The Insider

While doing my “Project Management” course in the uni, I had to do some research on Virtual Project Management for an assignment. We were to research on this concept and imagine that the assignment itself was a proejct and that its with a virtual team. We have discovered lots of interesting facts and issues during the process. I was amazed with the relativity of the topic with my work here at Yahoo! So with all of you engineers/developers, I thought I would share my thoughts and also see what different tools are up there to overcome these issues. I would be doing this as a series as there is so much to discuss in one post.

A few interesting questions we had in the beginning of the project (which was our assignment) was what VPM is and why do we need it. Though the name gives you a hint, there is a whole science of project management behind it. In simple terms, VPM is the project management techniques for managing virtual teams. Now that will definitely raise the next question “What is a Virtual Team?”. A Virtual team is a team of individuals separated geographically. So basically a team that does not meet very often, a team that has to rely on technology to communicate to each other, works together on a project reaching its goals and meeting its deadlines.

Now though that sounds simple, there is a lot to tackle in this concept of Virtual Project Management -The VPM. Issues like communication, availability, trust, co-ordination, time difference etc.. arise. Though latest trends in technology definitely does provide tools and aids to overcome these hurdles, a lot of the process is still human dependant.

In this series, I will be trying to jot out the ideas that I have noticed and studied in my observation and research. So keep an eye out for more in here.

Upcoming: VPM - An Intro, Its pros and cons
- The Insider