When you work with others, there is all of the task work that has to get done, and that takes time and effort … and there is also the coordination of the task work, and that takes time and effort as well. For novice teams—those that haven’t worked together before—more time will be needed to spent on the coordination of the work, because people are not in a groove of working with the others. For established teams, the time on coordination will be less and less over time, because people know what to expect from the others. They have a history of working together, and can intuit what others will do or won’t do without having to articulate that.

What Do I Need To Do?
If you are working on a new team, be aware that the total time involved in the project will be greater than if you were working with an established team. The coordination time will be much greater, even if the task time is pretty much the same. You’ll have to talk it out, and you’ll need to do a lot of talking and sharing. This need to coordinate the work will also apply with an established team that is working on a task variant that is different for the team.

If you are working on an established team, where the task is one that the team members have collectively done before, it is fair to expect that the coordination time will be minimal.

See A-Z of Virtual Teams: Summary for the complete list.