Virtual Team Communications Literature Review

Virtual Team Communications

Literature Review of Technologies for Virtual Team Communications

The pervasive adoption and use of virtual teams in enterprises is redefining the pace, direction of innovation in communication, collaboration, shared project workflows, project management, and knowledge transfer. The intent of this literature review is to evaluate each of the technologies that when combined form the foundation communication platforms that enable virtual teams to be productive and attain their shared goals. The technologies included in this evaluation include collaboration portals that are Web-based and accessible from anywhere globally there is an Internet connection, e-mail, telephone, teleconference, video conferencing, and voice mail. Each of these tools has a specific use to the attainment of the highest levels of performance within globally-based virtual teams. Social networks are also turning into one of the most powerful catalysts of innovation in the area of virtual teams as they are driving the development of state-of-the-art operating systems for smartphones and tablets including the Apple iPad (Bernoff, Li, 2008). This trend in smartphones and tablets is so pervasive than it is anticipated these devices will surpass PCs in shipments during 2011 (Hardy, 2010).

Social networks are the catalyst of disruptive innovation in smartphones as they have overtaken operating systems as the primary focus within many companies as to how they can collaborate more effectively and create knowledge sharing processes that can quickly scale globally (Bernoff, Li, 2008). The egalitarian nature of social networks is also fueling the development of rapid advances in portal software, with Microsoft SharePoint emerging as the dominant leader in this area of technology adoption globally (Turban, Liang, Wu, 2011). What also emerges from this literature review is that none of these technologies are deployed in isolated from the other, and all are often deployed as part of a broader strategy or series of goals for remote teams to achieve. As many of the studies indicate that the most successful virtual teams are comprised of experts in their fields that have learned over time to be self-sufficient, the focus of these technologies take together is to accelerate knowledge transfer and the sharing of expertise online, virtually on a 24/7 timeframe (Akoumianakis, 2009). A secondary finding of this literature review is that these technologies must be evaluated, deployed, managed and optimized with change management strategies in mind first. This finding emanated from the studies of the most successful adoption cycles and patterns of these technologies over the long-term. Transformational leaders, not surprisingly, have the most successful track record deploying these technologies over the long-term (Balthazard, Waldman, Warren, 2009). To evaluate and explore the many factors that contribute to this finding would take another chapter, yet to succinctly define this dynamic, transformational leaders are seen as orders of magnitude more authenticity, transparent and willing to sacrifice for the success of their teams compared to transactional or authoritarian-based managers (Balthazard, Waldman, Warren, 2009). They are also experts at using these technologies to create a safety net for virtual team members to rely on when they need reassurance, recognition, motivation and continued validation they are moving in the right direction with their projects (Casey, 2010). As with any study it is not necessary purely the technology that separates the highest and lowest performing virtual teams. Rather it is the decision on the part of team leaders to selectively use these technologies to create a virtual team that is capable of being self-sufficient and focused on assisting each other to their shared and often complex goals (Jang, 2009).

