Critical and Comparative Analysis of Challenges Faced by Virtual Project Managers

This report provides a critical and comparative analysis of the challenges faced by project managers while leading virtual teams compared to traditional project teams from a people management perspective. It evaluates the skills and competencies required by project managers of virtual teams and provides suitable recommendations. The report includes relevant case studies and examples to support the analysis.

Critical and comparative
analysis

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................4
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................5
1. A critial-comparative analysis of different challenges faced by virtual project managers......5
2. Evaluation of skills & competencies that a project manager requires in virtual teams with
justified recommendations..........................................................................................................6
3. Conclusive findings of analysis regarding the leadership and management of virtual project
teams with traditional teams........................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................9
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................10
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................13

INTRODUCTION
A projects team is described as a cohesive group of several team members that fall under
a coherent group of integrated group members who have been tasked to work together on a
specific project task. The topic of such a project task can be related or linked with any kind of
genre or subject matter as in it can belong to either management, academia, corporate structures
or any other faculty. One of the integral elements of such project teams is the main project
manager who is tasked with the duty and responsibility of handling and managing various kinds
of assigned projects along with maintaining its members. Then again there are two particular
modes of project teams – traditional and virtual where the former is associated with
physical/offline meetings and the latter is conducted through online modes (Alfehaid and
Mohamed, 2019).
Leadership and people management are the two most vital parts out of many that are
involved in this. The following report will precisely cover all this with the inclusion of various

project team examples or case studies. The report will critically compare and analyze the various
challenges that are faced by the virtual project managers as compared to their traditional
counterparts. From the particular lens of people management that includes the HR team too
among other the report will evaluate the competent skills required by a project manager of virtual
teams along with suitable recommendations, justifications and a sound conclusion (Burrell,
2018).
MAIN BODY
1. A critial-comparative analysis of different challenges faced by virtual project managers
Various organizations do take advantage of present opportunities in utilizing new technologies
for becoming more effectual and efficient. One of the more recent kinds of approaches that are in
use is termed “virtual team.” Such teams consists of members who don't work at a same place
and even at a similar time. They might be widely spread across multiple time zones and might be
situated all over the globe (Taras and et.al., 2019). Such types of teams seem to be made possible
through advances within computer-mediated communicative interactions and software that
permits people to work coherently and collaboratively on several specific projects devoid of
being co-located or maybe working within a same time-period. Evidently the management of
such teams like these presents many and at times differentiating challenges as opposed to the
traditional modes of project teams (Lee, 2021). There are a lot of problematic issues and
challenges that the project manager of a virtual team faces which are as follows:
Virtual teams and its project management challenges
Project managers in certain cases such as the Covid and the post-covid period where all
the business, corporate, academic and management based activities were being processed and
channelized through virtual and online medium were prone to facing several issues in managing
virtual teams (Morrison-Smith and Ruiz, 2020). An example of this can be based on a lot of
network based teams such as the famous brand of H&M (Hennes & Mauritz) who outsources
majority of its production of goods online mainly in Asian or South-East Asian nations, etc.
Some of the general challenges that various virtual parallel teams such as those belonging to the

manufacturing firms like Cray and Platform and their project managers face are:
 There is always the associated risks and threats of resistance among project participants
due to a varying high level of informed cooperation that is required from almost all of the
team members. This specifically include those members who join the virtual teams
through a semi-virtual mode and who belong to the remote areas or regions (Hacker and
et.al., 2019). Generally project managers have to bear a number of issues and handle
them as per the varying needs of such remote participants whose major issue revolves
around unavailability of internet connections.
 Conflict based issues within the internal communication of the team-group also pose a
barrier in the proper channelizing of messages on the project managers' end and the
incomplete comprehension or inability to comprehend from the team members' end in the
case of virtual teams. In sharp contrast to this, the traditional mode is quite likely to
resolve such conflicts due to good amount of proximity (Reyes and et.al., 2021).
 One of the main challenges of this also involves a good amount regarding time, financial
capacity and resource efficiency that also present a considerable amount of constraints at
times in the final analysis or decision-making concerning the project topic (Panteli and
et.al., 2018).
 The project manager of a team also many a times faces the issue of the fear of
victimization among its team members which might arise due to varied reasons ranging
from either the team member feeling neglected or being mistreated all the time (van der
Hoek and et.al., 2021).
 Also, one of the most difficult challenges for the project manager who is leading a virtual
team involves strong resistance from the participating members. This gets very difficult
to manage as it comprises a lot of variances in the team members' demands and also hints
at the inability of the team lead to properly manage (Feitosa and Salas, 2021).
2. Evaluation of skills & competencies that a project manager requires in virtual teams with
justified recommendations
Based on the above depiction of the various challenges mentioned above it ultimately

