Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed, Third Edition

Chapter Two. Crossing Technical Boundaries

The role of technology in virtual teamwork is one of overcoming the complexities of time and distance in communication and collaboration. Virtual teams and their leaders need up-to-date knowledge about technology and its role in facilitating performance. However, as this book emphasizes, the successful use of technology involves more than that. It includes understanding the technological needs of the task and the team, matching the technology available to the task, and facilitating the technology to maximize team performance. This chapter surveys the rapidly changing and frequently confusing arena of electronic communication and collaboration technology and the various tools available to the virtual team. Its goals are to simplify this topic and make it relevant. The first part explains considerations that can be used to guide technological selection. The second focuses on the technological alternatives and the strengths and weaknesses of each. Readers who are not familiar with electronic communication and collaboration technology can survey this part now and use it as a detailed reference later. The third part presents cases that illustrate some of the real-life consequences of selecting various technological solutions.

Other issues regarding the use and impact of technology are distributed throughout the other chapters of this book. For example, Chapter Eight covers concepts and techniques in facilitating virtual meetings.

Factors That ...