IT Does Matter

Virtual Projects are mainly enabled by Information Technology. The rapid development in technology has made it possible for organisations to readily pursue the use of virtual teams (Rad & Levin,2003).

Since technology plays such a central role in virtual teams, a number of factors such as team profile, project type and length, hardware compatibility etc have to be carefully considered before the technology is procured (Machet, 2001). Furthermore, the technology has to be installed, fully functional and the entire team should be proficient in its use

In their book, Mastering Virtual Teams, Duarte and Snyder (1999) identify two categories of technology tools available to virtual teams, i.e. Synchronous and Asynchronous.
Synchronous include:
- Real Time Data Conferencing
- Electronic Meeting Systems
- Electronic Displays
- Video Conferencing
Asynchronous include:
- Email
- Group Calendars
- Blogs
- Workflow Application Software

However one cannot ignore the rise in the use of social network tools (SNT). Virtual project teams can take advantage of these tools not only for project collaboration purposes, but as tools for team development. A real life example of this is a financial institution in South Africa, which has launched its own version on twitter in order to connect employees across all the countries (over 40) in which it has a presence. In addition to this, the organisation has set up a corporate blog which is used by employees to share information. This organisation also has twitter , FaceBook, Youtube and RSS Feeds accounts. So not only is this organisation taking advantage to connect employees across the globe, but it is also connecting with its customers for free through SNT.

This blog references the following authors:
- Duarte, D.L., & Snyder, N.T. 1999. Mastering Virtual Teams. San Francisco. Jossey Bass Publishing
- Machet, R. 2001. An Investigation into the Effectiveness Of Using Virtual Project Teams To Manage Projects Across Borders and Time Zones. A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering, University of Witwatersrand.
- Rad, P. & Levin, G. 2003. Achieving Project Management Success using Virtual Teams. Florida. J.Ross Publishing.