calls for the need of having in the project managers of virtual teams the skilled competencies that
have been distributed in two specific dimensional zones. The virtual teams' project managers
need to have a lot of skills including 2 core competencies which are as follows:
Leadership management potential
There are a lot of leadership qualities and virtues that can be embedded by the project
leaders or managers with the helpful and timely application of a myriad number of leadership
styles and theories. Specifically in the context of a project managing leader regarding a virtual
team, out of all the leadership styles such as behavioural theory, attribution theory or fact or
evidence based one, the trait theory of leadership fits this particular situation in the best way.
According to this specific theory, some inborn or instilled qualities along with several
characteristics could make a wise person a leader (Steffens and et.al., 2018). Virtuous qualities
include both academic and emotional intelligence factors, communicative aspects,
personality/understanding factors, etc. It is basically a persuasion-based theory which serves as a
yardstick against which leading quality of a person could be assessed. It is one who seems highly
able in providing detailed information possessing understanding level regarding team leaders’
element within the virtual procedure (Kohntopp and McCann, 2019). It could be applied by
persons at all levels associated with the option of utilizing the information from this theory for
identification of position in team.
Conduction of creative learning sessions
The learning chances are vast, regarding the talent portfolio of leaders who possess more
skills and are increasing. Skills like digital marketing, technical adoptions etc. are few essentials
under this concept and context. The human resource segment regarding many projects teams
such as that of the Delloite and HSBC firms can efficiently generate such trainings which mainly
aims to support individuals and teams to develop plus maintain skilled knowledge. This even
leads to the allover growth and development regarding the specific talents, skills and qualities
that can contribute in the improvement concerning team members' performance plus innovative
talents in conjunction with improvising the potential within an individual including their learning
(comprehension) capacities (Swartz and et.al., 2020).
Furthermore this people management skill can also comprise the module of another kind
of talent generation strategies like having exclusive teamwork discussions, development of body

language dimensions through regular trial/team management sessions, brainstorming regarding
enlarging team members' cognitive capacities, etc. This would not only aid in improving project
managers' self-clarity, memory, and extrovert personality rather will even provide the virtual-
team with various required tools/techniques for interpersonal alignment.
Some other recommended skills and talents that needs to be present in the project managers of
virtual teams are as follows:
Innovative leadership
Such a model regarding innovative leadership seems to be based upon innovative
thinking pattern which gives space for unconventional resolution methods. The innovative
managing leaders need to ponder outside the box plus appreciate unpredictability under strategic
conditions. Such a leadership motivates associated virtual team members so that even they could
effectively invent reality-based modes of handling performance issues. Teams within this
leadership are satisfied with assigned roles leading in less turnover (Stretch and Roehrig, 2021).
Contextual evolution
Generally a project manager put his/her efforts in assessing and upgrading related
teamwork practices to generate better workflow. Albeit in actuality the result seems far from
expected because only altering or shifting teamwork processes is not meant to upholster actual
performance. Authentic and major betterment comes when project teams like the Deloitte Group
emphasize on the methodology of changing its team management practices. The lookout for a
quick change with regard to managerial processes upto more focus on experience-based practices
can effectively make the team members and project leaders more able for proliferating their
productivities (Soares and et.al., 2018).
3. Conclusive findings of analysis regarding the leadership and management of virtual project
teams with traditional teams
With the increasing sophistication in the sector of Information-Communication
Technologies (ICT), various organizations seem to be exploring rising virtual platforms for the
purpose of bringing together several diverse talents, skills and expertise, that are available widely
across the world to build internationally spread world-class teams (Theobald and et.al., 2020,
November). In quite a simple manner, a team can be defined as a group of working or thinking

individuals performing together on a desired task/activity to accomplish a common and
established pre-defined goal. In contrast the traditional teams, at times termed as conventional
and co-located or collocated structured teams, comprise of individuals who work within physical
proximity, as opposed to virtual teams which refer to the group of persons/individuals who are
divided in terms of physical distance although they are united through a shared goal (Biglan,
2018).
The above findings of the report seem to provide this aforementioned gist with various
other elements too such as the contrastting differences between the defintions, strfuctures and
challenges that are presented in the virtual team as compared to te traditional teams. This has
been followed by a critical analysis of various distinctive factors that seem to rotate around the
instillment, development and inculcative growth of distinct skills and talents among the project
managers and team leaders of virtual project teams (Leroy and et.al., 201). Also, the
characteristic elements regarding the people management and culture of the role of HR based
talent acquisition and management along with the major necessary inclusion and application of
properly applied leadership theories and themes was also discussed in alignment with the
functioning of the virtual teams (Lukić and Vračar, 2018).
The project manager should examine and assess those arenas regarding his/her team
which represents the optimal flow in its structure. It is the 1st step in creating and developing the
teamwork morale concerning the team sorting process as this shows which regions of work need
a higher workforce strength. Associated human resource professionals also known as people
management culture can be used in different ways for the purpose of achieving team leaders's
objective of offering instant solutions within large-scale organizational virtual teams that come
with both advantages and disadvantages. It could be done with keeping a check from the
managers' end regarding both contented and unhappy team members since their experience gets
counted as the determinant under the procedure of evaluating relative HR team's staffing
capacity requirements.Workforce diversity is also a concern that expands incoming sources of
revenue, creates a good amount of diversified talent, and eliminates gender gaps (Maduka and
et.al., 2018).

CONCLUSION
It can be accurately observed from the above report that it has clearly and distinctively
provided a critical, comparative and comprehensive analysis of the different challenges faced by
project managers while leading virtual teams compared to traditional project teams with regard
to the people management perspective. It has also analytically linked the report or research
findings and has evaluated the skills and competencies which a project manager of a virtual team
requires such as the adaptive forms of elemental leadership theories and has properly described
the necessary skills that need to be present in the project managers of virtual teams. This has
been supported with relevant justifications and suitable recommendations. Finally in conclusion
the report has included an ending note with relavant and relative conclusive findings for the
leadership and management of virtual project teams.
REFERENCES
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CONCLUSION