Critical Success Factors for Virtual Teams
February 12, 2025
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The early phase of development of a virtual team is crucial for its success. Just like the foundation defines the strength of the building, the steps involved in establishing a virtual team goes a long way in contributing to its successful functioning in later stages. The two basic questions give skeleton to this phase - ‘what does the team stands for’ and ‘how will the team achieve its goal’. This article aims to evaluate this in greater details and provide practical insights to the team leaders who have been given the task to set up a virtual team.
So we start with first finding answer to the question of ‘what does the team stands for’. This involves creating a unique identity for the team with which all the team members can relate to.
The second phase involves answering the question of ‘how will the team achieve its goal’. This involves action planning to align the team on how to meet their assigned tasks effectively. A well-defined and understood action plan sets the team in motion guiding them in right direction.
Once both the phases are complete it is best to launch the virtual team with a kick-off or introductory meeting. All the team members should be involved and the use of real-time media is most suitable for this purpose. All the documents such as team directory, process flow, task interdependencies, media plan etc should be made available to all the members. This meeting should involve a brief introduction of each member and their background, an ice-breaker or team building session, explaining the context of the team in the organization and setting the ground rules with the help of above documents. Before closing the kick-off meeting, do a quick review of expectations, make sure that all members can access the project web portal and meet IT security requirements, if any, and set up the tentative schedule for next meeting.
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