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Virtual Teams Case Study

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1. The attributes that contribute to the success of virtual teams would be clarity of communication the most important key aspect of success in virtual teams, because the lack of communication or the lack of clarity will cause many misunderstandings between the members of the team. There are many attributes to failure some of them would be that there is no physical communication, and there is no social interactions that would build relationships with your colleagues, also it can be very difficult to establish trust.
2. A well effective functioning group make the trust within the team more stronger, knowing that there are people who are members of the group that are reliable in getting the work done on time and hence having the right characteristics in a virtual team is important for success because any small mistake or loss of communication may lead to failure.
3. Cultural diversity may be an issue in virtual teams due to the different time zones that every member is in therefore work has to be done in order to fit everyone’s schedule. Also, it is very hard to communicate through video conferences when everyone is from different parts of the world and hence have a different time zone. Also, some members in the virtual team don’t consider English their first language therefore every member should make sure to communicate effectively in order to avoid misunderstanding.
4. I think that Volvo’s approach to evaluating effectiveness of its virtual teams could serve as a useful model because Volvo evaluates the effectiveness of four questions How aligned is the team’s understanding of goals, actions, and expected results? How familiar is the team with roles and responsibilities? How comfortable is the team with communicating internally? How clear are project timelines and milestones?” these questions are the main points that needs to be evaluated in order to have a successful virtual organization. Evaluating communication is very important because communication in virtual teams is the most necessary aspect for it to work and also it is necessary in order to get the job done right.

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