the survey instrument. Those who responded were sent company t-shirts by interoffice mail. At present, the team has formed an online focus group to pilot the new program. The orientation sessions will be intranet-enhanced in order to accustom new employees to the company’s information management system.
   

3. The Dallas Chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators will hold its Bronze Quill awards banquet this month. With very few in-person, real time meetings, the entire event was planned and managed online.
   
   - Judges were selected from chapters in other states.
   - The banquet site was vetted and selected.
   - Winner notification and Web event announcements were prepared.
   - Status reports, agenda and minutes were sent regularly.
   

4. Dr. Ruth May, who teaches international management for the University of Dallas Internet MBA program, says she gives explicit guidance on expected deliverables, but little direction to project teams as to how they should organize themselves and communicate on their final assignment.
   
   "Online group dynamics seem to be about the same as they are in live groups. People stew around in e-mail for about a week, maybe getting a sense of one another’s level of verbal skills and areas of expertise." Then someone gets restless and takes the organizer role. Creativity takes over. May says the degree of collaboration is no more or less than happens in regular classrooms.
   
   "Each team has a different personality and thus, a unique way of moving through a project that works best for them. The students have to figure this out for themselves; it’s part of the learning process. I’m not going to force them to use my preferred way of virtual collaboration, because my way may not work for them."

Key Practices
Karen Steele, a project management consultant, has worked in project teams for over fifteen years, performing projects for NEC, IBM, US Life, Policy Management Systems, MCI WorldCom and others. Steele says there are four key practices that help her bring multi-million dollar projects in on time and within budget:

• Frequently distribute both team status and project status reports. Everyone sees project progress, changes that require adjustment and their own to do lists at the same time.
• Use templates that can be sent and returned via e-mail. Steele sends a screen capture or document with a built-in form requesting information. "People come unglued if you ask them questions while playing a tape recorder. If you ask the same questions by having them fill in the blanks, their nervousness vanishes." Once everyone has given their basic input on standards, policies and processes, it usually takes one meeting to get consensus on the final report.
• Capture thumbprints. "I realized a long time ago that everyone wants to make just one last little change. I call it their ‘thumb print,’ and I factor time into the approval process for this step. It’s great for morale."
• Celebrate milestones. Even when projects get stalled, there are definable hurdle-jumps that can be celebrated, to re-energize everyone.

Tips for Virtual Teams
Talent usually appears along with people’s initial suggestions. Whoever has natural collaborative leadership skills usually gets the group to:

1. Appoint a project manager who will track tasks, make status reports and work the communications plan.
2. Poll the team to be sure each member knows what content or research they’re expected to provide.
3. Avoid too many iterations of documents under construction by selecting a chief "scribe." The scribe captures all inputs into documents, lists or databases. An editor may be needed for word-smithing. The scribe and/or editor makes a composite for final review.
4. Rank order their preferences, or limit their content contribution to a certain number of points.
5. Vote on an outline of the final report early in the project. Most business cases, annual budgets, financial reports and proposals have common key elements.
6. Appoint a designated meeting facilitator to time conference calls, announce agendas and keep everyone focused.
7. Engage in threaded discussions (asynchronous chats), useful when trouble-shooting or problem solving. Most Web developers or Web administrators can set up a project site for this purpose. It is important to focus on a single question or link, and to announce the window of time for the discussion via e-mail.

In most business-environment observations, humans tend to resort to the same communication tactics -- whether on or offline. Productive work is typically preceded by some degree of mindless "whaddayawannado" chatter. Then people get organized and, hopefully, produce results.

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