Best Practices in Technology Use by Virtual Teams

There are many technological developments occurring today across the collection of technologies virtual teams rely on. Portals based on enterprise-class software platforms from IBM, Microsoft, SAP, Oracle and others are now commonplace as the virtual content management system millions of teams use globally for sharing documents and creating their own unique approaches to organizing team information (Lamont, 2010). These portals also have the ability to create unique role-based data structures, can be designed to meet the exact requirements of each member of a virtual team, and increasingly are designed to also be delivered in smartphones and tablets (Lamont, 2010). These portals are also able to create contextual search that encompasses both unstructured and structured content, which was not achievable at price points for virtual teams just five years ago. This capability in portal technologies significantly accelerates knowledge transfer and data management across global boundaries, as team members can quickly create and maintain their own pages and areas of a portals, in effect creating the ability to serve team members on a 24/7 basis. The integration of structured and unstructured content in these portals is unified through contextual search technologies that can create linguistic models literally on the fly to put unstructured, comment-based content into context quickly so it can be used quickly by teams (Holtshouse, 2009). Another aspect of the contextual search aspect of these portals is the ability to quickly capture the conversations with customers, other team members, and outside suppliers to create an ongoing discussion of project notes and action times completed. The portals in the best-run virtual teams become the system of record for all activities, often becoming the basis for how project managers evaluate the progress towards goals and objectives (Lamont, 2010). All providers of portal software are also starting to emulate the design criterion of social networks as well, creating the look and feel of Facebook, Twitter and other interfaces, much the same way salesforce.com accomplished this with their Chatter application (Lamont, 2010). Over time there will also be integration for videoconferencing, e-mail exchanges via the social network-based interfaces, ability to upload phone lists from smartphones and tablets and the ability to create a unified record of each contact associated with each project. The integration of all these technologies together is happening quickly due to the Web 2.0 design objectives as originally defined by Tim O'Reilly, founder and publisher of the O'Reilly Technical Book Series and a thought leader in application design. Figure 1, Web 2.0 Design Criterion as shown as a Meme Map, provides a graphical representation of the design goals that Tim O'Reilly created and which has since become a market standard globally for the development of collaborative applications that are Web -- based. Many of the founders of social networks credit the design goals of the Web 2.0 framework as the catalyst of their social networks, including Twitter and others (Bernoff, Li, 2008). It is clearly a preferred framework for creating application to support virtual teams as the focus is on seamless information and knowledge sharing over time. What resonates with the developers of portals for virtual teams is the design goal of having the Web as a platform, which is ideal for those virtual teams with team members scattered across several different geographies that may have different language requirements for a traditional operating systems. There is also the user positioning of allowing the people using the software to control their own data. This is a major advantage for those who are working on a virtual team, as there is a measure of confidentiality they will need to ensure their own data is also not comprised across a broad working group. Allowing users to control their own data is also a critical leadership tenant as it allows virtual team members to also attain autonomy, mastery and purpose on their jobs, a critical set of attributes for them to gain mastery of their tasks and jobs (Balthazard, Waldman, Warren, 2009).

Figure 1: Web 2.0 Design Criterion as shown as a Meme Map

Source: (O'Reilly, 2005)

Web 2.0 as a design platform has also led to an increasingly rapid adoption of business process management, business process re-engineering, and the more precise definition of information workflows to tasks that virtual teams need to accomplish (Guzman, Ramos, Seco, Esteban, 2010). This approach to designing the workflows and approaches that portals use to manage information is relatively recent as the programming developments on these platforms have only recently been capable of defining complex workflows. These developments however have led to the development of highly customized applications on portals that give virtual teams the ability to create their own unique process definition, including how and where in a given process definition they integrate to legacy databases, applications or their own databases. These developments in portal technologies have led to an entirely new level of agility and flexibility in portal design to support virtual teams. These developments taken together are also creating an increasingly higher level of cross-department and cross-functional collaboration and knowledge transfer across corporations globally (Lin, Chiu, Joe, Tsai, 2010). The net effect of all of these advances is leading to the development of much greater levels of contextual collaboration and information sharing across virtual teams and divisions of companies (Ruths, 2003). This is why it is so critical for virtual teams to be managed by transformational leaders who see the value in creating these links and connections with other departments, divisions and virtual teams globally (Balthazard, Waldman, Warren, 2009). When portals are designed to the specific requirements of Web 2.0 design objectives, companies with virtual teams are finding they can attain higher levels of shared task ownership as well. This is because there are significantly greater levels of trust overall throughout an organization based on the collective contributions of every member of a virtual and in-office team when they share their knowledge and information together (Mancini, 2010). Portals are not the catalyst of trust forming in virtual teams; transformational leadership is because it sets a standard of authenticity, transparency and by a leaders' example, sacrifice for the attainment of a greater goal (Balthazard, Waldman, Warren, 2009). Online tools including social networks, portals, and the e-mail accounts that fuel much of the content interchange all need to be galvanized with a shared vision of how to create virtual teams that trust each other and freely share their expertise and intelligence if the team is going to succeed. For many of the virtual teams that operate globally today, social networks' influence on entirely new approaches to communicating interactively are slowly overtaking e-mail as the dominant platform for interactive communication (Turban, Liang, Wu, 2011). The reliance on private Facebook groups, password-protected Twitter accounts and the increasing reliance on private label social networking platforms are overtaking the role of e-mail in daily conversations online (Bernoff, Li, 2008). An example of an application that has been specifically designed to capitalize on the social networking usability lessons learned is Salesforce.com Chatter, which combines the interactive communication aspects of Twitter with a Facebook-like screen layout and application structure. Chatter is now replacing traditional Outlook e-mail in many of Salesforce.com's largest customers including Qualcomm who claims Chatter increased their cost savings in it by up to 60%, according to a quote on the Salesforce.com website. Figure 2, Chatter from Salesforce.com shows how Facebook-like this interface is and how the interior flow of information is very similar to Twitter as well. Marc Benioff, during the company's annual DreamForce event in San Francisco chose to launch a free edition of Chatter to all customers so they could immediately begin using it. The result has been a significant increase in adoption of this communications application, which Salesforce.com has remarked is now replacing their use of internal e-mail systems. Conversation trails, support for a wide variety of data formats for uploading images and movies, and the integration of voice annotation is making Chatter a solid replacement for e-mail with virtual teams as well, according to the Salesforce.com website. Chatter can also be readily used across a variety of mobile devices including smartphones. Given the highly graphical nature of Chatter and its reliance on social networking design principles, it is anticipated that Oracle, Microsoft, SAP all will have comparable e-mail replacement platforms within 2011(Turban, Liang, Wu, 2011).

