Distributed Teams

For globally distributed teams charged with innovation, member contributions to the team are crucial for effective performance. Prior research, however, suggests that members of globally distributed teams often feel isolated and excluded from their team's activities and decisions. How can leaders of such teams foster member inclusion in team decisions? Drawing on leader-member exchange (LMX) theory, we propose that for distributed teams, LMX and communication frequency jointly shape member influence on team decisions. Findings from a test of our hypotheses using data from 40 globally distributed teams suggest that LMX can enhance member influence on team decisions when it is sustained through frequent leader-member communication. This joint effect is strengthened as team dispersion increases. At the team level, member influence on team decisions has a positive effect on team innovation.

Globalization has altered the nature of competition, IT infrastructure flexibility is the essential of today's global competition and Web is the core means of such competition; the Web which is now transformed from a rigid, passive, and reactive circumstance, to a flexible, customized, interactive and people-centric environment. On the other hand, to compete successfully and effectively on a global scale firms need to get the most from many project teams which are distributed across the globe. These distributed teams need to employ IT infrastructure flexibility and exploit collaborative Web 2.0 tools. Based on the literature and the survey which were conducted by the authors, this paper assesses flexibility features in Web 2.0 tools; proposes an interrelated scheme for IT infrastructure and Web 2.0 flexibility, addresses current state of Web 2.0 adoption in globally distributed teams and finally discusses how these components leverage IT infrastructure in distributed teams towards productivity.

Increasingly, software projects are becoming geographically distributed, with limited face-toface interaction between participants. These projects face particular challenges that need careful managerial attention. This PhD study reports on how we can understand and support the management of distributed software projects, based on a literature study and a case study. The main emphasis of the literature study was on how to support the management of distributed software projects, but also contributed to an understanding of these projects. The main emphasis of the case study was on how to understand the management of distributed software projects, but also contributed to supporting the management of these projects.
The literature study integrates what we know about risks and risk-resolution techniques, into a framework for managing risks in distributed contexts. This framework was developed iteratively, using evaluations by practitioners. Subsequently, the framework served as the foundation for the design of a risk management process, compliant with Capability Maturity Model Integration’s (CMMI) generic approach to risk management (2006).
The case study investigates the managerial challenges of control and coordination in a successful, distributed software project between a Russian and a Danish company. The case study’s control aspects were investigated, drawing on Kirsch’s (2004) elements of control framework, to analyze how control is enacted in the project. This analysis showed that informal measurement and evaluation controls were used even though the team was short-lived and rarely met face-to-face; in addition, informal roles and relationships, such as clanlike control, were also used. The investigation suggests that management in successful distributed software projects can be highly reliant on both formal and informal controls and in both a project context and mediated communications. The case study’s coordination aspects were investigated, drawing on the collective mind concept, developed by Weick and Roberts (1993), to analyze the patterns of mediated interactions in multimodal communication. This analysis showed that multimodal communication can facilitate collective minding in distributed software projects and can positively impact performance. In providing an approach for investigating the impact of multimodal communication practices on virtual team performance, we can further understand and support coordination in distributed software projects.

Loyal and steady customer base alone can keep the organizations successful in the current turbulent business environment. In the current era of software engineering, the success of a business process is measured in terms of 'customer satisfaction' rather than any other criteria like meeting deadlines for delivery, optimization of data, architecture etc. Day by day, customers are turning out to be more demanding, as their expectations from the software are growing. In order to achieve customer satisfaction in a meaningful way, software engineers are looking for more effective development models. "Agile" is one such model, that fits the bill and therefore industry is looking at with interest .Is agile better than traditional waterfall model will agile work effectively with distributed teams which is most common in the current software engineering Phenomenon. This paper highlights a few challenges with Agile->scrum and gives an insight to the user whether the agile is THE SILVER BULLET .

