Truly Virtual Teams

1. Truly Virtual Teams (Team) Work in Progress

2. DISCLAIMER The statements made in this presentation represent the personal opinions of the author, and should in no way be taken to represent any official position taken by either of the institutions with which he has recently been associated.

3. ABSTRACT • This paper presents the recent involvement of the authors in the development of a new course at the UK's Open University (OU), which at the time of writing (Spring 2005) is in its first presentation. The course, entitled "M253: Team working in distributed environments", forms an integral part of the OU's named degree in Computing. It attempts to make a virtue of the fact that OU students study in a distance learning environment, by providing a structure within which team working activities are carried out with no face-to-face contact. Some of the problems encountered in designing this course and the decisions reached about how to manage and assess the students' experiences are discussed, and some directions for future development and enhancement are indicated.

4. OVERVIEW • INTRODUCTION • CHALLENGES OF VIRTUAL TEAMWORK • GROUPS OR TEAMS? • VIRTUALITY • TEAM FORMATION • TEAM MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP • THE COURSE STRUCTURE • CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK • REFERENCES

5. INTRODUCTION: THE NEED • Complaints from employers about graduate skills • "In our recent survey of 13,000 employers, over half felt that the education system was failing to equip people with the skills necessary for today's workplace" and went on to say that "It could be argued that two or three (or more) years solely in educational institutions don't give learners a capacity to make their way in the world of work. Especially if they are not taught other complementary skills such as communication, team working, customer relations, IT skills or management and leadership" (The Times newspaper 22 March 2005)

6. INTRODUCTION: THE DEBATE • Team working best acquired in the workplace? • Teamworking recommended as part of the undergraduate experience? • Team working a professional accreditation requirement from organisations such as the British Computer Society (see [1] for details)

7. INTRODUCTION: THE OU CONTEXT • The UK Open University (OU) • Historical development of self-contained, independent courses in most aspects of computing • Demand for named degree in computing • Re-organisation and rewriting of courses • Need to include teamworking • Distance learning environment

8. INTRODUCTION: VIRTUAL TEAMWORK • Developments in technology and business practice "Virtual teamworking is already commonplace and is rapidly becoming essential as organisations work in an increasingly collaborative way" (see [3] for discussion) • Distance learning experience of OU students / use of CSCW • Decision to make the new course ‘virtual’

9. THE CHALLENGE OF VIRTUAL TEAMWORK • Some significant issues to be addressed in creating effective virtual teams (see [10] for a recent literature review) • Need to establish shared norms • Need to establish shared knowledge • Need to establish a clear team structure • Need to establish explicit intermediate goals • Need for shared social information to achieve a sense of cohesion and trust • Need to establish clear decision making processes

10. THE CHALLENGE OF VIRTUAL TEAMWORK • Further issues relating to virtual teams • Team size • Allocation of members to teams • Diversity and gender • Project duration and schedule • Timeliness / effectiveness of communication • Asynchronicity of activity and communication • Leadership • Conflict resolution

11. GROUPS OR TEAMS? • Frequent and unjustifiable tendency to use the two terms interchangeably • "What are teams? The step from small groups to teams is short and simple. Teams exist for some task-oriented purpose. Orientation to task is what distinguishes teams from other small groups. While purpose is fundamental to all groups, teams are specifically, deliberately, and invariably about results" [see 7, p 57] • "An oft-quoted research definition of teams offers the three small-group characteristics together with a task-oriented purpose: Teams are distinguishable sets of two or more individuals who act interdependently and adaptively to achieve specified, shared, and valued objectives" [see 7, p 290]

12. GROUPS OR TEAMS?: CURRENT PRACTICE • Group work activity within computing degrees tends to be face-to-face • Activity tends to be focussed on a large software development task with significant individual components and sparse / sporadic need for interaction • Assessment tends to be focussed on quality of product and presentation rather than process

13. OUR APPROACH • Decouple process from product • Focus activity on teamwork • Use software element mainly as a vehicle • Include team and individual reflective activity in the assessment • Follow the advice of the EPCOS project to: "consider awarding academic credit for (successful) accomplishment of tasks rather than assessing the products of those tasks" [see 4, p 218].

