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Information Technology: Meeting the Challenges of Virtual Cross-functional Teams

Executive Summary

Today's organizations often use cross-functional teams to tackle large and complex business problems. They are a way to take advantage of the knowledge and experience of people with diverse backgrounds, and they are a way to involve all stakeholders in critical decisions. The global and distributed nature of today's organizations means that most cross-functional teams are in practice virtual cross-functional teams. That is, they use technology to "tie together physically dispersed members in order to achieve a common goal." (Robbins, 2001) Both virtual teams and cross-functional teams have their own sets of challenges; these are barriers to effective teamwork and the accomplishment of the team's goals. However, the Information Technology industry is providing products that address some of these challenges and make virtual cross-functional teams more effective. Currently, workflow tools like PeopleSoft, groupware tools like Lotus Notes, and collaborative tools like Microsoft Office take advantage of the Internet to bring together these virtual cross-functional participants. In the future, we will see dramatic developments in technology that will directly impact virtual cross-functional teams: three dimensional computer displays, new collaborative virtual reality environments, and computer interfaces custom designed for a class of users, like doctors or auto mechanics or marketing project managers.

Introduction

One of the most commonly used organizational tools for solving complex business problems is the cross-functional team. A cross-functional team is one made up of employees from about the same job level, working in different work areas, departments, or even in other organizations; these team members come together to accomplish a common goal. Common buzz words for cross-functional team include "task force" or "committee".

Because of the global and geographically distributed nature of today's business organization, many, if not most, cross-functional teams are in fact virtual teams. A virtual team is one that uses technology to bring together physically dispersed participants to accomplish a goal. Therefore, organizations have created a new special case of the cross-functional team: the virtual cross-functional team (VCFT). A VCFT may be defined as a team made up of physically dispersed participants from different work areas, departments, or organizations who are brought together through technology to accomplish one or more common goals.

While VCFT's have obvious advantages in that they bring together diverse knowledge, experience, and backgrounds and that they involve many stakeholders in a particular problem, they do have problems that need to be addressed. Significantly, VCFT's combine the challenges of both cross-functional teams and virtual teams. Because of their inherent diversity and complexity, cross-functional teams have a difficult time getting started; building trust, reciprocity, and dense social networks is difficult. Likewise, because of the lack of face-to-face interaction, virtual teams can be difficult to manage because subtleties of communication tend to be lost across some technological channels. In a VCFT, the in-person interaction that would normally aid the establishment of a conventional cross-functional team is missing; communication is the number one challenge to creating effective VCFT's. (Robbins, 2001)

Fortunately, the Information Technology industry is providing business with products and services that are helping to bridge these gaps in communication and improve the effectiveness of VCFT's. This paper will study the currently available technologies; specifically, it will investigate how the internet is an enabling infrastructure for most other products, the categories of tools available, and how they improve communication among team members. Furthermore, this paper will shed light on technologies that are currently under development - the next generation of VCFT tools. Technologies on the horizon will be examined, and their applicability to VCFT's explained.

Literature Review

A significant body of business and scholarly literature exists on the subjects of virtual teams and cross-functional teams, but little exists on virtual cross-functional teams. What literature does exist is focused on virtual teams but recognizes that many times these virtual teams are in fact cross-functional in nature. This paper is based on several sources, each of which falls into one of three categories. The first category of literature identifies the issues involved in creating and managing VCFT's'. For the most part, they discuss the problem of building what Jessica Lipnack and Jeffery Stamps term "Social Capital" within a team. Carol O'Connor discusses, among other things, the criteria that will determine a technology's success as a VCFT tool and why technological implementations sometimes fail in the context of virtual teams. Charlene Solomon enters into a discourse on the connectedness of team members and has especially insightful comments on how subtleties of communication are often lost when messages are transmitted across technical channels. Teresa McUsic very briefly touches on the physical and geographic barriers that separate team members. Lisa Kimball and Amy Eunice emphasize the importance of creating a virtual space for team members to foster social interaction, a place they call the "virtual watercooler". The second category of literature reviews the technology that is currently available to managers and team members. Suzanne Gaspar's article introduces groupware technology and communication tools. She goes into some depth about email, scheduling, and video conferencing. Business guru David Drucker "shines some light" on GE's collaborative workplace and discusses their use of Lotus tools in their VCFT implementations. Finally, Anthony Townsend provides a lot of information on desktop videoconferencing systems and new internet meeting software like NetMeeting.

