The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Thoughts on using the After Action Review method in a virtual team. “Upon noticing that our team was losing focus on our project when we moved to a virtual platform, Surinder thought it would be useful for us to conduct an “After Action Review” (AAR) to provide some insight on our team’s problems and help provide some structure to our activities. An After Action Review is essentially a tool that explores what has happened with the team, why it has happened, and what we can do in the future to move forward and fix problems.“
• Five triggers to watch out for when managing virtual teams, from a recent academic study: “The five trigger types include external interferences, or the external conditions imposed on a project such as global timeline and the policies of the organizations that are working together; internal interference, such as team size and team-member demographics; information and communications technology (ICT) inadequacy, including very basic problems with the sheer volume of the number of emails in a project to more complex software-related problems; trust and relationship inadequacy between team members; and ICT knowledge, skills and abilities inadequacy among team members.“
• Companies that are successful with multi-firm collaborations focus on people, processes, platforms and programmes. These all take time and money to develop and fine tune.

The Technology Trends of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams

• Forrester chimes in on SharePoint: companies are going to adopt and use it, regardless of what the naysayers say. “SharePoint users have sometimes found basic Web 2.0 features difficult to use, and complain about a lack of advanced features commonly found in best-of-breed products, such as tools that let you build lightweight applications on top of a wiki, says Forrester analyst and report lead author Oliver Young. These concerns won’t limit adoption rates of SharePoint, though, he says.“
• The Yugma Web collaboration service has been certified as a Skype add-in. “Yugma revolutionizes real-time collaboration by enabling quick and instant sharing of ideas by letting users conduct virtual meetings or webinars and to share desktops spontaneously. Yugma is free, easy to use and works seamlessly across Windows, Mac and Linux platforms.“

Insights on Being Productive and Effective as an Individual

• Laura’s 10 steps to being prepared to be productive: (1) work towards your mission statement, (2) track your long-term goals and aspirations, (3) create high-quality performance objectives, (4) define your specific job responsibilities and related tasks, (5) maintain a list of projects to accomplish, (6) review regularly, (7) track tasks, projects and appointments, (8) create and prioritize your daily to do list, (9) schedule your day realistically, and (10) choose effective communication channels.
• If you complain about not having enough time to get everything done, the problem is your priorities, not an apparent lack of time. “It takes courage to set priorities and stick with them. That’s why it’s important to keep others informed about you’re A-1 priorities. This way, you will have eliminated the need to do things you don’t want to do and won’t have to explain to others why. If you are in a leadership position, sit down with those who report to you and work with them to determine their A-1 priorities for the month so they are in alignment with the business.“

Other Noteworthy Insights

• Web 2.0 and social networking sites are places where your customers get together; companies need to pay attention and listen.