Challenges Information Technology Department Is Likely To Face When Adapting Virtual Team Essay Samples

IT Support Virtual Teams

The advancement of informatics and communication has led to the emergence of the new opportunities that organizations are changing to higher rate. One of the opportunities that most of the organization is changing is the use of the virtual teams. These virtual teams are made of highly trained with unique skills and in most cases; they are located far from the central organization offices. Therefore, those employees are required to collaborate and to work as a team to accomplish the organization's goals. As a result, when the team had decided to adopt the use of virtual technology there are challenges that it is expected to face. Some of those challenges are such as the building the trust of using this technology, team identity and overcoming the isolation of group workers of the organization. In addition, establishing the system and maintaining of the virtual system also, contributes to the challenges that the organization may face when using the virtual communication technology (Moser, 1996).
For instance, Building the trust among the virtual users is one of the challenge that the organization is expected to face. Many of the organizations tends to make assumptions that, the employees cannot be trusted since it is unwise to trust the people whom the organization he does not know well. Equally important, the overcoming of the feelings of isolation and detachments that are associated with virtual teamwork is another problem. They are lack of physical interactions between employees, supervisors, and the organization management since they are supposed to be one family working in one geographical location. As a result, the employees feel isolated and loneliness to the point where they feel, that they are not part of the organization working team.
Another challenges the organization is expected to face when adapting the use of virtual is the balancing of technical and interpersonal skills among the virtual team workers. This due to some managers can assume that skills that are need by the virtual team workers are less important than face-to-face groups. As a result, it is challenging when it comes training the workers with technical and interpersonal skills. On the other hand, the organization it may face the problem of maximizing process and minimizing process losses on the virtual teams workers (Rheingold, 1991).Positive productivity of the organization that is using virtual technology to work may not be achieved since it’s hard to manage those employees. Similarly, the assessment and recognition of the virtual performance of the employees is difficult since those employees are from different locations (Gignac, 2005).

The advantages of using virtual teams

Through the application of virtual teamwork, the organization is capable of expanding to other location from the headquarters. This will enable the organization compete globally with other organizations that are in the same industry. Equally important, it is less expensive to use virtual teams than when agency employees move from one location to another to offer to work for the organization. Additionally, it much faster when using virtual teams working in a different place since it saves time wastage of locomotion (Moser, 1996).Nevertheless, using virtual teams it enables the organization to exploit fully market opportunities from a different location since this opportunities may not be the same. Finally, the virtual technology it allows the international employees to work from their homeland nation thus they are a crossed to their families at home.

The disadvantages of using virtual teams by the organization

They are the issue of lack of trust by the organization towards the employees. They are a risk of exposing the organization's information to other similar organization that is operating in the same industry. Equally important, not all location globally has advanced with the use of virtual technology; thus, it is difficult for the organization that depends on this technology to operate in those places. The installation and maintaining the virtual technology systems is expensive since it requires significant capital. On the other hand, it is hard to evaluate the performance of virtual teams. Finally, virtual teams of workers they feel isolated from other working employees of the same organization (Rheingold, 1991).
The information technology national standards have challenged different organization that uses different technology platforms in the same industry to use the one standard technology for the benefits of the users. However, those challenges can be solved by encouraging the most user friendliness technology that can be widely used with many users globally. On the other hand, in one industry platform they exist from different protocols that govern the use of information technology, thus limiting the full use of technology as is expected. These challenges can be solved by accepting the international standards of protocol to be used when delivering technology. Similarly, the organizations are facing the challenges of different strategies of adapting the virtual teams thus make it difficult to close work from various groups. They are need of accepting the use of the standards protocols and procedures that will enable different group from various industries to interact fully (Moser, 1996).

The use of the virtual team with that of traditional teams

The virtual teams make use of advanced technology and communications to compete globally with minimal extenders. However, the traditional side they see the use of technology as a risk to be used in connection since hackers may hack it. On the other hand, both the virtual teams and traditional teams they are applying the use of technology and communications with the aim of improving the productivities of the organization (Gignac, 2005).

References

Gignac, F. (2005). Building successful virtual teams. Boston: Artech House.
Moser, M. (1996). Immersed in technology: Art and virtual environments. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Rheingold, H. (1991). Virtual reality. New York: Summit Books.