Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most From Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools [Book review; Brown, M.K. et al.; 2007]

This book bridges two fields - the management of teams and the use of collaborative software tools to support work in the virtual team environment. It is divided into two parts: the first addressing the managing of virtual teams and the second an evaluation of software tools to support the virtual teams. Chapter 1 discusses team dynamics in a virtual team. Chapter 2 concerns the establishment of a virtual team. Chapter 3 discusses the choice of particular collaborative tools. Chapter 4 addresses decisions about communicating with the team, while Chapter 5 addresses the issues of coordinating the team. In Chapter 6, the authors advocate the use of a wiki for authorship of documents, while in Chapter 7, they discuss the conduct of project reviews. Chapter 8 concerns the processes required to manage risk and change, while Chapter 9 wraps up Part 1 by discussing the evaluation of projects. Part 2 describes the general classes of tools available, the variety of features available in tools, and the interaction of those features with different types of of situations presented in virtual team work. The chapters of this part deal with the general approach used by the authors, the issues of installation, customization and security, collaborative software suites, meeting and communication tools, information broadcasting tools, information sharing tools, information gathering tools, "push" technologies, and wikis. The guidance provided in this book will be of considerable assistance to anyone making decisions about appropriate tools to support collaborative virtual teamwork.