A tale of two teams: Success and failure in virtual team meetings

Marilyn M. Tremaine, Allen Milewski, Richard Egan, Suling Zhang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Interaction between two teams with the same team leader and with similar size and goals moved from weekly face-to-face meetings to virtual meetings because of the temporary displacement of the team leader to a time zone six hours ahead of the rest of the team. One team focused primarily on software development and the second team on developing and testing a research instrument. The Software Team floundered through multiple different meeting arrangements and eventually agreed to disperse until the leader returned to the same time zone. In contrast, the Research Instrument Team kept a single meeting time that was set before it moved to virtual gatherings, and continued to be an active and productive team. This paper explores what factors led to this divergence in team success and concludes that the implicit temporal structures entraining the members of the Software Team coupled with an inability to repair member unhappiness and an unequal dispersion of skill sets among virtual and co-located members led to one team's eventual shutdown.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationUsability and Internationalization
Subtitle of host publicationHCI and Culture - Second International Conference on Usability and Internationalization, UI-HCII 2007. Held as Part of HCI International 2007, Proceedings
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages442-451
Number of pages10
EditionPART 1
ISBN (Print)9783540732860
DOIs
StatePublished - 2007
Event2nd International Conference on Usability and Internationalization, UI-HCII 2007 - Beijing, China
Duration: Jul 22 2007Jul 27 2007

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
NumberPART 1
Volume4559 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Other

Other2nd International Conference on Usability and Internationalization, UI-HCII 2007
Country/TerritoryChina
CityBeijing
Period7/22/077/27/07

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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