1 CHAMPION-LED “GO LIVE” SUPPORT

Your team has worked together successfully, communicated well, been managed efficiently, and built
a product according to the company’s business requirements. It’s now time to release that product
into the business environment. Implementation is always one of the most intense times for a project
team, and you’ll want to minimize disruption as much as possible.

If you’re providing support with a virtual team, delivering the product can be more of a challenge. To
avoid any risks or issues, it’s important to have the right support structure and channels in place for
virtual team members and champions, so they can quickly react to and address problems.

39% of all projects succeed (delivered on time, on budget, and with required features and
functions), 43% are challenged (late, over budget, and/or with fewer than the required features and
functions), 18% fail (either cancelled prior to completion or delivered and never used). — The Standish
Report / CHAOS Manifesto

Go Live Action Plan

It’s never too early to think about how your virtual team is going to support “Go Live.” The following
steps provide a recommended action plan that supports project delivery:

1. Test your support technology ahead of time. Make sure all of your team members have
access to, and are trained in, your support software. Complete some test runs of support
processes and fixes to understand how the support technology and process will work in
practice.
2. Ensure proper support coverage for all time zones. If your business and / or virtual team are
in different time zones, make sure there’s enough support in place to quickly fix issues and
solve problems during working hours. Use Microsoft Project to schedule support resources.
Ensure you have champions in place for every time zone.
3. Assign clear roles and responsibilities for support. Let your virtual team members know
what their roles, responsibilities, and focus should be before, during, and after product delivery.
Get your support champions to help them meet their responsibilities.
4. Embed champions in the business. Get virtual team champions on the ground in the business
areas where you’ll be delivering the project. Make sure they are known to the business areas,
so any issues can quickly be identified and reported to them.
5. Get clear support communications and escalation routes in place. Check that everyone
understands the communications that will be needed throughout the ”Go Live” process. Ensure
 proper escalation and prioritization routes are in place for issues and fixes; this is especially
important for champions.
6. Carry out a pilot, limited scope go live. Test your ”Go Live” process on a small, defined
business area to identify and resolve any potential problems prior to rolling out to larger
business areas.
7. Maintain active communications. Throughout ”Go Live”, ensure you have clear, open
communications channels and actively encourage everyone to use them.
8. After go live, learn lessons. Once ”Go Live” has been completed, ensure you hold a post-
mortem (lessons learned) analysis to identify best practices and issues for future project
delivery from virtual teams.
 1.1 Leading by Example
One of the best ways to ensure the success of virtual teams in your organization is to lead by
example. When you directly understand the benefits, drawbacks, challenges, and other factors faced
by virtual teams, you can put processes in place to support them.

“As a leader, part of your job is to inspire the people around you to push themselves – and, in turn,
the company – to greatness. To do this, you must show them the way by doing it yourself.”

— Mind Tools

When it comes to virtual teams, that means you’re going to have to roll up your sleeves and try
working in one for yourself. Here’s how to do that.

Set high expectations at the outset and raise the bar on any crucial factors. The best way to establish
a standard is by modeling the expected behavior yourself. Showcase excellence.

— Karima Mariama Arthur — Entrepreneur.com

Perform the following steps to set yourself up for working in a virtual team:

1. Identify a small project you want to accomplish in your leadership team.

2. Let your peers know about the project and get buy-in to complete it in a virtual environment.

3. Bring in a project manager who can work with everyone virtually.

4. Ensure you and your colleagues have the right technology, tools, and training to complete your work virtually.

5. Set up champions and others just as you would for a regular business project.

6. Use the same communication processes, techniques, and standards as you would for formal business
projects.

7. Complete your leadership-level project, together with your peers, colleagues, and project manager.

8. As you’re working, make a note of any issues, drawbacks, lessons learned, and factors to fix.

9. Following project completion, work with your communications, training, and project management areas to
understand how to communicate the essential parts of working in a virtual team.

