Leading agile and virtual projects

Traditional project management training assumes a relatively simple people management environment. However, projects increasingly operate virtually with project team members in different locations and sometimes different cultures and time zones.

Proponents of agile methodology insist that teams should be co-located and that meetings should be face-to-face, but this doesn’t match the reality of our projects.

Virtual project management brings some additional people challenges, including

• structuring collaboration for speed. Collaboration requires us to be available at the same time (for a live meeting or call) and this can be challenging in international project teams or where diaries are booked far in advance. We need to streamline how we collaborate and make decisions to accelerate our virtual collaboration. Holding a daily agile meeting may or may not form part of the process
• creating engagement through technology – most of our meetings and collaboration happen through technology like audioconference, WebEx or Skype for business. We need the skills to run engaging and effective online meetings, overcome the barriers of distance and create real participation and engagement
• finding the right balance of trust and control in how we manage project team members. Control is essential in some areas and high levels of trust and empowerment are vital to engagement and performance. Both are impacted by remoteness and the lack of face-to-face contact

Agility in virtual project teams is not about slavishly following a methodology, it’s about engaging people, accelerating delivery and cutting out waste,

Global integration are specialists in inspiring and enabling people to succeed in increasingly connected virtual, matrix and digital organizations. We can help you upgrade the skills of your project managers to survive and thrive in an increasingly complex organizational environment.

You can see more about how we do this in our free webinar “leading the journey from virtual to matrix and digital teams” or by downloading one of our research led white papers here

If you need to get started in building the skills now, please contact us direct.