Geographically distributed work has become a popular way to work. Past CSCW research has shown that remote workers rely on innovative communication platforms but still face challenges being remote. Research has also provided organizational and managerial strategies to bridge the distance gap. Our study in contrast investigates how individuals develop strategies to cope with the daily challenges of working remotely and alone, and what managers can do to help them. We interviewed seventeen individuals involved in remote work about their experiences, identifying unique challenges and their workarounds. Our interview results suggest that, although people may work alone, the process of conducting distributed work is actually very social. Individual remote workers establish a unique kind of work rhythm, visibility management for evaluation, social support infrastructure, and personal connection as a part of their coping strategies to balance their professional and personal lives.

This paper discusses a theoretical framework designed to elucidate the many issues surrounding distributed team performance, emphasizing how work characteristics associated with such teams may alter both the processes and the products emerging from distributed interaction. It is suggested that distributed team performance can best be understood through conceptualization of a coordination space within which distributed interaction occurs over time and distance. The goal is to take a socio-technical approach to distributed team research so that one can explicate both the cognitive consequences of a lack of co-location as well as the social consequences affecting interaction and team development when work is technology-mediated. The overall objective is to present a framework of 'distributed coordination' such that the principles most appropriate for distributed team performance can be developed.

In recent years, we have witnessed an increasing trend towards the conduct of Information Systems Development (ISD) projects in distributed environments, whereby ISD team members are geographically, spatially and organizationally dispersed. This has been driven by the desire of organizations to expand their pool of development resources and to gain access to diverse sources of expertise, irrespective of location or organizational affiliation. While these benefits are impressive, the conduct of distributed ISD projects is far from a routine undertaking. This is reflected more broadly in the high rate of ISD project failure recorded across different industry sectors and organizational settings over the past twenty years.
In particular, the effectiveness of distributed ISD teams is often inhibited by deep seated social and task-related differences between team members. For instance, distributed ISD project team members typically come from diverse backgrounds which can create social challenges around the alignment of structures, identities, and cultures, as well as task-based challenges related to the delivery of project outcomes. In light of these challenges, literature suggests that cohesion is a key determinant of team performance. However, a competing set of literature asserts that conflict is essential for exploiting diverse knowledge. These contrasting bodies of literature highlight an opportunity to explore the factors which affect the tension between both cohesion and conflict in distributed ISD projects and the impact these have on team performance.
The dissertation therefore seeks to explore how cohesion and conflict co-exist and co-evolve through distributed ISD project team interactions, and how this impacts team performance. The dissertation presents a within-case and cross-case analysis of three distributed ISD projects. Each in-depth case study is characterised by inherent aspects of complexity or ‘wickedness’ which created unique challenges around the need for both cohesion and conflict. For instance, the distributed ISD projects were undertaken in emergent areas (i.e. connected health), and the team members in each case had not worked together before.
In order to explore this emerging research area, theory building is undertaken by the researcher to describe and explain the factors which affect cohesion and conflict in distributed ISD project team interactions. The theoretical framework co-evolved through empirical insights from the in-depth case studies as well as logical propositions from seminal literature. Discussions of case study findings are structured according to the concepts developed in the theoretical framework, as well as their underlying relationships. These emergent theoretical insights are also used to guide discussions around both team performance and distributed ISD project team leadership later in the dissertation.
The dissertation presents a number of unique contributions. Firstly, the dissertation develops a novel theoretical framework for describing and explaining how the interplay between different factors shape team interactions in distributed ISD projects. This contribution can help deepen scholars’ understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of team interactions in distributed ISD projects. Secondly, the dissertation contributes insights into how shared understanding and shared commitment among the team can be affected by these factors. In particular, findings presented from the in-depth case studies suggest that shared understanding and shared commitment may evolve in ways which are often unexpected. Thirdly, novel contributions are made by considering the relationship between cohesion, conflict and team performance. For instance, findings from the cross-case analysis suggests that cohesion and conflict are both needed to maximise team performance in distributed ISD projects. In particular, findings suggest that cohesion and conflict are appropriate for realising different perspectives of ISD project team performance. Lastly, the dissertation contributes insights into how team leaders can respond to social and task-based factors in distributed ISD projects. The dissertation puts forward a new style of team leadership called ‘agitation’. This theoretical contribution expands on existing literature by considering how team leaders embed constructive conflict into team member interactions in order to challenge social and task-related differences. Finally, the dissertation puts forward the concept of ‘leadership intelligence’ to contribute insights into how leaders can develop the sensitivity to know when to promote and suppress different leadership styles over the course of a project, and indeed even during an individual interaction.
The structure of the dissertation is as follows: Chapter 1 provides a high-level introduction to the dissertation and sets out the structure of the remaining chapters as well as how they relate to each other. Chapter 2 presents a review of existing literature across the key areas of study and identifies areas which the dissertation will aim to investigate. Chapter 3 then outlines the first stage of theoretical development undertaken by the researcher which uses logical propositions from literature to investigate the relationship between concepts. Meanwhile, Chapter 4 presents an overview of the paradigm choice, research method, research strategy, and research process. Chapters 5-8 then investigate each research question in turn based on in-depth case study findings from three distributed ISD projects. Each case study is used to support theory building through empirical insights from a within-case analysis. Chapter 9 then provides a cross-case analysis of the research questions drawing on further empirical insights from across the three in-depth case studies. Chapter 10 draws the dissertation to a close with a conclusion.