Figure 2: Chatter from Salesforce.com -- a replacement for traditional e-mail based on the lessons learned from social networks

Source:http://www.salesforce.com/chatter/gettingstarted/whatischatter/

Portals, e-mail programs and communications platforms virtual teams rely on are going through a revolutionary change right now thanks to the impact of Web 2.0 design goals influencing their structure and definition, and the lessons learned from social networks on improving usability and adoption (Bernoff, Li, 2008). Portals are going to continue become more capable of aligning to how virtual teams complete shared tasks, define team-based goals and measure results. The continued use of analytics and the ability to create customized key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics of performance are for the first time going to give virtual teams the opportunity to define measures of performance that capture what they really do instead of attempting to fit their activities into pre-conceived reporting structures. This ability to define KPIs and metrics of relevance will also be a disruptive innovation in the productivity of teams, as the use of very specific and focused KPIs and metrics will be a major break-through in determining the true contribution of teams (Guzman, Ramos, Seco, Esteban, 2010). Most importantly, this ability for virtual teams to define their own KPIs and metrics of performance will also lead to greater trust within and between teams (Jang, 2009). Trust is a very significant accelerator of achievement and accomplishment throughout and between virtual teams, as it fuels higher levels of collaboration and communication, and can be instrumental in much greater levels of accomplishment occurring as well. Technologies mentioned in this analysis contribute to this higher level of productivity from a personal and group standpoint by creating more real-time means of communicating and sharing information across broad geographic distances and time zones. The future of online communication, from portals to e-mail accounts and the transition to social network-based communication and collaboration platforms, will make smartphones and tablets more commonplace than PCs and traditional office systems today (Turban, Liang, Wu, 2011). It will be commonplace to see entire virtual teams using smartphones, tablets, and also interacting online seamlessly without regard to the platform or system they are using. This consumerization of technology will make virtual teams more capable of attaining complex shared goals efficiently and economically. Finally, the combined effects of all of these innovations will lead to the creation of learning systems that successfully support knowledge transfer across broad geographic teams globally (Lin, Chiu, Joe, Tsai, 2010). The virtual team and their workspaces will no longer be dictated by intensive technology investment on the hardware side of things, as the software and mobile operating systems including Apple iOS and Android are in the process of completely revolutionizing the necessary tools for contributing and excelling as a member of a virtual team.

