To capture a brief snapshot of how different groups collaborate, two LinkedIn groups (Interaction Design and User Experience) were asked to share their experiences collaborating within a virtual team.  These group members are usually part of a product or web site design and development group and live day-to-day with the issues of virtual team collaboration.  This was an attempt to gather top of mind thoughts about the overall collaboration experience.  Note there was no opportunity to deeply probe various issues and comments.  Although informal, there were some interesting patterns in the various stories that are related to the 4P collaboration framework. 

The following questions were asked: “Collaborating within a virtual team can be a challenge. Do you have stories to share? How have you collaborated? Have you used a unified tool or multiple applications? Why did your team succeed or fail?”

Most of the responses revolved around people, communication and the tools.  The highlights are discussed within the context of the 4P’s. 

Purpose: What is the collaboration effort trying to achieve? 

Few comments specifically mentioned the overall team purpose.  Given that these teams were part of a product design and development effort, it could have been assumed the purpose was a given.  However, from an individual perspective, many of the comments described the “purpose” as I need to communicate or work better; for example, “…still exploring the best approach” or “It's gotten progressively easier over time”.

People: Who needs to be on the team, and in what roles? 

 Many responses touched on people issues from a willingness to make it work, accountability, communication ability, and corporate culture.  For example, “The big factor, however, is a willingness to make it work.”; and, "... communication is key to any collaboration, and in some ways the team is held to a higher degree of accountability when they are remotely located." 

Process: What is the overall process to define the problem, analyze the current situation, gather data, analyze options, and gain input and support from other people? 

There were really no comments from a global, high level work flow or process perspective.  There were a few comments that would indicate a need to enhance the process; for example, “Especially brainstorming in a virtual team is almost impossible.”; and, “The virtual world will never deliver the value of the hallway conversation.”   

Place: How will the team conduct their interactions?  

There were approximately 12 different communications and project tools mentioned.  This has significant implications for a unified communications definition of collaboration.  The method of collaborating, whether it involves direct communication or document sharing, appears to be extremely siloed.  See Allcollaboration comments on Collaboration Tools and Google Wave.

Conclusion:

This was a quick look at what is happening today on the front lines.  For the most part people are making collaboration within a virtual team work; however, they are struggling.  Overall, the comments point to the need for creating a formalized task with the goal of creating the best collaboration environment using the 4P’s as a guide and framework.

The following are the comments:  

“My Art Director is located in Washington, D.C. and I'm in St. Louis. We use Google Wave and Skype to communicate, FreshBooks for time tracking... This is a new working relationship so we are still exploring the best approach for us... But I'd say multiple applications are the way we are going. Different groups of people work together in different ways, so I can't imagine there being one definitive virtual collaboration solution. It will be interesting to see Wave in 2010 as more extensions and gadgets are developed.”  Benjamin Zalasky, Owner, Rockhopper Digital

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 “I am managing production of my company. In the morning, I use my iPhone to check mail and allocate project for each members in the company, communicate with them and all. We have an intranet application called Dots, which have a nice iPhone interface too. 
While I am in the office, Chrome is my tool. We are already gone Google for email and docs. We use them with all it's advantages for collaboration. Our few members at in UK, few are in AU and in India, we are spread in two offices. I often use remote access to other's computers to give them idea of how to work on their projects and all. 

Every weekend, we use to have a video conference to discuss current market and technologies. All these make us feel that we are always in the same office. Cloud technology rocks!”  Remiz Rahnas, Head of Production at WebCastle

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“There are plenty of technologies to help remote teams step in sync, and my use of all the ones mentioned here has been pretty good. To me, even when physically sitting in the same space, co-editing docs in the cloud, and moving digital post its are efficient ways to get the end product out. Basecamp and wikis are good ideas whether you're down the hall or in different countries. 

The big factor, however, is a willingness to make it work. I've been in virtual teams that make this easy, and others that don't get it so well. If the culture is open to remote, it can work, and quite well, using any technologies. If not, it's an uphill struggle.”  Kathy Priola, User Experience Strategy at Cisco.

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 “Daily meetings via GoToMeeting and /or Skype, works pretty good until power failures in our India Office which are becoming more common interrupt the meeting. There is still a real infrastructure problem in these emerging economies which the proponents of Off-shoring never mention. Not to mention audio difficulties with echoes from the mics and headsets on both sides. When that all works well we find using Excel in the GoToMeeting to summarize our ideas is necessary in getting clarity on concepts. I have also used Axure generated CHM files when I was a designer with a company that had an office in China. Compared to my present India team the difference in communicating was day and night. Few of the Beijing team spoke good English and I could not speak a word of Mandarin. However, I also found a cultural barrier problem which I never fully understood despite asking advice from my Mandarin colleagues in my home office. The result was any feedback at all came through email and was usually "Yes we understand, very good" 

Having said all that after working with an extremely successful software development company where all team members were in the same office, and now having had almost two years of working in offshore environments, you cannot convince me offshore or nearshore teams is a good return on investment. You can use all the new tools you want. The virtual world will never deliver the value of the hallway conversation.”  Mark Pawson at S.i. Systems

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“Especially brainstorming in a virtual team is almost impossible ....”  Rozita Naghshin, Product Manager and User Experience Expert at Pixman

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...virtually impossible (referring to brainstorming). It's a new kind of challenge. It has obvious benefits such as reducing overhead and collaborating with more people who have special expertise. Plus it's greener. The tools for doing this are improving all the time. I believe virtual working arrangements will continue to be more and more common. Ken Newbaker, Principal at Ken Newbaker Design

