Virtual Team Management Tip #2
March 21st, 2008
I’ll probably take a break from virtual team discussion for a few days after this post, but here is another tip that is very necessary if you are running a virtual team. And, in full confession, we are still not very good about it (but fortunately we have such a great team, it has not been too necessary, everyone works on the “it was due yesterday” system 
Running Tight Deadlines
By default with a virtual team - the team members are going to work their own hours - there really is nothing you can do to control that. If you try to place too many measures to assure “time based” work from your team, that’s a horrible culture to put in place.
So the solution is to move over to “project based” - think about it, do you REALLY care what times the project was worked on so long as it was done on time?
Our position on this is that we set-up launch dates and sub-dates within the launch for milestones. As long as those are met, we’re in very good shape.
It’s critical to really watch these deadlines tightly. It’s even more critical to make sure you have multiple milestones in the process of creating a bigger project. Small deadlines are much easier to manage than one large “launch this project on date X” deadline.
Make sure to appoint a “Project Manager” - one person who is responsible for managing the deadlines.
Project and milestone based deadlines: This is the simplest way to manage virtual teams, to make sure everything is getting done in a timely fashion while also allowing the freedoms that everyone gets from working off-location.
Popularity: 23% [?]
Tags: deadlines, management, project-based, Virtual Team
