What are the greatest obstacles you've encountered when managing global virtual teams?

The most challenging thing in managing globally disbursed virtual teams is Time Zones. To overcome this, we implemented a couple of things:

1) Core Hours: Set a few hours each week when all team members are expected to be online, regardless of their time zone.

2) Rotation: To accommodate all team members, rotate meeting times regularly so that the same people aren’t always waking up early or staying late for meetings.

Alexandria,

The Communication plan is key! I've worked on project teams where the Comm plan was one sentence that referenced email. I've also seen Comm plans several pages long that referenced many elements like methods and tools, frequency and timing, but also other details such as language and cultural considerations. Starting with a detailed communication plan will help with managing a global team.

Alexandra -

Creating shared understanding at the onset and throughout the duration of the project to avoid having to spend all my efforts in course correction.

Kiron

One that I encountered was assuming our distant teammates had all of the same infrastructure as we do at our offices. When all your work instructions are digital, it may be far less convenient in remote locations where everyone is working off printouts.

Performing dry runs of important activities can be very useful in finding the idiosyncrasies of organizations that don't naturally integrate well with other parts of your business.