Technology Projects: Virtual is Good but Not Always Better

 

I had not heard of RW3, a company providing “online cultural training” to large corporations. They surveyed 30,000 corporate employees and got back 600 completed results. 80% of the respondents said there were part of a team with people based in different locations, including a large proportion outside their own country—a “virtual team.” Already this is pretty different from my experience and of perhaps you as well. I take the study with a grain of salt yet find the observations interesting regardless.

 

While the majority considered their teams to be successful, many found these problems compared to meeting face to face: managing conflict (73%), making decisions (69%), delivering quality output (48%) and generating innovative ideas (47%).  

 

“The top five challenges faced during virtual team meetings were  insufficient time to build relationships (90%), speed of decision making (80%), different leadership styles (77%), method of decision making (76%) and colleagues who do not participate (75%).” 

 

Reading this report, I found myself nodding my head. Sheepishly. New technologies have unmistakably sped up, magnified, and transformed political advocacy and community action. I loved the way Clay Shirky described all this in Here Comes Everybody. New technologies don’t change anything in themselves. They reduce the barriers to effective collaboration and initiative, especially where networks are large, ad hoc, distributed, loosely connected.  And I’m enjoying Beth Kanter  and Alison Fine’s new Networked Nonprofit. 

 

Meanwhile, what about projects to plan, select, adapt, develop and deliver those new technology systems? Technologies that improve communication and support collaboration do make it possible to work on technology projects virtually. Yet I’m sure that many developers and consultants would also acknowledge the sorts of issues identified in the RW3 study.

 

As I read the report, the concept of “pair programming” immediately jumped to mind. Pair programming is one of the more controversial precepts of Agile Development and in particular Extreme Programming. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_development

 

These theories are at the heart of new thinking about software design and development. And much as you would expect that software people would be comfortable with working virtually, the new theories put great stock on teams of two work physically side by side for days at a time (pair programming). You can’t do pair programming virtually. You can get close with chat, screen sharing, skype video and the like. But in practice, you can’t beat working side by side, even when it poses psychological or cultural barriers. When done right there is no question in my mind that it contributes to a better and more creative result. 

 

For sure, some of the survey respondent discussion in the RW3 report sounded like whininess, lack of training, cultural insensitivity. Good things to identify for a company focusing on addressing these things. Yet reflecting back on a recent 4-hour planning conference call with a new client  who I haven’t met in person versus weekly phone progress meetings with another client that I start with on site with, there is no question that virtual needs healthy supplementing with real. 

 

I wouldn’t give up using SVN (code repository), donedone issue tracker, shared Google docs + Basecamp, Skype/chat and other cool collaboration tools to keep things in sync  and enable virtual teams. Yet no question, the lively interplay of sitting with laptop at our conf table makes a difference. 

 

Hmm. Seems like a good topic for further discussion over a beer, or on a conference panel discussion--and oh yes, on-line too!