The third and final category of literature describes some technological innovations that are waiting just over the horizon. Two articles from the archives of the IEEE Computer Society's Computer magazine stand out. Back in 1995 Wolfgang Krüger and his colleagues were doing work on the "Responsive Workbench", interfaces that are designed specifically around the needs of a class of users. More recently Ravin Balakrishnan's team has been doing research and real-world prototyping on volumetric displays. These are computer displays that present visual representations of data or real objects in true three dimensions.

Treatment

There are several obstacles that prevent virtual cross-functional teams from working as effectively as their in-person counterparts. One such challenge is the difficulty of creating trust, reciprocity, and dense social networks among the team participants. Together, these three team characteristics are needed to build "Social Capital". Social Capital is the willingness and ability of employees to work together. Social Capital can be increased or decreased due to individual participants' good or bad experiences with teams in the past. Technology can be used as links to build social capital by bringing team members together. (Lipnack and Stamps, 1999)

Another obstacle is the fact that social interaction is critical to effective teamwork. Individual team members need to have a line-of-sight, that is, knowledge of what is happening around them in the context of the VCFT. In a virtual environment, it's common for the leader of the team to be the only one in constant contact with the sponsor of the team, thus the leader is the only one "in the know". Additionally, team members need to be encouraged to see the team as a whole. In an in-person situation, it's much easier for the team to take on an identity because there are physical clues to its existence; the distributed nature of both virtual and cross-functional teams remove these clues and reduce the importance of the whole team in the minds of participants. Similarly, managers need to find a way to keep the team in the forefront of members' consciousness. All of this is exacerbated by the fact that physical and geographic boundaries impede social interaction. (Kimball and Eunice, 1999) (McUsic, 1997)

One of the reasons that social interaction is impeded is because the subtleties of communication are so often lost in transmission across technical channels. When people communicate in person, both the sender and the receiver have access to all the non-verbal cues that accompany the message: proxemics, paralanguage, and kinesics. However, when the same message is sent across an electronic channel, invariably one or more of these non-verbal cues is lost. Often this problem is only made worse because team members unfortunately sometimes select the wrong media to transmit their message. Team members must consider the importance of the message and match it properly with media richness and immediacy of delivery. Altogether this impairs the communication of the team and drastically hinders the team's performance. (Solomon, 2001)

Fortunately, managers of VCFT's have several tools already available to help them overcome some of these obstacles. Mainly, current tools fall into the following categories: infrastructure, workflow, collaboration, and portals. Carol O'Connor makes an excellent observation when she presents a set of criteria by which to evaluate potential tools for use in a VCFT. First, a tool must serve a clearly identified and/or and emerging need for information. Second, it must replace a more cumbersome process. Finally, it must enhance people's ability to make human contact. (O'Connor, 2000)

Many if not all companies today have voice and data computer networks that can serve as the base infrastructure for workflow, collaborative, and portal solutions. However, corporate networks do not solve the infrastructure needs when group members are widely geographically distributed or when they work for different organizations. That is where the internet comes in. Perhaps the internet's greatest contribution to business is its ability to thoroughly enable true virtual cross-functional teams; it allows members to connect with each other from anywhere on the globe. It offer extremely wide access, even in under developed countries, it provides for security, stateful connections, and has the ability to transport messages for virtually any application protocol. It also is the link between and among disparate corporate networks.

