Project Management in healthcare Discuss the challenges associated with managing

Question

Project Management in healthcare

Discuss the challenges associated with managing a virtual project team.

Which challenge do you believe is the most difficult to overcome, and how would you go about overcoming it if you were a project manager?

Support your answer with an example

Your essay should be 2 pages in length and follow APA formatting and citation.

Your textbook may be used as a reference. Your essay should be 2 pages in length and follow APA formatting and citation.

Your textbook may be used as a reference. The APA format for your text is as follows:

Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2014). Project management: The managerial process. (6th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Explanation / Answer

10 Common Virtual Team Challenges

Virtual teams refer to a group of people who work across space, time, and organizational boundaries with electronic communication being the main form of interaction. Most project teams work virtually in one form or another. This includes working from different time zones, geographical locations, firm-wide boundaries or with other third parties. However, the concept of virtual teams faces various challenges mainly due to lack of face to face interaction. Below is an insight into the virtual team challenges and their management

1. Poor communication

Most virtual teams cite communication as one of their greatest challenges. They lack informal, everyday face to face communication, which often results in loss of information or miscommunication. The team members often go for days without contact which can lead to a feeling of isolation.

It is inherent that poor communication is the main factor hindering innovation, effectiveness and decision making. Faced with the virtual team communication challenges, therefore, team managers should enhance communication to increase everyday interactions. This can be through creating smaller interdependent tasks and developing partnerships which can give virtual teams goals to achieve together.  

2. Lack of social interaction

The second challenges of virtual teams is that virtual working can be draining, as it is hard for team members to create working friendships. Team members do not see how their work and projects fit as a whole, so they often become demotivated and despondent.

Virtual team leaders should, therefore, strive to increase social interactions by engaging members in written communication, such as instant meaning As well, regular communication on the progress of every member helps increase the overall team effort.

3. Lack of trust

Virtual working often creates mistrust among team members, which is often one of the biggest challenges of managing virtual teams. Members rarely work at the same time, cannot see what others are doing and do not get immediate responses. Trust is, therefore, a big problem which can be averted by creating awareness of the contribution and achievements of every team member. Supportive team managers who set clear goals and expectations also help in building trust among team members.

4. Diverse multicultural teams

Virtual teams often constitute people from different ethnic groups, with different cultures. As a result, the team members have conflicting customs, work habits, and values. Overcoming cultural diversity automatically becomes a challenge as everyone follows his or her way of working and leaders face the challenge of finding common grounds to manage team members. To minimize conflicts, the virtual teams should agree on some work ethics and team customs to foster cultural understanding.

5. Loss of morale and team spirit

A significant percentage of virtual team members have trouble keeping their spirits high. Unlike face to face teams that create cohesiveness, virtual teams feel more like some globally dispersed individuals who are working on the same project.

Although faced with challenges with virtual teams, virtual teams can be more cohesive, effective and engaging through shared leadership. The leaders should create a clear direction for the team members, making sure everyone is connected to a common goal and vision.

6. Physical distance

Lack of face to face interaction means cold relations among members, which pose great risks for the competence of the virtual team. While the members experience the inability to ask questions, there are difficulties with delegation. It is therefore advisable that team leaders pay attention to every member, to create a sense of commitment and ownership of the project.

7. Time zone differences

This is an obvious challenge of working in virtual teams, as members reside in different locations. However, relying on collaboration tools to minimize the time overlap between members and reduce the number of virtual meetings is an effective strategy for addressing this challenge.

8. Routine

Just like in any other working environment, working on a daily routine reduces motivation especially in virtual teams. Members feel exhausted for staying on the computer for long hours leading to unmotivated employees. That's one of challenges in virtual teams that you will face.

9. Personal life and work-life imbalance

The concept of virtual teams involves tasks being accomplished from the same physical space, where most team members go about their personal lives. That one of the challenges faced by virtual teams means work will affect team members' personal life, or the other way round. Harmonizing personal life and work life is therefore crucial to the success of any virtual work.

10. Lack of clarity, direction, and priorities

The most difficult part of entrenching a specific goal is maintaining it and keeping everyone focused. Virtual staff consists of professionals living in different time zones, with varying priorities and abilities, making it difficult to keep everyone in the same direction.

The most difficult challenge to overcome:

Lack of face-to-face communication.

Let’s face it. No matter how advanced our technology is, it isn’t enough to compensate the lifelong advantage of facing somebody physically. Remember the emotions you want your colleagues to make sense of? That’s just not possible through Skype. Maybe yes – thanks to smileys and emoticons; but then, our inability to interpret nonverbal cue – which is very essential to understanding – makes it difficult to perform well within the virtual team. Not only does it lead to misinterpretation, it also leaves us feeling isolated most of the time. Try working virtually for a few days without any human contact and it will literally drive you nuts.

The effect of isolation and the lack of social interaction may be more serious than you think. Most members of the team may feel inadequate and demotivated to work at their best, therefore, making them less effective. They may not even see how their contribution fits into the bigger picture so they miss out what it’s like to do teamwork. Friendship at work – which is also a great motivator – is rarely present in virtual teams.

How do you overcome it?

Communication. Whether you are working offline or online, persistent communication never fails. Increase the frequency of your interactions everyday and try to set team goals where the members get to work together. A social interaction calendar may even help. Setting up a meeting just to catch up with everyone’s lives is a plus. In the field of work, it is best to allow your members to share their own ideas. This will help them to be more innovative when it comes to decision making. Everyone should keep each other updated so every team member knows what the others are up to and how their work is contributing to the overall success of the project

Let’s face it. No matter how advanced our technology is, it isn’t enough to compensate the lifelong advantage of facing somebody physically. Remember the emotions you want your colleagues to make sense of? That’s just not possible through Skype. Maybe yes – thanks to smileys and emoticons; but then, our inability to interpret nonverbal cue – which is very essential to understanding – makes it difficult to perform well within the virtual team. Not only does it lead to misinterpretation

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse P
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.