THE POWER OF VIRTUAL TEAMS IN ICT PROJECTS

e-ISSN: 2582-5208 International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science Volume:02/Issue:09/September-2020

Impact Factor- 5.354

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THE POWER OF VIRTUAL TEAMS IN ICT PROJECTS Ahmed Raafat*1, Hussein Eldeeb*2 *1Oracle Business Development Manager, Information Technology, REDINGTON Gulf, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. *2Consultancy

& Enterprise Solutions Manager, Information Technology, Fingerprint Consultancy, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

ABSTRACT This study is going to describe the power of using virtual teams by ICT service provider companies, and the managers’ challenges for using this model of delivery. Worldwide ICT service providers depends on virtual teams in their projects delivery [4] that is why those type of companies were chosen as a target population. Service providers need a managerial method for handling the virtual team model, which will support them to achieve the purpose from using virtual teams without affecting their delivery quality, team communication and customer satisfaction. Moreover, this study will relate the challenges of using virtual team model by ICT service providers and the delivery quality. In addition, it will articulate the challenges faced by using virtual teams, and will provide the recommended managerial aspects for influencing the benefits of virtual teams, and reduce the bad impact on services delivery. Virtual teams are quite powerful in cost optimization [7], delivery time and skills flexibility. It is recommended that managers who are highly dependable on virtual teams have to include those defined challenges in their management strategy.

KEYWORDS: Virtual teams, remote delivery, team communications, ICT service providers, ICT projects.

I.

INTRODUCTION

Traditional organizational structure in major ICT service providers are being transformed by a series of virtual teams to catch-up today’s world race of modern services. Virtual teams are a group of individuals who work from different geographic locations. In the United States alone, more than half of companies having over 5,000 employees use virtual teams involving around 8.4 million people. [7] ICT service provider companies expand geographically, and as telecommuting becomes more common, the virtual team model became a good solution for ICT service provider companies that require optimizing their work. On the other hand, virtual team’s management are hard to get right as about 66% of ICT projects outsourced to virtual work groups found failed to satisfy the clients’ requirements. [4] This study aims at describing the challenges faced by ICT service provider companies, which using virtual teams in their service delivery model. It targets foreign ICT service provider companies that are using virtual teams in their managerial environment. Virtual teams could deliver their assignments either remotely or through a short visit to the site, but they are not based in the home country of the project.

It is important for ICT service provider companies to consider the challenges of using virtual teams on their service deliver quality, as this will directly affect the relationship of their customers.

II.

METHODOLOGY

Worldwide industries and organizations are in need for ICT services and projects, which could be provided remotely through virtual teams. ICT service providers keen to use remote resources with high quality to reduce delivery costs and implement the latest worldwide technologies.

This research is a descriptive research that used to identify and classify the challenges of using virtual teams by ICT service providers. The research is targeting foreign ICT service provider companies that are using virtual teams remotely from outside home country to deliver technology services from other countries. This is because worldwide ICT service provider companies are normally depending on virtual teams in their services delivery.

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e-ISSN: 2582-5208 International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science Volume:02/Issue:09/September-2020

Impact Factor- 5.354

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The study is depending on sampling based on the target team members in ICT service provider companies and the following clusters are the targeted actors in our study: Projects managers.

Teams’ managers.

Sales managers.

Virtual teams’ members.

• • • •

The research uses descriptive statistics to describe the characteristics of the study sample, also, to summarize, organize, and simplify the data. In this regard. Finally, the study provides recommendations for using virtual teams in order to optimize your projects’ delivery based on the analyzed data, and visualizes the challenges you may face internally with your team and externally with your clients.

III.

MODELING AND ANALYSIS

Previous studies demonstrated the positive that influences team tenure, longer tenure leads to shared values and consistency. Aspects relevant for virtual teams include beliefs, values and communications require longer time than in the case of face-to-face teams [12]. Thus, this study describes factors like delivery quality, communications and customer satisfaction.

Delivery quality in some cases influenced by the use of virtual teams as virtual teams have many benefits that could optimize the delivery quality especially for ICT projects. On the other hand, the delivery quality affected due to projects’ logistics.

Communications normally affect multi-cultural virtual teams as often, virtual teams have less direct communications than face-to-face teams [5]. This means members of a team from cultures may experience particular kinds of misunderstandings.

Customer satisfaction is one of the most important challenge for ICT service providers, which are using virtual teams in their delivery model. Other studies interested in general customer satisfaction or virtual teams used in other fields, while this study focuses in technology organizations.

Project planning.

Project logistics.

Achieving the project objectives.

Remote delivery.

Resource Allocation.

    

Teams’ integrations and interactions.

Handover between teams.

Team multi-culture.

Different time zones.

Customer onsite interfacing.

   

Security and confidentiality.

Trust and relationship building.

Organization culture.

Projects Success.

Delivery Quality

Communications

Virtual teams in ICT Projects

    

Customer Satisfaction

Figure 1: Challenges for Virtual Teams

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e-ISSN: 2582-5208 International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science Volume:02/Issue:09/September-2020

Impact Factor- 5.354

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Virtual Team Building Virtual team building takes considerable care and effort. This includes the considerations of language, location, time and culture, which have to take into account in not only the selection of the staff concerned but also in setting up and managing each meeting. Virtual teams have three dimensions to their operation: 

National and organizational cultures.