14. M253 TEAM FORMATION • We have randomly allocated students to teams of 6 on a countrywide basis, to emphasise the non face-to-face nature of their existence • Warming up exercises are seen as a critical factor in formation of teams operating in face-to-face environments, and even more so in virtual • Need for early establishment of team identity – to gain knowledge of, and confidence in, other members of the team • We use an initial 3 week, non-assessed, formative phase to establish mutual working practices. The whole course runs for 6 months

15. M253 TEAM MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP • Need to distinguish between the two concepts • We see management as external, and leadership as internal, to the team. The M253 course team plays the management role, in terms of: • Setting up the teams • Setting up the overall objectives • Setting the schedule of deliverables • Providing suitable resources • Monitoring progress and outputs

16. M253 TEAM MANAGEMENT AND LEADERSHIP • Leadership is something that we want to emerge from the team, as it configures itself to meets its objectives, in the light of the time constraints and the available resources • Leadership takes many forms, especially in virtual teams – they need to be polycephalous • "It takes more than one to lead a successful virtual team" • "Leadership is pervasive in virtual teams ... there are (at least) six basic leadership roles needed in virtual teams" [see 7, p 176] • We want teams, with minimal guidance, to determine their own roles, responsibilities and rules. Tutoring is basically in ‘hands-off’ mode

17. M253 COURSE STRUCTURE • The context is a generic project framework into which specific scenarios can be dropped for successive course presentations • No specialist knowledge of the application area is assumed • No specialist knowledge of specific software development methodologies is assumed • Team and individual tasks revolve around investigation and analysis of the scenario and clarification of the system requirements

18. M253 COURSE STRUCTURE • There are three assessed phases of activity, with a milestone for team and individual deliverables at the end of each phase • Each deliverable is a (partial) product and a reflection on the processes by which that product was produced • The team reflection component is based around roles, responsibilities and rules • The individual reflection component is based around relationships and interactions

19. M253 COURSE STRUCTURE • The students receive a printed Course Guide, a set of online Activity / Assessment Sheets and a set of online Resource Sheets • The Course Guide provides background administrative information and a detailed, week by week, breakdown and explanation of what activities teams and individuals should be undertaking and which Resource Sheets they should currently be studying

20. M253 COURSE STRUCTURE • The Activity / Assessment Sheets spell out the nature of the activities and deliverables for each phase of the course, and are only released at the beginning of that phase to ensure concentration on the current task • The Resource Sheets provide a fairly extensive background to both theoretical and practical aspects of working in (virtual) teams, to the analysis and documentation of system requirements, and to keeping logs, reflective practice, report writing, etc • We have tried to concentrate the teams’ attention on problem analysis and specification rather than implementation, since the main focus of the course is the teamwork experience itself

21. M253 COURSE STRUCTURE • We have not attempted to balance team make-up, in terms of categories such as Belbin roles or Myers Briggs personality types, but have introduced such ideas in the Resource sheets so that teams can reflect on whether this affects / explains their experience • There is no element of competition between teams and no concept of a ‘right’ or even a ‘best’ product or process – the key outcome is undergoing and understanding the experience • We have built in the concept that partial success does not constitute failure, provided there is evidence that lessons have been learned

22. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK • Very early days yet: Watch this space • Need for greater ‘social’ interaction in teams • Up-emphasise roles, responsibilities and rules • Teams want to rush into production activities • Problems of convincing students (and tutors) that there is no right or best answer • Lots of archived conferencing to analyse • Need an improved communication environment – but remember problems and solutions are 10% about technology and 90% about people

23. REFERENCES • [1] BCS Guidelines on Course Exemption & Accreditation (2001) available at wwwl.bcs.org.uk/DocsRepository/04500/4562/guidelines.htm • [2] Brereton P. et al, Distributed Group Working in Software Engineering Education Information and Software Technology Vol. 40 No. 4 pp 221-227 (1998) • [3] DTI Fact Sheet, Virtual Teamworking (2004), available at www.dti.gov.uk • [4] Fincher S., Petre M. and Clark M. Computer Science Project Work: Principles and Pragmatics, Springer-Verlag (2001) • [5] Hause M.L., Software Development Performance in Remote Student Teams in International Computer Science Collaboration, PhD Thesis, The Open University (2003)

24. REFERENCES • [6] Joy M., Group Projects and the Computer Science Curriculum, Innovations in Education and Teaching International Vol. 42 No. 1 pp 15-25 (2005) • [7] Kerr G., Research on distance collaboration, Real World Systems (August 2004) • [8] Majchrzak A., Malhotra A., Stamps J. and Lipnack J., Can Absence Make a Team Grow Stronger? Harvard Business Review, May 2004 pp131-137 • [9] Nicholl P. N. and Alexander S., A study into managing group work when dealing with large student numbers, Proceedings of 5th Annual LTSN-ICS Conference on the Teaching of Computing (2004) • [10] Powell A., Piccoli G., and Ives B., Virtual Teams: A Review of Current Literature and Directions for Virtual Research, The DATA BASE for Advances in Information Systems Vol. 35 No.1 pp 6-36 (2004)