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“About a year ago I collaborated with a team that was designing an interface for a GPS unit. I'm in the Midwest, and other members of the team were located in California and Oregon. Both the UX/IA lead and the Visual Design lead on the team were fantastically organized (which is truly why the project succeeded) but we successfully utilized Basecamp for daily communication and file sharing, and used the screen sharing feature of iChat (we were all Mac-based) during conference calls to discuss trickier design issues when Basecamp wouldn't suffice.”  Thomas Bonney, Web Designer at Krell Institute

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“Our UX team is a virtual team. We've been working from all parts of the country as a unified team for about seven years. It's gotten progressively easier over time, thanks to the advances in online collaboration tools. Our clients are all over the world too, so we rarely work face-to-face with them. Ideally we have kick-off meetings face-to-face, but most times that just isn't possible (their team is virtual or budget constraints). 

The four key tools we use are Basecamp, IM (iChat, AIM, etc...), GoToMeeting, and the phone. We use other tools as needed for each project, but those four are our foundation tools. 

It's easy to go to someone’s desk to ask them a question, and sometimes it can even lead to a discussion that is deeply productive and takes useful tangents. But, it is just as easy to send someone an IM, and if the conversation warrants it, the IM can lead to a voice-chat or a phone call. The thing the IM does reduce is idle chit-chat, making it ultimately more productive to be remote. 

As we all know, communication is key to any collaboration, and in some ways the team is held to a higher degree of accountability when they are remotely located. Each team member is responsible for documenting conversations and posting deliverables & documentation where all the relevant team members can retrieve them. It's also important for everyone to be proactive, because it's very difficult to pull information from people when they aren't sitting near you. Although, that also makes it easy to track the people who aren't pulling their weight. 

This is a really interesting discussion to me. I'd be very curious to learn other members’ thoughts and experiences with virtual teams. i'd also like to know your thoughts about the path of virtual teams. Is this going to become more common or is it going to remain the exception? We've experienced it quite successfully, but this may not work for many people.”  Michal-Anne Rogondino, Founder & CEO at Little Ricky Software

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“Michal-Anne, I like what you said about accountability and communication in the 4th paragraph. I have found the same to be true. People are held more accountable and are more accountable. Communication is clearer. The written communication also makes up the time writing the specifications as well as rationale on why decisions were made. Less people dozing off in the meetings and then protesting after the fact.”  Tammy (Monk) Fritz, User Experience Design Consulting - User Interface, Information Architecture, Design Research, Principal and Founder at Pink frog Interactive, Inc.

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“I agree with the above two comments. I work in a company that gives me the option to work from home 2 days a week. I find it much more productive working virtually, and use con calls, IM, GoToMeeting, whatever is needed to get the work done. I am also able to concentrate more on my work not having to deal with all the work-life imbalance issues I would have had, had I been working 5 days a week in office and doing the regular routine. 
I have also had experience working as a contractor for a company for 3 months where all of my work was exclusively done remotely, because the team was in multiple locations. So I interviewed key stakeholders over con calls, worked at home and made presentations remotely. That was quite an interesting experience, and even though I was a little anxious about it in the beginning it worked out well. I think it also went well because the culture at that place allowed it and people were accustomed to it happening.”  Meeta Mathur, Specialist in Social Media and Emerging User Experiences at BigBad, Inc.

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“I worked for 6 years with Sapient, who has a large offshore component in India. I would say the #1 most important thing needed for success in these situations is communication. 

Daily meetings with your offshore team were necessary for shorter engagements (2-4 month web projects). For longer engagements (6-12 months and beyond) it makes sense to meet more frequently upfront to the get the project rolling. It will also require more frequent sessions towards the end as you get towards acceptance. But the majority of the project can usually be managed with 2-3 meetings per week for these longer engagements. 

Meetings do not need to be long, especially when you are meeting everyday. Having a defined agenda (status, risks, dependencies, tracking) that you run through everyday should get you the info you need in 20-30 minutes. 

Having a virtual project plan, one that everyone can see and have access to helps individuals see what is tracking and what milestones are coming up. No matter what time zone you are in, opening this document first thing in the morning will give you the overview you need to direct teams/ team members. 

Running any virtual team would be close to impossible without the proper tools and infrastructure (bug tracker, issue tracker, svn repository). 

If at all possible, getting the remote team to join you for the project kick-off phase goes a long way. It creates better relationships amongst team members. It also creates more sense of ownership for the remote team being involved from the beginning and not having the work just thrown over the fence. 

Being on the West Coast and working with India was a great challenge. California is 12-1/2 hour difference from India. So if a project is going off the rails right after lunch for the remote team, it means you are getting woken up at 1am to address. Team meetings need to happen at a painful hour for someone no matter what. A daily 8am call for the remote team is a nightly 8pm call for your local leads. Choosing a location that has somewhat of an offset to your time zone can reduce the burden of off hours needed by your teams. 

Lastly, patience is a necessity. There will be several occasions where you felt that something has been communicated clearly or that process had been defined, only to find out neither are true. Getting on the same page can take some time (2-3 projects) before all teams are running full steam. I find that even if all professionals involved have worked with virtual teams before, it takes awhile to figure out the personal dynamics and working styles in any new situation.”  Marc Van Norden, Sr. Manager Interactive Development at Sapient

Al Schmidt is a customer experience consultant with over 25 years of experience with a broad range of products, technologies and industries.  He is focused on understanding how people use and incorporate technology into their day-to-day activities so that the overall experience, utility, and ease of use are optimized. Follow Al on Twitter.