A vast number of electronic communication tools are available to VCFT's today, and a large number of them operate over the internet. Some communication tools are not especially technical in nature: telephones, postal service, and express delivery are all communication tools that are essential to VCFT's. However, these means of communication lack richness that is often needed for important messages, thus the development of a bevy of tools to complement them. The most ubiquitous without a doubt is email. Email allows users to almost instantly send written communication to one another; in addition, it provides the ability to pass files back and forth. Unfortunately, email is sometimes misused because 1. each email is a one-sided discussion, not allowing the recipient to break in and share information 2. non-verbal cues are totally missing from email, although senders try to project some non-verbal cues through the use of capital letters, emoticons, and punctuation. (Gaspar, 2001) One of the biggest advances in VCFT communication and collaboration is desktop video conferencing. Desktop video conferencing involves each team member having speakers and a microphone coupled with a camera attached to their computer and pointed at their face. Members then use special software to "meet" - in this meeting, users are able to see each other and thus read some kinesic clues like facial expressions. Often times DVC systems are combined with collaborative applications, allowing users to share data and use applications together, resulting in highly productive work sessions. (Townsend, 1998)

A major communicative trouble that VCFT members have is routing work from one team member to another, determining who currently "has" the work in hand and is holding up the process, or whether specific team members have approved or otherwise noted work in progress. This situation is called "workflow", and there are several tools available to assist members in this area. One of the most commonly used workflow tools is Lotus Domino Workflow; it provides the ability to create applications that route documents and data among specified team members according to specified business rules. It allows for multiple distribution, approvals, notification to team members that their action is required, and more. Another major player in the workflow market is PeopleSoft. PeopleSoft, a major Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) vendor, has a product called PeopleSoft workflow. This software goes a step beyond Notes by keeping a detailed history of the path that the document or data has taken in its routing. If there is question, you can review this history to see exactly when a document was routed to whom, what action was taken, and where the document went from there. Such tools reduce ambiguity among team members and take some of the responsibility off the shoulders of the manager.

Sometimes, workflow routing is impractical, and team members need to work together in real time. This is where collaborative and "groupware" applications come into play. Lotus is one of the major tools available in collaborative software, and it is credited with inventing the concept of groupware. Notes and Domino.Doc provide communication through email, individual and group scheduling, common data repositories, and real-time document sharing. However, the most widespread and commonly used collaborative tool is Microsoft's Office suite of applications. Newer versions of Office have features that are especially useful to VCFT members. Microsoft Word, for example, has a feature that will track changes in a document, identify the user who made the changes, and display each user's contributions in a different color. This is extremely useful when multiple team members are required to author a single document. Similarly, Microsoft Excel has the ability to track changes by user, but even more impressively, if multiple users have opened the same spreadsheet from a network share, each user can automatically see changes that are made by another user. (Drucker, 2000)

While all of these tools certainly contribute to the productivity of the workgroup, probably none has had so great an impact on VCFT cohesiveness as the newest technology, portals. Portals can be thought of as "virtual watercoolers". They are websites or other electronic meeting places where members can come together to interact socially, both inside and outside the context of work. eProjectOnline.com is just one example of such a portal. PeopleSoft provides a portal solution that is intended specifically to be used by members both within an organization (employees) and outside the organization (customers and suppliers). PeopleSoft's product is interesting because it presents a personalized web page for each user, showing only information that is important to each individual. Portals must have tools that allow users to connect with one another, such as instant messaging or chat, message boards, polls or voting booths, etc. They should be updated constantly with news about the team, social events, and news of general interest. (Anonymous, 2001) (Kimball and Eunice, 1999)

While the currently available tools provide for many of the requirements of a VCFT, they still lack the ability to communicate as effectively as face-to-face conversations allow, and they still have limitations in the transference of knowledge. Two new technologies that are on the horizon promise to greatly improve VCFT's in both areas.

One of the troubles with communicating over technical links is that subtleties in conversation are lost. Another is that the user has to adapt himself to the interface of the computer, rather than the other way around. Either way, import parts of the message are going to be lost. This is the thrust of Wolfgang Krüger's work on responsive workbenches. A responsive workbench is a computer interface that is designed specifically for a class of users. An example of a class of users might be physicians. What's important to a physician may be the ability to visualize in three dimensions a model of the patient's body and to be able to zoom in on and manipulate specific parts of the model. A nurse working on the same patient, however, may need an interface that logically organizes the patients chart, allows her to see the precise medications delivered to the patient, and monitor vital signs in the patient, alerting the nurse when vitals exceed set parameters; this interface must also organize all of this information for many different patients. The goal of both team members is to care for the patient, but the doctor and the nurse both have very different information needs. Today, both users would have to limit themselves to an interface that is the "least common denominator", usually a keyboard, mouse, and CRT monitor. Tomorrow, responsive workbench interfaces will provide users with exactly the information they need in exactly the way they need it. (Krüger, 1995)

