Today I met an interesting statistical information about the project teams stricture. The results of a survey of one European IT company stated that only 31% of all the teams are co-located (all the team members sit in one room or at least in one office building). The other 33% of the teams are co-located teams with off-site project management and product owners. This is a common practice for the projects first appearing in the USA or Western Europe countries (like the UK, France or Germany) and being outsourced to so-called development centers in such countries as India, Mexico, Ukraine, Belarus and so on. It means that project management and business analysis will be done in the outsourcer company and the software development and testing will be performed by the outsourcing team. For example, Florida web development company creates a development center in the Eastern Europe to do custom website development and mobile apps development for them.
And the rest 36% will go to distributed teams. According to Wikipedia - "a virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team or distributed team) is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology". It means that more than one third of all the teams are geographically dispersed and they need to have some means of special communication. This may be a huge market share for different tools and solutions helping such teams to organize their every day routine.
But what really do they need to operate effectively?
1. If the project is performed by a distributed team the role of the communication plan increases. The PMO or project manager should create clear and easy rules of delegating tasks, sending e-mails, responsibilities and the system of reporting.
2. The next important step is creating the set of workflows. It's closely connected with the previous factor. Processes help people to stay focused on their tasks. In distributed teams there is often a problem of time-zone difference and it's not always possible to ask questions and get answers on a real time basis. So, good processes may help to organize the work the most productive way.
3. Find a tool or a combination of solutions that will help to organize the work of distributed team. The choice will depend on the team size, type of project and methodology used. For example, for traditional software development projects Basecamp may be a very good choice. It allows to set tasks, add documents, use white boards for tough tasks and to track time. But for Agile projects one may want to have something more flexible. Google Drive Spreadsheets maybe a perfect solution for the small projects and small teams. But for the projects that last more than 1 month and involve more than 5 geographically dispersed people it's good to try Jira GreenHopper, Pivotal Tracker and Comindware Tracker.
4. Create a list of possible risks and the ways how to avoid them or mitigate. The list may include cultural differences, language problems, time-zone differences and so on.
So, the statistics says that distributes teams are increased by number during the last 10 years. So, if you plan a career in IT you need to increase your skills in distributed teams management.
And the rest 36% will go to distributed teams. According to Wikipedia - "a virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team or distributed team) is a group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technology". It means that more than one third of all the teams are geographically dispersed and they need to have some means of special communication. This may be a huge market share for different tools and solutions helping such teams to organize their every day routine.
But what really do they need to operate effectively?
1. If the project is performed by a distributed team the role of the communication plan increases. The PMO or project manager should create clear and easy rules of delegating tasks, sending e-mails, responsibilities and the system of reporting.
2. The next important step is creating the set of workflows. It's closely connected with the previous factor. Processes help people to stay focused on their tasks. In distributed teams there is often a problem of time-zone difference and it's not always possible to ask questions and get answers on a real time basis. So, good processes may help to organize the work the most productive way.
3. Find a tool or a combination of solutions that will help to organize the work of distributed team. The choice will depend on the team size, type of project and methodology used. For example, for traditional software development projects Basecamp may be a very good choice. It allows to set tasks, add documents, use white boards for tough tasks and to track time. But for Agile projects one may want to have something more flexible. Google Drive Spreadsheets maybe a perfect solution for the small projects and small teams. But for the projects that last more than 1 month and involve more than 5 geographically dispersed people it's good to try Jira GreenHopper, Pivotal Tracker and Comindware Tracker.
4. Create a list of possible risks and the ways how to avoid them or mitigate. The list may include cultural differences, language problems, time-zone differences and so on.
So, the statistics says that distributes teams are increased by number during the last 10 years. So, if you plan a career in IT you need to increase your skills in distributed teams management.