10. Share the key parts (successes and failures) of working in a virtual team with your business.

11. Build your lessons learned into the training you’ll provide people when onboarding them into virtual teams.
1.2 STRATEGIC PLANNING

To achieve maximum effectiveness from your virtual teams, you need to integrate them into your
business in the most efficient way. That means making the creation and use of virtual teams, and by
extension the projects they create, part of your overall strategic planning process.

“Strategic leadership doesn’t come easily in most organizations. Statistics show that fewer than 10% of
leaders exhibit strategic skills, a woefully inadequate number considering the demands on organizations
today.” — Forbes

As a leader, you’re thinking about strategy all the time — How does your business adapt to changes
and risks, do you need to adapt to competitive practices, and have you got the right people in the
right roles to move forward?

A virtual team can help resolve all these concerns. By utilizing people from around the globe you can
get a truly worldwide perspective, gather expertise from diverse areas, and strategically position your
company for success.

“I believe that people make their own luck by great preparation and good strategy.”

— Jack Canfield

You should perform the following steps to integrate virtual teams into your corporate strategy:

1. Work with your leadership team to understand corporate priorities over the next 1 to 5 years, including
risks, competitive practices, new markets, products, services, operations, and more.
2. Identify the changes you’ll need to drive the projects that will deliver those changes. Prioritize and
schedule them appropriately.
3. Work closely with HR and your project areas to identify whether you have existing qualified people or
future recruitment needs, both domestically and internationally.
4. Review each project together with necessary resources and people to decide which would best be
served by virtual teams. Create criteria for assigning projects to virtual versus local project teams.
5. Build an awareness of virtual teams into your business through ongoing education and onboarding
processes.
6. Ensure your strategic requirements are met by a balance of local and virtual teams, depending on
business need and company culture.
 7. Adopt an attitude of continuous improvement towards virtual teams. Ensure that virtual team
experiences and outcomes feed back into the strategic planning process so you can identify and resolve
any gaps.

1.3 INVOKING INNOVATION

In a rapidly changing digital world, you must stay ahead, or at least stay on, the curve. That means
adapting rapidly to changes, understanding what’s being planned for the future, and empowering
your people to create and adopt innovative ways of doing things. Innovation should be part of a
company’s DNA. A fresh approach, the most up-to-date tools, and new ways of working can deliver
profound results, and that’s as true of virtual teams as anywhere else.

“Embrace innovation as a top team. It's not enough for the CEO to make innovation a personal goal and
to attend meetings on innovation regularly. Members of the top team must agree that promoting it is a
core part of the company's strategy, reflect on the way their own behavior reinforces or inhibits it, and
decide how they should role-model the change and engage middle management.”

— McKinsey

Part of leading by example is giving people a good reason to innovate; that is, by breaking down
barriers, promoting useful, productive interactions, and embracing technology that makes working
together faster and easier. You should consider the following best practices when planning how to
invoke innovation in your business and virtual teams:

 Find a good balance between innovation that enhances how people work together and communicate,
rather than innovation that’s just “cool new technology.” The latter doesn’t deliver much benefit beyond
something that’s “nice to have.”

 Let people know they are free to innovate, suggest new ideas, and try things out, within the boundaries
of the standards you’ve set.

 Ask your people how they want to work together. Let them decide which technology they want to use
to communicate, track progress, assign tasks, and deliver projects.

 Encourage virtual team members to find the best solutions as a team. MS Project, SharePoint, OneDrive,
and Skype are all innovative products that make remote working much easier.
  Get your people to track the technology they’re using, and map that against business and project
successes. Find correlations between innovative technology and successful project delivery.

 Discourage members of a team from using different types of technology to achieve the same tasks.
Coordination, working processes, and scalability are all easier if people are working on the same
platform.

 Make sure you’ve got the proper administration and controls in place on the platforms your teams use.
It’s important to control access and use of tools so they don’t interfere with company security or other
functions.

1.4 Motivating employees

As any HR department can tell you, motivating employees is about much more than just providing
them with a paycheck. That’s not to say a paycheck isn’t important; few of us would work simply for
love of the job. However, monetary compensation is just one factor in helping your employees feel
engaged, happy, and rewarded for their work.