Loyal and steady customer base alone can keep the organizations successful in the current turbulent business environment. In the current era of software engineering, the success of a business process is measured in terms of 'customer satisfaction' rather than any other criteria like meeting deadlines for delivery, optimization of data, architecture etc. Day by day, customers are turning out to be more demanding, as their expectations from the software are growing. In order to achieve customer satisfaction in a meaningful way, software engineers are looking for more effective development models. "Agile" is one such model, that fits the bill and therefore industry is looking at with interest .Is agile better than traditional waterfall model will agile work effectively with distributed teams which is most common in the current software engineering Phenomenon. This paper highlights a few challenges with Agile->scrum and gives an insight to the user whether the agile is THE SILVER BULLET .

This article makes recommendations to help team leaders effectively use ICT channels to develop and improve trust within their distributed virtual teams which will allow achieving a more effective team collaboration. Based on thorough review of the literature and content analysis, we have identified 29 factors for trust-building in this environment based on Cognitive Trust and seven factors based on Affective Trust. Team leaders will be able to use these main factors to develop trust among their team members, according the team's type (short-term or long-term team). They will also know how to do so across diverse technology and communication channels. In addition, by examining the differentiation between cognitive and affective trust, they will be able to understand which ICT factors are essential for task-oriented purposes, and which are essential for social

Loyal and steady customer base alone can keep the organizations successful in the current turbulent business environment. In the current era of software engineering, the success of a business process is measured in terms of 'customer satisfaction' rather than any other criteria like meeting deadlines for delivery, optimization of data, architecture etc. Day by day, customers are turning out to be more demanding, as their expectations from the software are growing. In order to achieve customer satisfaction in a meaningful way, software engineers are looking for more effective development models. "Agile" is one such model, that fits the bill and therefore industry is looking at with interest .Is agile better than traditional waterfall model will agile work effectively with distributed teams which is most common in the current software engineering Phenomenon. This paper highlights a few challenges with Agile->scrum and gives an insight to the user whether the agile is THE SILVER BULLET .

Continuous software process improvement (SPI) practices have been extensively prescribed to improve performance of software projects. However, SPI implementation mechanisms have received little scholarly attention, especially in the context of distributed software product development. We took an action research approach to study the SPI journey of a large multinational enterprise that adopted a distributed product development strategy. We describe the interventions and action research cycles enacted over a period of five years in collaboration with the firm, which resulted in a custom SPI framework that catered to both the social and technical needs of the firm's distributed teams. Institutionalizing the process maturity framework got stalled initially because the SPI initiatives were perceived by product line managers as a mechanism for exercising wider controls by the firm's top management. The implementation mechanism was subsequently altered to co-opt product line managers, which contributed to a wider adoption of the SPI framework. Insights that emerge from our analysis of the firm's SPI journey pertain to the integration of the technical and social views of software development, preserving process diversity through the use of a multi-tiered, non-blueprint approach to SPI, the linkage between key process areas and project control modes, and the role of SPI in aiding organizational learning.

