Purpose

To develop insight into the issues related to communications effectiveness in a virtual team environment.
To gain experience in communicating an approach to improving the effectiveness of virtual team communications to your subordinates in the AVI simulated environment.
Role and Audience

You are: Jim Jones, the Manager of the AVI Program Office
Your audience is: your project managers
Assignment

(Two-module assignment) You are Jim Jones, the Manager of the AVI Program Office, and you have noticed that an increasing number of projects involve interactions with collaborators outside AVI’s immediate geographical region resulting in a number of ad hoc virtual teams. You have become aware that some communications issues have come up on some of these teams. You want your project managers to be familiar with the challenges to effective communications that occur in virtual teams and to know about the latest thinking on ways to mitigate those challenges in order to maintain effective communications in a virtual team environment. You also want to encourage them by summarizing some of the benefits of virtual teams that may offset the extra effort that will be required of them to maintain effective communications on these teams.

Research and write a 750-1500-word memo to your project managers identifying the communication challenges that exist on virtual (non-co-located) teams and how to mitigate those challenges in their ad hoc virtual teams, Then discuss the benefits they might see in their virtual teams. Note that this memo is primarily about improving communications in existing virtual teams and NOT about the establishment of new virtual teams.
This should go on AVI letterhead, which you are free to create. (Here’s a hint: you’ll need letterhead for almost all of your assignments, so it would be good to create something you like that you can use all semester).
Provide at least one reference each from a) one of your textbooks; b) a lecture or video; and c) an outside source not used in your course materials (magazine, book, and/or website).
A general word of advice about essays – they will be easier to read and grade if you use subheadings and keep each paragraph to one important idea.
Shorter paragraphs get your point across with greater clarity.