“Organizations that offer at least one recognition program and that have a low turnover rate (0%-5%)
report statistically more recognition programs in place than the medium or high turnover categories.

A 5% increase in employee retention can generate a 25% to 85% increase in profitability.”

— CareerBuilder / USA Today

Clearly, engagement is vitally important, but here’s some sobering news — Engagement in virtual
teams is harder (much harder) than in face-to-face teams.

The Harvard Business Review writes, “Virtual team leaders need to continually motivate members to
deliver their best, but email updates and weekly conference calls are not enough to sustain
momentum. In the absence of visual cues and body language, misunderstandings often arise,
especially on larger teams. Team members begin to feel disconnected and less engaged, and their
contributions to the project decline.”

How can you ensure your virtual team members feel motivated, engaged, and rewarded? The
following list is a collection of suggestions on improving motivation and engagement in your virtual
team members:

 Create clear, aligned objectives. Provide people with clear objectives that recognize and reward the
contributions they’re making to a virtual team, and the overall success of the business. These objectives
should be clearly aligned with the overall goals and purpose of the business.
 Foster a collaborative environment. Encourage a collaborative, blame-free, trusting virtual environment.
Train your people in how to resolve difficulties remotely without interpersonal conflict. Promote a no-blame
culture. Allow all virtual team members to give and receive constructive, useful feedback.

 Balance work and life commitments. Ensure your people have a proper, healthy balance between work life
and home life, including effective boundaries between the two.

 Encourage training and advancement opportunities. Provide virtual team members with opportunities for
advancement, additional training, and the ability to become a team champion. Allow them to learn skills and
take on responsibilities that will enhance their careers.

 Develop interesting, challenging tasks and ways to work. Provide quality learning opportunities and
exposure to new ways of virtual working. Ensure that challenges are consistent with an employee’s skillset and
approach.

 Limit isolation. Allow your virtual team members to travel and meet other people face-to-face. Provide some
space in their travel plans to take a little leisure time. Face-to-face meetings are especially important during
onboarding, project kickoff, and key milestones.

 Celebrate success. Ensure that both team and individual contributions and successes are recognized and
celebrated. Encourage virtual team members to praise and highlight each other’s good work.

1.1 PROVIDING SUPPORT TO VIRTUAL TEAMS

Providing resources, ongoing support, and training to your virtual teams are some of the best ways to position
them for success. The job of providing support doesn’t fall solely to the team manager; HR, IT, training, and
other departments all have a part to play.

There are numerous areas in which you can provide support to a virtual team, including:

Personnel.
+
Training.
+
Advocacy.
+
Mentorship.
+
Technology.
+
Information.
+
Communications.
+
1.2 PERSONNEL.

Ensure team members have access to HR so they can manage their career progression,
report on objectives, and ensure they’re performing as expected.

1.3 TRAINING.

Give team members access to the training they need, both on the technology they need to
use, and the approaches and business processes they’ll use to deliver a successful project
in a virtual environment.

1.4 ADVOCACY.

Enlist a member of senior management or the executive team who can champion the use
of virtual teams and provide good reasons to other business areas querying the use of
virtual teams.

1.5 MENTORSHIP.

Provide virtual team members with mentors and experienced employees who can share
successful approaches and encourage new ways of working and thinking.

1.6 TECHNOLOGY.

Grant access to the right types of technology so virtual teams can work together easily and
be more productive.

1.7 INFORMATION.

Share useful guides and resources on the various aspects of working together.
1.8 COMMUNICATIONS.

Provide a central place where virtual team members can easily communicate and share
what works, get answers to questions, and solve their problems.

1.9 TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES THAT PROVIDE SUPPORT TO

VIRTUAL TEAMS

The following is a selection of tools and approaches that can be highly effective
in providing virtual teams the support they need:

1.10 CHAMPIONS.

Virtual team champions can act as excellent support staff. They can liaise between team
members, ensure they get the support they need, and highlight issues others may not be
aware of.

