Project management in the most volatile year of COVID-19

LA TROBE BUSINESS SCHOOL
2022-MGT5PMT(S2) - PROJECT MANAGEMENT
ASSESSMENT 2: V IRTUAL TEAMS IN
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Lecturer: DR. FATIMA SHAHMEHR
Student name: KIEU OANH VO
Student ID: 21179931
Melbourne, Victoria

2022
2020 can be seen as the most volatile year in history due to the outbreak of COVID-
19. The economic landscape, as a result, has changed dramatically, and project
management is no exception. Typically, the rise of virtual teams in project
management is one of the most visible changes and predicted to dominate in the
following years. Also, advanced technologies and virtual communication platforms
play indispensable roles in accelerating the process of an organization’s transition into
remote working (Mehtab et al., 2017). Even though the prevalence of virtual teams
was already on the climb earlier, the disease has re-defined the role of this concept in
project management. By leveraging the benefits of virtual teams, project managers
can mitigate risks or avoid unexpected situations arising from the COVID-19
pandemic, but not limited to other crises. In addition, it is necessary to keep
maintaining as well as empowering virtual teams as there is a high likelihood that
remote work will continue to evolve and become the new normal even after the crisis.
VIRTUAL TEAMS AND CRISIS MANAGEMENT
Crises come in all shapes and sizes, as a project manager, there is nothing terrible than
being informed that the project has missed deadlines, costs are overrun, and resources
are not available. In the context of the COVID-19 unprecedented crisis, for example,
it forced many organizations to establish virtual project teams, which has been proved
to mitigate the risks related to scheduling, budgeting, resourcing and thereby
increasing the productivity of the entire project. In other words, project teams, without
doubt, have to plan and manage schedules, budgets, and resources appropriately in
order to preserve the project continuity during crisis situations.
During the project life cycle, there are four notable advantages of virtual teams
contributing to crisis management, which consist of cost saving, global talent pool,
flexibility, and productivity enhancement.
First of all, cost-effectiveness is one of the greatest benefits of virtual teams since it
enables the organization to reduce or better, eliminate a certain amount of fixed costs
like office space, equipment, and utilities. Expenses directly attributable to the work

on the project such as team traveling, accommodation, or other administrative costs,
to some extent, are no longer incurred by the company in the remote work culture
(Zuofa et al., 2021). In terms of cost management function, the implementation of
virtual teams helps project teams to effectively control the cost and minimize it where
possible. Since no one knows when the crisis will happen and how long it will last, it
is better to save money in case of budgets overrun. The total savings can be used to
fund management reserve and contingency reserve for the purpose of covering costs
of unknown events or risks that might affect the project.
The second benefit worth mentioning is talent accessibility, which means
organizations can search for top talent from different parts of the country or even the
world without bringing them together face-to-face. In the beginning, geographically
dispersed teams were formed to enable collaboration among international and local
experts who were not able to travel to work on the designated tasks (Garro-Abarca et
al., 2021). Even so, today’s companies keep on battling for human resources, virtual
teams concept allows them to gather and retain competent individuals for successful
project delivery. It no longer makes sense, for instance, to hire a full-time local
project team member with limited knowledge, and pay him benefits, when companies
can easily now find subject matter experts who are far away to join their particular
project. Furthermore, for large-scale and complex projects, many organizations
strategically select resources which have appropriate skill sets and experience, even
though they only can work in certain phases of the project. Effective project resource
planning by forming a great geographically dispersed team, in turn, help companies
cope with potential project failure risks.
Thirdly, the flexible nature of virtual teams also facilitates businesses to deal with
risks arising from communication and procurement. To be more specific, there might
be difficulties in communication between project team members and customers due to
language or cultural barriers. It leads to misunderstanding of customer requirements,
and failure in project delivery, which consequently delays the overall schedule.
However, with the involvement of a dispersed team, companies can flexibly hire an