Virtual Teams at Ivey

COMING TOGETHER IS A BEGINNING….

KEEPING TOGETHER IS PROGRESS….
WORKING TOGETHER IS SUCCESS….
- HENRY FORD
 The Virtual Team Challenge

• Jake Santora joins EMBA, Ivey Business School. He has done undergraduate Business Degree at Ohio University
workload and currently workload is hectic at EMBA program.
• EMBA study culture is team based work
• Schedule of class – 4days weekend per month.
• Challenge – How would his geographically dispersed team members coordinate and manage themselves
during the other 26 odd days
• Santora worked in Asia as part of a distributed cross functional team and he understand challenges of Virtual
meetings
• They will be meeting on 27th Aug
• Agenda of the meeting – To understand first workload, individual’s preparation time, frequency, structure of
the team meetings. Task assignments and project deadlines
 The Virtual Team Challenge

• Ivey Business School Mission was to develop business leaders who think globally, act strategically and
contribute to the societies within which they operate. It was ranked as one of Canada’s top Business School
• Subjects – Analytics, Information Systems, Leadings, Accounting and Marketing
• Assessments Pattern – 4 individual written assignments, 4 final exams and 5 learning team assignments
• Team Purpose – To improve and strengthen individuals learning and to prepare each other for class room
experience
 The Virtual Team Challenge

Team members
• Marc Bellefeuille – He works as Private Banker, Education – Undergraduate Degree in Economics, he has a
5days travel plan per month due to official reasons. He is available for school work only during nights and
weekends
• Jennifer Christie – Sales manager by profession,, holds Business Communication and available for school work
during night and weekends
• Joanne Hing – Managing Director by profession. She has done Business Communication Under graduation and
available for school work any time
• Hee Kim – He is a Senior Director of F&A, he has done Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology and Master’s degree in
Physiotherapy. He was very flexible in terms of fitting school work.
• Sumita Sikand – She is Product Manager, completed her Under Graduate in Biology & Psychology. She is
flexible with School work schedule
• Landon Tresise – He is a Business Development Manager, Under graduate degree in Political Science and
flexible with school work schedule
 The Virtual Team Challenge

Way of thinking
• Compatibility of computing platforms. Ream members using different applications to complete portions of
group assignment and then challenges to integrate those results
• Communication in 2 approaches
1. in person meetings by using space at Ivey’s ING center in Toronto or Team members workplace or home
2. Virtual connects using Skype on webex
Note – they have decided to use a combination of both physical and virtual meeting. Santora is aware about
challenges using Virtual meeting

• Team needed to determine the mechanics of asynchronous document sharing. Sharing documents through
emails might be challenge. A document storage service could be used such as Drop box or Google Drive
• Team’s coordination –Virtual tools were available to facilitate team activities such as online chatting tools like
Microsoft project was fairly easy to set up and use another one was Base camp or Ace project.