This study investigated virtual teams playing World of Warcraft to better understand how traditional leadership theories applied to virtual worlds and to identify the most valuable leadership traits. Raid members completed surveys that assessed their leadership capability under the Competing Values Framework. In keeping with previous scholarship, the findings indicate that successful virtual teams value roles from task-based leadership and a factor analysis revealed that the Behavioral Complexity Leadership theory operates differently in virtual environments.

In this paper, we propose and study an L 2-norm based test for high-dimensional two-way MANOVA where there are fewer observations than the dimension. The test statistic is constructed by removing the inverse sample covariance matrix in the Wald-type statistic for the general linear hypothesis. We propose to approximate the null distribution of our test statistic by using the well-known Welch-Satterthwaite chi-squared approximation and discuss the relationship between chi-squared approximation and the commonly-used normal approximation. The L 2-norm based test is also shown to admit several invariant properties under certain transformations. The asymptotic and approximate powers of the proposed test are investigated. Simulation studies and real data applications show that the proposed test performs well for high-dimensional data. Keywords high-dimensional data, L 2-norm, chi-squared-type mixtures, Welch-Satterthwaite chi-squared approximation, two-way MANOVA, test of linear hypotheses MSC(2010) 62H15, 62F05

Distributed team is a group of people collaborating together virtually from different locations, different time zones and are culturally diverse from each other. Such team have the characteristics of both virtual team and culturally diverse team and is termed as Geographically Distributed Team (GDT). Members of geographically distributed team (GDT) experiences different forms of distances while working together as team both in terms of objective distance based on physical location and subjective distance based on perception. Since the members are located in different continents and working at different time zones they heavily rely on computer mediated communication tools to collaborate.Being distant from each other members experiences a unique set of challenges compared to traditional collocated team which hinders collaboration. The most commonly highlighted issues are related to absence of social ties, distorted flow of information, misunderstanding, misperception and miscommunication. The inability to observe each other work and lack of spontaneous communication due to physical distance builds in perceptual distances among members. The cultural differences among the members being from different nationality, values, beliefs, work style and languages adds to the complexity of working together as a team. Several research studies have looked into both positive and negative effect of distances on team effectiveness. This paper examines the various forms of distances experienced by individuals working in a distributed teams, how it has been measured and the challenges posed by it in GDT.

Information Systems Development (ISD) practice is an inherently challenging undertaking, as exemplified by the high rate of ISD project failures. The scale of the challenge is often heightened in distributed environments where ISD practitioners can face considerable complexity, uncertainty, and contention. The concept of 'wickedness' epitomizes such challenges. However, ISD literature has yet to fully explore the nuances of wickedness found in ISD practices within distributed environments. To address this gap, we use a theoretical framework to analyze case study findings from an interdisciplinary connected health project. In particular, we break open the social aspects of wickedness and explore their impact on shared understanding and shared commitment in ISD projects. The paper highlights the implications that these nuances have for group decision-making in distributed ISD project teams.

The developers' physical dispersion in Distributed Software Development (DSD) imposes challenges related to awareness support during collaboration in such scenario. In this paper, we present a systematic literature review and mapping that gathered, analyzed, and classified studies that improve awareness support in DSD, providing an overview of the area. Our initial search returned 1967 papers, of which 91 were identified as reporting some awareness support to DSD. These papers were then analyzed, and classified according to the 3 C collaboration model and to the Gutwin et al. Awareness Framework. Our findings suggest that awareness in DSD is gaining increasingly attention, 71 out of 91 papers were published from 2006 to 2010. Most part of the papers presented tools with some awareness support. The classification showed that the coordination is by far the most supported dimension of the 3C model, while communication is the less explored. It also showed that workspace awareness elements play a central role on DSD collaboration.

