Working with virtual teams.

Now a day’s virtual team concept is growing rapidly and many startups, sme’s are switching to this.
Virtual teams are group of people working across locations by communication model like Email, Telephone & instant messaging. Virtual teams may not have the same level hierarchy as in the organizations but the purpose behind this is only one to get the best out of the industry.

CHALLENGES:

Many of us think that working with distributed or virtual team may not be easy as team members are not always from the same organization.

1. Difficult to build trust.
2. Managing the conflicts is hard.
3. Understanding co-workers and their capabilities.
4. Decision making.
5. Working across time zones.

BENEFITS:

There are lots of benefits working with virtual teams for employees/freelancers as well as employer/project owners. For freelancers it’s easy to work from home or any other location which suits them across different time zones and can work on multiple projects from multiple project owners. For employers it is really benefited as they need not to invest more on infrastructure, lower operating cost and can extract the best from the market.

1. People can work from anywhere.
2. No cost like travel, parking.

COMMUNICATION TOOLS:

1. Skype: This tool plays a very important role for communication and a must have tool for all the start-ups, sme’s.
2. Zoho Projects:  With this tool team member can share timeline, documents view project status and this helps them to deliver projects on time.
3. Google Drive, Sky Drive or drop box can also be used for file storage that people can access from anywhere and on multiple devices like Laptop, Tablet, Mobile phones.