1.11 WIKIS.

Wikis are websites anyone can edit and update. They’re a great way to share information
as they let team members effortlessly add and refine details so they’re useful to the widest
number of people.

1.12 RESOURCE GUIDES.

Resource guides and knowledge bases are a great way for virtual team members to “deep
dive” into particular topics. You can provide guides on everything from using technology
to project management documentation, working practices, and more.

1.13 FORUMS AND DISCUSSION GROUPS.

These are a useful place for virtual team members to ask questions, share their
approaches, and solicit feedback and guidance from others. This doesn't need to be
limited to just virtual team members either, as this could easily cross over with other parts
of the organization.

1.14 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ).

Often underrated, an FAQ page is a great way to share succinct pieces of information with
a team.
1.15 ONLINE COURSES AND TRAINING MATERIALS.

Video courses, interactive training, and access to classroom sessions are incredibly useful.
Review the various different types of training your team might need, and supply training
courses to deal with any gaps.

1.16 CENTRALIZED COMMUNICATIONS CHANNELS.

Providing an updated, centralized way to communicate (in addition to regular team

meetings and conferences) helps to keep everyone informed on all the latest issues
affecting the team.

This means you and your team members need to think through the best tools and solutions for your
virtual team’s particular way of working. That will depend on the specific project you want to deliver
and the problems you need to solve.

You should perform the following steps to and use the right technologies for your virtual teams:

1. Understand your virtual team’s specific needs. Brainstorm your technology needs with your
team members. Identify the key business processes and approaches you’ll need to interact
with, and get suggestions on the best technologies for each function.
2. Decide on the right technology as a team. Let people try out various technologies and get a
consensus on the best technology to use for each particular function in the team. Get buy-in
and agreement from each of your team members.
3. Make your technology fit your process, not the other way around. Technology shouldn’t
force you to adopt to a new way of working. Instead, technology should be able to adapt and
fit into your workflow, and be as simple and easy-to-use as possible.
4. Provide training and support on agreed technology. Ensure you have appropriate
guidelines and support documentation in place to use the new technology. If documentation
isn’t sufficient to provide team members with an adequate comfort level for the new
technology, enhance it with training for your virtual team members.
5. Review new technology solutions between projects. New technologies are being developed
all the time by startups and established players, so it’s worth exploring new options to see if
something might be better suited for your team.
5

1.17 STAGES OF THE COLLABORATIVE PROCESS

Successful collaboration doesn’t “just happen,” instead you need a solid, reliable, proven process. This
ensures everything happens in the right way, to the right guidelines, carried out by the right people,
at the right time, to deliver the right results. Because virtual team members work remotely, it’s vital to
get collaboration between them exactly right.

“Collaboration is a working practice whereby individuals work together to a common purpose to achieve
business benefit.”

— AIIM

The collaboration process within a virtual team consists of four stages, each of which is depicted in
the following graphic. Click on each stage to view the key tasks associated with that step in the
collaboration process.
 +
+
+
+

“Although collaboration is at the heart of modern business processes, most companies are still in the
dark about how to manage it.”

— McKinsey&Company

Planning and design

 Work out exactly what the virtual team is going to do, and ensure everyone understands the
purpose and goals.
 Create a high-level plan on how the team is going to work and what it’s going to deliver.
 Assign the right people and resources to the plan to deliver business benefits.
 Design effective ways of working together, including communications and technology.

Information and data-gathering

 Understand all the requirements for working together from individual team members.
 Track, review, and report on progress on a regular basis.
 Ensure all targets for collaboration and project delivery are being met.

Analysis and processing

 Establish common principles for collaboration and remote working.

 Create a continuous review and feedback process to identify and resolve any gaps in virtual
team working.
 Use champions to provide an outside perspective and make suggestions for improvement.