Best Practices in Secured Web Conferencing

The one application that still requires many members of virtual teams to still hold onto their bulky laptops and in some cases, their expensive desktop PCs are the Web conferences they must participate in. These Web conferences are often required as team members often have two-way webcams set up to communicate and be seen on the call. Skype has become the free platform of choice for many of these Web conferences in small businesses, despite the lack of security

(Whitman, Mattord, 2005). Web conferencing has however grown exponentially in sophistication of its feature sets, support for third party protocols, and most importantly, in the area of security and presentation of multimedia content. The use of Web conferencing for briefings between the White House, the Pentagon and the U.S. headquarters in Iraq for example are all handled through secured Web conferencing technology based on the IPSec information security standard (OpenReach, 2002).

Companies who have standardized on secured Web conferencing have reported back being able to earn the payback of their systems within two years or less of use (Suduc, Bizoi, Filip, 2009). Adding to the rapid adoption of Web conferencing continues to be the uncertain and during some months, challenging economic climate the U.S. And global economies are facing. The worse the economic condition of a given economy a Web conferencing vendor is located in, the faster investment in Research and Development (R&D) increased (Suduc, Bizoi, Filip, 2009). The one company who is emerging as the global leader in R&D spending on the security aspects of Web conferencing is Cisco who regularly spends up to 7% of total revenues every year on R&D company wide, making innovation one of the most strategically important initiatives the company has (Xirasagar, Mojtahed, 2010).

Analysis of Web Conference Security

During the completion of this literature review it became apparent that the pace of innovation in Web conferencing security is accelerating. The many initiatives of Apple, and their iOS operating system, Microsoft with their next release of Windows 8 and enhancements to Windows 7, and Google with its impressive Android operating system are all focused on how to create a more effective security platform within Web conferencing. Each of these companies eventually wants to offer Web conferencing on their smart phones as Apple is offering on the latest iPad2, where bidirectional, real-time Web conferences can be held anywhere there is a Wi-Fi connection or in the instance of an iPad2 with 3G wireless enabled, anywhere a signal is strong enough to support it. The future build-out of smartphones and tablets will be capable of hosting secured Web conferences anywhere, anytime. This is another disruptive innovation as to how virtual teams will be able to complete their tasks.

Web conferencing systems today share the common attributes including data entry and usability requirements, information access, and data protection & storage options and Application Programmer Interfaces (APIs) (Baez, 2011). These factors taken together form the foundation of the industry's effort to create secured, role-based Web conferencing platforms that can scale across virtual teams with no degration in performance and no comprise to the security levels of the applications and data shared globally online, often in real time (Xirasagar, Mojtahed, 2010). The U.S. Department of Defense is attributed with creating the most scalable and secured platform for ensuring two-way communication across networks that are global in scope (Baez, 2011).

The many innovations occurring in Web Conferencing has also attracted many members of the investment community in addition to some of the world's largest system integration companies including Deloitte & Touche, Accenture and others. These system integrators see the potential of creating entire networks based on the inherent cost and performance advantages of secured Web conferencing networks and the applications running on top of them (Xirasagar, Mojtahed, 2010). The critical catalyst of security that many of these system integrators are relying on is the continued evolution and support for Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) as the security technology of choice for corporations globally creating secured Web conferencing, portal and e-mail connections. VPNs are an indispensible and necessary securi8ty technology that allows virtual team members to coordinate their activities, share plans, an operate in a highly secured network that is inaccessible from the outside world. VPNs are the cornerstone of virtual team security strategies and programs (Baez, 2011). The U.S. Department of Defense working with Cisco were instrumental in creating the necessary standards and programs to ensure compliance to military standards would also be met in the definition of the VPN standard. These military standards eventually were integrated into the IPSec requirements for highly secured communications of Web conferences (Xirasagar, Mojtahed, 2010). Both IPSec and SSL emerged as security standards as a result of these efforts and are compared in the following figure.