Russ J. Martinelli - Projects Without Boundaries: Successfully Leading Teams and Managing Projects in a Virtual World

Copyright 2017 by Russ J. Martinelli, James M. Waddell & Tim J. Rahschulte. All rights reserved

Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Life can be serendipitous at times. Most of the projects I have managed in my career as a new product development program manager have been virtual in nature and made up of geographically distributed teams. However, about five years after my last virtual project, I received an email requesting that I step in as the project manager for a project aimed at creating a secure cell phone for the government. The team, I was told, consisted of members of two organizations that had never worked together before, the software security group and the mobile devices group. Further, I was told that the team was highly distributed across the globe, with development centers in two locations in India, three locations in the United States, and one location in each of the countries of Ireland, Israel, and Germany.

The timing of the request is what was serendipitous. We had just begun the writing process for this book and were working through the primary differences between traditional and virtual projects. As I assumed my new virtual project manager role, the differences immediately began to emerge. So too did the various techniques for managing those differences. Personally managing a virtual, multinational, multicultural project while writing a book on the very same topic provided a wonderful opportunity to establish a practice-based foundation for the information found in the chapters that follow.

brings forth the forces that drive the continuous increase in virtual organizations and projects, and the key differences between traditional and virtual projects that project managers must be aware of and use to their advantage.

All project managers must be prepared to assume two critical roles: being the manager of the project and being the leader of the project team. On a virtual project, there is often a shift in the balance of effort between these two roles. This shift in effort is caused by the distributed nature of the team, which demands significant focus on team leadership in addition to one's core project management responsibilities. ).

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The final section of the book, describes how national culture and company culture must converge to create the project culture and how virtual project managers must adjust their leadership tactics to account for multicultural factors.

Unlike co-located teams, virtual team members have to communicate and collaborate in a nearly exclusive asynchronous manner, and do so through the use of technology. focuses on the primary role of technology for distributed project teams. We describe the various types of technology that are available to the virtual project manager today and then suggest a method for developing a strategy for choosing a suite of technological tools that will help the team overcome the challenges created by separation in time and distance.

Much of the pressure to succeed in managing virtual projects is unfairly placed on project managers. To address this situation, presents the critical organizational factors that must be addressed to create a sustainable environment for virtual project success. These include instituting effective organization and team structures that foster collaboration and empowerment, changing recognition and reward systems to reinforce new behaviors and practices, and investing in new skills development for people thrust into the role of the virtual project manager.

Finally, a number of assessments are included throughout the book. Each assessment can serve as a survey, checklist, or tool to baseline and improve an organization's virtual project management and team leadership capabilities. The virtual project readiness assessment included in the Appendix will help an organization evaluate their readiness to enter the virtual project management arena, or to create a capability gap analysis and change transformation plan to increase their virtual project maturity. Virtual project readiness is assessed from organizational, team, and personal perspectives.

On behalf of the co-authors, our heartfelt thanks to the future readers of this book. I hope you find it both enjoyable and useful in your virtual project endeavors.

RUSS MARTINELLI

We would like to thank the many people who have helped in making this book a reality.

To our experienced virtual project managers who graciously shared their expertise and experiences with us:

1. Janet Astwood
2. Sewa Bhatt
3. Stan Carr
4. Becky Christopher
5. Richard Cook
6. Ron Forward
7. Paola Genovese
8. Sylvie Huyskens
9. Hans-Juergen Junkersdorf
10. Sujith Kattathara Bhaskaran
11. Kris Knopf
12. Gideon Koch
13. Adit Liss
14. Kathy Milhauser
15. Amita Rao
16. Shlomit Shteyer
17. Victor Sohmen
18. Marc Valentin

To the team at John Wiley & Sons who continue to provide world-class support and guidance. In particular, we want to thank our executive editor, Margaret Cummins, our assistance editors Kalli Schultea and Amanda Shettleton, and our production editor, Seshadri Srinivasan. Your continued partnership and collaboration is greatly valued.