Execution and implementation

 Bring the virtual team together and actively manage it on a day to day basis.
 Progress towards project delivery, reviewing, and meeting individual milestones.
 On completion of the virtual team project, complete close down, debrief, and lessons learned
activities.
 1.18 Implementing the Collaborative Process
You should perform the following steps to create an action plan for creating an effective virtual team
collaborative process:

1. Involve the people on your virtual team, your sponsors, previous virtual team managers, and champions in
defining and managing the collaborative process.

2. Ensure the purpose and goals of the virtual team are very clearly defined and communicate them to all virtual
team members.

3. Create a realistic delivery plan and use this to select and assign good virtual workers to necessary tasks and
outcomes.

4. Ask team members how they want to work together, what standards they expect to work to, and the technology
they want to use.

5. Regularly track progress towards working as a virtual team and project delivery. Identify and resolve gaps.
Share progress reports with the team.

6. Establish a continuous improvement process for virtual team working. Embed champions into the process so
they can identify and report on any issues.

7. Manage the virtual team towards delivery. On completion of the project, carry out all necessary review and
closedown activities.

1.19 TECHNOLOGIES THAT ENABLE GROWTH

If you want to make virtual teams a success in your organization, you need to invest in technologies
that provide support and enhance collaboration. The following sections define the different types of
collaboration technology that can enhance the growth of your virtual teams, and your business.

“Executives are sold on the need for enterprise social technologies to improve collaboration, especially in
supporting the work of today’s enormous global organizations. A 2013 Avanade survey found that 77
percent of decision makers are using such technologies, and 82 percent of businesses that use
collaboration tools want to use even more in the future.”

— Accenture

Project management
Next to communications, the most essential function in any virtual team is strong project
management. Good project management technology enables you to:

 Plan in detail.
  Assign tasks to virtual team members.
 Track, review, and report on progress.
 Manage milestones and delivery.
 Deal with resources, dependencies, risks, and issues.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how
they want to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can
support these tools and eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes
online working and collaboration.

Collaborative creation
The main aim of a project is to deliver something tangible, so having creative collaboration tools
makes that process much easier. Think about collaborative prototyping, development, and testing
environments. Look at how team members can share, refine, and comment on business requirements,
design documents, plans, and tasks. The ability to share contributions should be as easy as possible.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.

Document storage and referencing

A central, trusted repository of information is essential. Every project produces large amounts of
information and documentation, so it’s important to have a place to organize content that can also be
used by others. You can store all project documentation, code repositories, reports, best practices,
training materials, and more.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.

Other, real time communications

Communications technology goes well beyond video and audio, with plenty of solutions for real time
collaboration and sharing for more efficient working practices. Consider instant messaging, online
communications platforms, and other solutions for your teams.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.
Audio communications
Video communications are great for some types of updates, such as team meetings and one-to-ones,
but for quick catch ups, audio conferencing might be better. That’s why it’s wise to have a
combination of video and audio technology so that people can communicate in the way that’s best
suited for them.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.

Face to face communications (video conferencing)

One of the main complaints from virtual team members is a feeling of isolation and a lack of
connection. The best type of technology to reduce these feelings is video technology. It creates a
closer bond between team members, lets people read into the subtle signs in communication (for
example, visual cues such as body language) and promotes a better, more open working
environment.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.

Tracking and reporting

If reporting isn’t built into your project tool, it is vital that you provide other reporting technology.
This lets you track progress, ensure milestones and dates are met, manage resources, and produce
reports for your stakeholders.

You should review each of these areas in detail and consult with your virtual team members on how they want
to work. You should also meet with your IT department to understand how they can support these tools and
eventually create a flexible, fast, and reliable suite of tools that promotes online working and collaboration.

1.20 AVOIDING THE PITFALLS

The road to creating a successful virtual team environment is full of pitfalls that you need to avoid.
You should carefully examine these areas of concern and make sure you’ve got solid plans in place to
address each one.
“Unfortunately, having solid business reasons for implementing a virtual strategy does not mean that
strategy is always going to be executed well. Many companies have virtual teams that are ineffective
and failing the company.”

— Business Know-How

The following slider tool identifies the primary reasons why virtual teams oftentimes fail. Slide the
pointer along the bar and stop at each reason to display a description of that pitfall.