A newer technology also concentrates on improving the user interface: volumetric displays. A volumetric display is one in which information or objects are displayed as three dimensional models that can be touched and manipulated by users. A volumetric display would allow users to collaborate in working with an object, allowing each to view the object from all sides. The prototypes of volumetric displays that exist today have been constructed as clear half-domes that range in size from 3 feet to 10 feet in diameter. The domes have a transparent pressure-sensitive film that allows tactile interaction with the images that are projected onto the dome. The result is that the user feels as if he or she is actually touching and moving the objects being displayed. The round shape of the dome allows for easy use of the display by more than one user, aiding in-person collaboration. (Balakrishnan, 2001)

Conclusion

As we've seen, the virtual cross-functional teams of today would not be able to exist at all if it were not for the innovations brought to us by the Information Technology industry. Without a doubt, the internet, with its ability to electronically link every individual and business in the world, is the greatest technological achievement with regards to VCFT's. It is especially appropriate for use as an infrastructure because of its ability to transport messages for arbitrary application protocols in both stateful and stateless modes. It is also highly extensible and scalable, allowing new individuals and business to join the network; it is highly available due to its many, many redundant links, allowing businesses to trust it to function; it is inherently upgradeable, allowing higher bandwidth between points as new communication links and routing devices are developed.

The applications in use by VCFT's today are highly capable of enabling virtual collaboration. As a group they focus on three important aspects of virtual cross-functional team work: the need to build social capital and enable human interaction; the need to provide line-of-site and a holistic view of the team; the need to overcome physical and geographical obstacles to communication and collaborative work. Tomorrow's technology, however, will take the VCFT to an entirely new level as new computer interfaces allow users to fully communicate messages instead of just convey them. Users will have full access to all of the non-verbal cues of in-person communication through the use of responsive workbenches. Further, users will be able to more effectively work on projects together as improved displays such as the volumetric display become available.

References:

  1. Krüger, Wolfgang et al, "The Responsive Workbench: a Virtual Work Environment", Computer, July 1995, pp 42-48.
  2. McUsic, Teresa, "Business Bookshelf: Electronic Age's virtual teams reshuffle division of labor", Fort Worth Star-Telegram, August 11, 1997, Final AM, p 20.
  3. Gaspar, Suzanne, "Virtual teams, real benefits", Network World, September 24, 2001, p 45.
  4. Solomon, Charlene Marmer, "Managing Virtual Teams", Workforce, June 2001, pp 60-65.
  5. Anonymous, "eProjectOnline.com offers B2B knowledge management portal", Direct Marketing, May 2001, p 78.
  6. O'Connor, Carol, "Building the Virtual Team", Accountancy Ireland, August 2000, pp 20-21.
  7. Drucker, David, "VIRTUAL TEAMS LIGHT UP GE - Customers, suppliers linked in real time with collaboration apps", Internetweek, April 10, 2000, pp 1, 16.
  8. Lipnack, Jessica and Jeffrey Stamps, "Virtual Teams", Executive Excellence, May 1999, pp 14-15.
  9. Kimball, Lisa and Amy Eunice, "The Virtual Team: Strategies to Optimize Performance", Health Forum Journal, May/June 1999, pp 58-62.
  10. Townsend, Anthony M. et al, "Virtual Teams: Technology and the workplace of the future", Academy of Management Executive, August 1, 1998, p 17.
  11. Balakrishnan, Ravin et al, "User Interfaces for Volumetric Displays", Computer, March 2001, pp 37-46.
  12. Robbins, Stephen P., Organizational Behavior, 9th edition, Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, 2001, p 261.

If you have any questions or would like to contact me for any reason, please email me at j.eckles@computer.org.