Virtual Project Risk Research In Progress

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Virtual Project Risk Research In Progress

• April Reed
• Linda Knight
• DePaul University
• May 23, 2006

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Outline

• Research Question
• Purpose of Research
• Importance of Research

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The Research Question

• Are there significant differences between
  virtual and traditional software development
  projects critical to successful project
  completion?

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Virtual teams

• "Virtual teams are groups of geographically,
  organizationally and/or time dispersed workers
  brought together by information and
  telecommunication technologies to accomplish one
  or more organizational tasks (Powell et al.,
  2004)

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Purpose of this Research

• Identification of differences useful to
  corporations
• In determining most effective type of team to use
• In decreasing project failure rates
• Boehm suggested focusing on top critical risks of
  a project to improve project success.

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Importance of this Research

• Many drivers creating greater dependence on
  virtual teams
• Offshoring working with global resources
• Outsourcing
• Increased cost of travel
• Fear of travel due to security concerns

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Importance of this Research Project Failure
Statistics

• Project failures not decreasing
• Project failures extremely costly to
  organizations
• CHAOS report statistics on project failure
• 2000 rpt 23 failed, 49 challenged
• 3rd Qtr 2004 rpt 18 failed, 53 challenged
• (Standish Group International, I. (2001).
  Extreme chaos. (2004). Chaos demographics -
  2004 third quarter research report)

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Hypothesis

• There are many similarities in the risk factors
  of virtual versus traditional projects
• Critical risk factors in these two types of
  projects are different

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Research Methodology

• Development of survey instrument
• Pilot Group face-to-face interviews using survey
  instrument to identify risk factors
• Focus Group to verify identified risk factors
• Revision of risk factor list
• Mass distribution of survey using risk factor
  list
• Analysis of results

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Research Progress

• Face-to-face interviews - completed
• Focus Group session - completed
• Focus Group data analysis In Progress

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Preliminary Results

• Some identified risk factors from the
  face-to-face interviews
• Communication
• Management of Remote Resources
• Trust

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Other Results

• Use of Virtual versus traditional teams
• Virtual teaming is more common than expected
• More participants in focus group had worked on a
  virtual project
• There are many many risk factors

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Communication Risk

• Different aspects of communication
• Vehicle technical non-technical tools to
  share project information, i.e. e-mail, web
  conference
• Methods type of information - quick questions
  or messages vs. important project documents, i.e.
  requirements, coding specs, etc.

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Communication Vehicle

• Virtual teams
• technical communications tools may be only method
  to share vital project information documents
• must be accessible by all team members
• tools must be compatible
• Traditional teams
• have choice of technical non-technical tools,
  i.e. face-to-face meetings
• Can mix technical with non-technical for best fit

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Quote on Communication

• It is more difficult to communicate over the
  phone than walking over to the persons desk to
  talk.
• Kirkman and Mathieu believe the resources
  important to virtual team success are software
  tools and accompanying hardware.

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Management of Remote Resources

• Difference in management style
• Comfort level with remote resources
• Working with people you may never see

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Quote on Resource Management

• It takes longer (to do the project) when
  learning how to manage remote resources while
  doing it.

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Trust

• Difficult to tell what remote team members are
  really doing
• Can trust be built without face-to-face
  communication?
• If trust is damaged, can it be rebuilt without
  face-to-face communication?

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Quote on Trust

• I couldnt see if the people were working.

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Conclusion

• Unexpected results
• Some managers had not worked on a traditional
  project in a number of years
• Companies evolved into using virtual teams
  without the accompanying change in processes or
  training

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Conclusion

• Any type of project can have risk
• Do certain risk occur more often or with greater
  intensity on virtual projects?

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Next Steps

• Revision of survey instrument
• Mass distribution of survey to project managers
  and analysts using a purchased mailing list
• Collection and analysis of data

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Questions

• ??????

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References

• Boehm, B. W. (1991). Software risk management
  Principles and practices. IEEE Software(January
  1991), 32-41.
• Jones, R., Oyung, R., Pace, L. (2005). Working
  virtually Challenges of virtual teams Idea
  Group Inc.
• Kirkman, B., Mathieu, J. (2005). The dimensions
  and antecedents of team virtuality. Journal of
  Management, 31(5), 700-718.
• Powell, A., Piccoli, G., Ives, B. (2004).
  Virtual teams A review of current literature and
  directions for future research. The DATA BASE for
  Advances in Information Systems, 35(1), 6-33.
• Standish Group International, I. (2001). Extreme
  chaos.
• Walther, J. B., Bunz, U., Bazarova, N. (2005,
  2005). The rules of virtual groups. Paper
  presented at the Proceedings of the 38th Hawaii
  International Conference on System Sciences 2005,
  Hawaii.