Managers must adapt their management techniques when working with virtual teams. No matter how
effective your management techniques and HR resources are for managing face-to-face, co-located
teams, these approaches won’t work for virtual, remote teams. Effectively managing a virtual team
requires a different, more open approach to management, and requires objective reviews of progress
and identifying gaps in communications.

You can resolve this by ensuring that everyone involved in your virtual teams has the right training,
and that your best practices and standards are clearly defined and documented.

It’s essential for virtual teams to have a very clear purpose and goal. What exactly are they meant to
deliver, and what are the key milestones involved in achieving that goal? Why does the business need
this project to work, and how do virtual team members align their own objectives with that overall
goal?

You can resolve this by clearly defining the purpose of the team and the goals of the project, together
with showing how individual team member objectives align.

It’s essential for virtual team members to feel engaged and that they’re contributing to the success of
a project. This comes from ensuring everyone understands their role and takes full responsibility and
accountability for what they need to deliver and how they work.

You can achieve this by holding regular one-on-one and all-team meetings and ensuring everyone
understands and commits to the part they play in the virtual team environment and project.

Virtual team members can only be successful when they’re assigned the right tasks at the right time.
It’s essential that project managers and virtual team leaders carefully review all tasks and ensure they
are properly assigned to the right people, with the right priority.

You can achieve this by studying your project management plan in detail and ensuring all tasks are
properly assigned and prioritized.
A lack of face-to-face communication is one of the biggest issues for virtual teams. Reduced social
interactions, a non-trusting environment, and the limitations imposed by distance can reduce how
engaged your people feel. This can also mean issues aren’t identified as early, optimal solutions aren't
discovered, and progress takes longer than expected.

You can resolve this by implementing proper communication technology, standards, and expectations
based on your virtual team requirements. Make it easy for team members to communicate, and
ensure they’re doing so. You and your champions will need to proactively communicate and
encourage others.

Technology must support the virtual team and be perfectly suited to what the team needs.
Technology should enhance how people work together and not get in the way of it. Don’t try to make
your working practices fit technology; instead, technology should fit your working processes.

You can resolve this by asking team members about the technology that will help them be the most
efficient, and testing out tools until you find the right solutions. You can compare alternatives and get
recommendations from your IT department on what the best solutions are.

1.21 TIPS FOR SUCCESS

The following are a collection of hints, tips, and advice to make virtual teams more productive and to
help ensure success:
 Make sure virtual team technology is mobile. Virtual team members can work from anywhere, so
ensuring technology works seamlessly, quickly, and efficiently across multiple platforms and devices is
essential.

 Aim to use cloud-based technology. Cloud technology is more secure, easily updatable, backed up,
and accessible. It enables faster collaboration and delivery, so utilize cloud technology wherever you
can.

 Let people check tasks in and out easily. Virtual team members need to be able to self-service. This
means giving them access to project management and other software so they can simply and easily
check tasks and other work in and out.

 Have proper user privileges in place. It’s important to control access to project information and
deliverables. Spend some time setting up proper user privileges and administration rights so others can
easily be invited into the project (including external people) without an issue.

 Ask virtual team members how they want to work. It’s essential to give your team a strong sense of
ownership. This means giving them a say in the technology they want to use, setting up standards
everyone agrees to, and getting commitment to work in a certain way for the entire team’s benefit.

 Get proper feedback loops and continuous improvement in place. Encourage an open culture of
honest, useful, constructive feedback. Chair team meetings that enable people to suggest better ways
of working and foster a trusting environment.

 Provide training and support. Identify the key approaches and attitudes people must have to work on
a virtual team and put training in place to teach and enhance those particular areas. Create a centralized
place where virtual team members can get support and solve virtual team problems.

 Emphasize communications above all else. Virtual teams live and die on the quality of their
communications. Get strong standards in place around communication and escalation and have regular
team meetings, one on ones, and other formal meetups.

 Have objective observers and champions. Have your champions observe how the team is functioning
and provide recommendations for improvement.