This study employed an experimental simulation to examine how well individuals and an entire distributed team could perform tasks when some members changed locations. Meanwhile, on a theoretical level it probed into the mechanism of how personnel rotation affected performance. We found that the impacts of personnel movements were asymmetric within a distributed team. Individuals shifting from a collocated office to a computer-mediated communication (CMC) site and those remaining at CMC sites performed worse after the rotation treatment. In contrast, people moving from a CMC site to a collocated site and those remaining in the collocated office did better after the rotation. Due to the cancel-out effect of the asymmetric impacts, the performance of an overall team seemed to be stable throughout personnel movements. The findings of this paper help unify the inconsistent literature and optimize the personnel rotation strategies.

Previous research has shown that diversity within distributed collaborative teams can lead to innovation, but trust must exist for the open expression of innovative ideas and establishment of idea credibility. Initial trust is pivotal for distributed teams where team members have never met face-to-face and have only a very limited time to accomplish a task. Our goal is to determine if knowing specific information about other team members could enhance initial trust and improve productivity and satisfaction in idea generation and idea evaluation sessions. In an experiment, we showed that cognitive and affective trust could be successfully enhanced by presenting relevant information elements, such as domain expertise and personal hobbies, and could have positive effects on the quality and quantity of ideas in idea generation sessions as well as the satisfaction of the participants with the rating result in idea evaluation sessions. However, participants receiving personal information often misconstrue this as professional competency. We also describe gender differences observed in the idea generation sessions and discuss how to better design future systems for supporting idea generation and idea evaluation activities.

This study employed an experimental simulation to examine how well individuals and an entire distributed team could perform tasks when some members changed locations. Meanwhile, on a theoretical level it probed into the mechanism of how personnel rotation affected performance. We found that the impacts of personnel movements were asymmetric within a distributed team. Individuals shifting from a collocated office to a computer mediated communication (CMC) site and those remaining at CMC sites performed worse after the rotation treatment. In contrast, people moving from a CMC site to a collocated site and those remaining in the collocated office did better after the rotation. Due to the cancel-out effect of the asymmetric impacts, the performance of an overall team seemed to be stable throughout personnel movements. The findings of this paper help unify the inconsistent literature and optimize the personnel rotation strategies.

The aim of the article is to study and systematize the trends in the transformation of employment and work motivation in the information economy. As a result of the study, the main trends in the transformation of employment in the information economy are identified. The interrelation between the transformation of employment and work motivation is substantiated. A comparative analysis of the main elements of the motivational model in the traditional and information economy is carried out. A new form of interaction between remote digital workers in distributed teams is explored. A new element of the digital labor market – artificial intelligence – is characterized and its role and place in it is defined. Attention is focused on changing the role of artificial intelligence from the labor market object to its subject. There proposed the author’s definition of the concept «employment in the information economy», which is based on the change in the essential characteristics of employment under the influence of the development of digital technologies. The interrelation between the transformation of employment and work motivation is substantiated. A comparative analysis of the main elements of the motivational model in the traditional and information economy is carried out. A new form of interaction between remote digital workers in distributed teams is explored.

This study was conducted to determine whether monitoring moderated the impact of trust on the project performance of 57 virtual teams. Two sources of monitoring were examined: internal monitoring done by team members and external monitoring done by someone outside of the team. Two types of trust were also examined: affective-based trust, or trust based on emotion; and cognitive trust, or trust based on competency. Results indicate that when internal monitoring was high, affective trust was associated with increases in performance. However, affective trust was associated with decreases in performance when external monitoring was high. Both types of monitoring reduced the strong positive relationship between cognitive trust and the performance of virtual teams. Results of this study provide new insights about monitoring and trust in virtual teams and inform both theory and design.

This study employed an experimental simulation to examine how well individuals and an entire distributed team could perform tasks when some members changed locations. Meanwhile, on a theoretical level it probed into the mechanism of how personnel rotation affected performance. We found that the impacts of personnel movements were asymmetric within a distributed team. Individuals shifting from a collocated office to a computer mediated communication (CMC) site and those remaining at CMC sites performed worse after the rotation treatment. In contrast, people moving from a CMC site to a collocated site and those remaining in the collocated office did better after the rotation. Due to the cancel-out effect of the asymmetric impacts, the performance of an overall team seemed to be stable throughout personnel movements. The findings of this paper help unify the inconsistent literature and optimize the personnel rotation strategies.