Managing Global Design Teams

Global design teams (GDTs) are the reality of the 21st century. These teams work across time, space and organizational boundaries towards common goals, providing the best possible results and in the shortest time possible. The results that can be achieved with respect to time, cost and performance of projects by such teams are hard to compete. This paper analyses eight different case studies of such teams, brings out the various issues involved in their functioning and finally provides a set of recommendations that can be considered to ensure the success of virtual teams. A global design team (GDT) is a group of individuals who constantly pursue shared objectives while based at distance work sites. Therefore, they frequently communicate using electronic "virtual" means. GDT have become crucial, yet a significant number of them fail to accomplish their objectives! Why? The answer is that long distances and cultural differences breaks down working relationships, communications, trust, accountability, organization, individual contribution and thus productivity. This research paper analyzes eight individual cases of geographically distributed teams in the high-tech industry and brings out the most common issues that surround such teams. These problems are categorized as technological, organizational or personal. An expert panel attaches a score to the issues and provides a set of recommendations that can improve productivity and minimize failure in virtual teams. The advantages such as cost and tax incentives, maintaining a global presence with extended work hours and leveraging expertise, associated with globally distributed teams in companies have created the need to have such teams. However managing such teams and making sure that they function well enough to meet deliverables is not an easy task. Since the establishment of teams, managers have been struggling with the concept of bringing together a group of people to work towards a common goal and objective. The challenges grow multi-fold when these people are not co-located and don't meet face-to-face. At times, they never meet each other. Such a situation requires a basic level of trust to exist between team members to operate smoothly. Trust and accountability is the cure to the fears and risks attached to meaningful communication and commitment. Trust means confidence in team leadership and vision. When trust prevails, team members are more willing to go through a difficult process, supported through ups and downs, risks and potential losses. Once trust is engaged into a team, it opens the doors to communication. Ineffective communication creates barriers and tasks become more complex. Once lines of communication open with teammates and managers, it helps the team to work together and overcome the barriers. The paper looks in detail at each of the problem areas while analyzing various aspects of global design teams and provides a set of recommendations that can be practiced in order to ensure a successful functioning of globally distributed teams.