Time zone.



Location.

In all three dimensions, an intranet or technology in general can play a very important role in supporting virtual teams [11]. Having weather information for all office locations on the intranet home page not only provides an initial neutral subject for conversations as the meeting connections are set up but also indicates potential problems for attendance arising from exceptional weather situations.

Cross Cultural Communication Virtual team members from different cultures vary in terms of their communication and group behaviors including the motivation to seek and disclose individuating information and in the need to engage in selfcategorization [6]. One major dimension of cultural variability is individualism-collectivism.

Shared Mental Model Mental models represent the manner in which knowledge arranged or organized in patterns that are stored in memory [9]. Mental models allow individuals to gain insight regarding their world by building working schemas. Schemas make it easier for team members to access the information needed to make understand phenomena, predictions, and decide for taking an action.

Swift Trust in Temporary Teams The concept of ‘swift’ trust for temporary teams whose existence, like those of global virtual teams, formed around a common task with a finite life span [6]. Such teams consist of members with different skills, with a limited history of teamwork with team members, and with little prospect of working together again in the future. This is because the time pressure, which hinders the ability of team members to develop expectations of others based on firsthand information, and members import expectations of trust from other settings with which they are familiar.

Team Intimacy Intimacy is a good indicator for the strength and health of any relationship this includes virtual team members. Intimacy refers to team members level of caring and feel for one another. Virtual team members distributed nature makes it difficult for them to grow and sustain. [3]

IV.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Using virtual teams in ICT projects are quite powerful in cost optimization, delivery time and skills flexibility, thus virtual teams are a pretty good solution for companies to optimize their projects’ delivery [8]. However, companies using virtual teams facing many challenges like limited communication channels, not every type of project can easily adopt virtual teams, not everyone can perform well in a virtual team and customers almost are not comfortable with virtual teams.

According to a survey applied from RW3 in 2010, which confirms the value of virtual teams. It found that 38% still reported that they were only somewhat successful, and 2% reported that they were not successful at all [10]. This survey shows that there is a room for improvement, and these results indicate there is a real need for training in this area.

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e-ISSN: 2582-5208 International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science Volume:02/Issue:09/September-2020

Impact Factor- 5.354

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Figure 2: How successful is your Virtual Team? [10]

Managers of virtual teams need to pay more attentions for the challenges and complexity facing from using virtual teams [1]. Management challenges include planning overhead, technical management, delay of support, lack of training, multicultural challenges, poor communications, and team morale.

In 2012, SAGE has applied a study on managers who already using virtual teams in their ICT project to measure the managerial focuses, while managing virtual teams, and concentrated on only the task focus and the social focus [2]. The following table shows the summary of this study: Table-1: Managerial Aspects for Virtual Teams' Leaders

Index 1.

Managerial Aspect

Task Focus

Social Focus

Provides direction for the

0.81

0.13

team 2.

Suggests new ideas

0.62

0.10

3.

Sets goals for the team

0.67

0.23

4.

Ensures that team members are meeting goals

0.67

0.19

5.

Tries to exert influence in the team

0.83

0.21

6.

Praises the team for what they have done

0.18

0.69

7.

Shows empathy in dealing with other team members

0.30

0.51

8.

Messages are generally positive

0.05

0.66

This study could provide a knowledge gap for companies and customers, which using virtual teams in their services. This study does not include the virtual teams’ participations in general purposes and will not target the whole sectors that can use virtual teams. It is targeting only ICT service providers who are working with technology organizations, and uses virtual teams in their project’s delivery.

V.

CONCLUSION

This research is quite important for managers who are using virtual teams in their management environment especially in the ICT field. Virtual teams are powerful in ICT project and can optimize the delivery overheads [7]. However, ICT service providers should use a special delivery model in order to adopt the optimal use of virtual teams. Many managers challenged with such model of delivery as this considered as a complex delivery model. Moreover, this research is important for literature, as it articulates the challenges faced by managers, who are delivering ICT services using virtual team model.

Managers then can develop a good planning and apply their risk analysis based on the studied challenges.

Virtual Teams delivery recently became a booming model for ICT services delivery. However, the challenges of using virtual teams are still ambiguous for many ICT service providers. Therefore, the www.irjmets.com @International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering, Technology and Science

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e-ISSN: 2582-5208 International Research Journal of Modernization in Engineering Technology and Science Volume:02/Issue:09/September-2020

Impact Factor- 5.354

www.irjmets.com

objectives of this research is to: 

Find out the challenges that facing the IT service delivery companies when using the virtual teams as a delivery model in their services provided to the customers.



Investigate the influence of virtual teams on delivery quality.



Define potential effects on communications when using virtual teams.



Determine when virtual teams could affect the customers’ satisfactions.

Companies using virtual teams are facing many challenges like limited communication channels [8], not every type of project can easily adopt virtual teams, not everyone can perform well in a virtual team and customers almost are not comfortable with virtual teams.

Managers of virtual teams need to pay more attentions for the challenges and complexity facing from using virtual teams [1]. Management challenges include planning overhead, technical management, delay of support, lack of training, multicultural challenges, poor communications, and team morale.

This study does not include the virtual teams’ participations in general purposes and will not target the whole sectors that can use virtual teams. It is targeting only ICT service providers delivering projects in foreign countries.

VI.

REFERENCES

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