Swinburne University: INF70007 Literature Review on Virtual Projects

This literature review examines the management and control of complex and virtual projects, focusing on the approaches, tools, and skills needed for successful leadership and delivery. The review highlights the increasing prevalence of virtual projects and teams in a globalized and technologically advanced environment. It explores the challenges associated with managing geographically dispersed teams, including the need for advanced electronic communication and effective leadership. The review synthesizes findings from various sources, emphasizing the importance of effective communication, technological support, and cultural understanding in overcoming challenges such as poor communication, technological issues, cultural differences, and inadequate leadership styles. Key factors for success include clear communication, transparent rules, appropriate project management styles, and building trust among team members. The review concludes that clear communication and advanced information technology are fundamental for the success of virtual projects, emphasizing the need for a system that connects talents across different locations and time zones to achieve project goals despite geographical and cultural barriers. The study also suggests that situational leadership is highly effective for managing the virtual projects, as this leadership style allows the leaders to take measures as per the demand of the project complexity or challenges.

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Literature Review
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Topic: How can we manage and control complex and virtual projects? What approaches,
tools, skills are needed to successfully lead and deliver projects with virtual complexities.
In the era of globalization and technological advancement, the term virtual project has
become quite common. Virtual projects refer to the team and assignment in which the members
are located in different geographic regions and also dispersed potentially on different dimensions
and work together for accomplishing a particular task within the resource and time constraints.
Thus, virtual projects are run by virtual teams. As stated by Lohle and Terrell (2014), virtual
teams can be defined as group of people working across space, time, and organizational
boundaries where the links are strengthened by the webs of communication technology. These
individuals have a common purpose of work, interdependent performance goals and hold each
other mutually accountable for accomplishing the goals of the project (Kovar et al. 2016). Thus,
collective but remote performances by the members of virtual teams in a virtual project are the
main functioning force of such projects. This literature review will present a discussion based on
literatures about how the complex virtual projects can be managed and controlled and to deliver
complex virtual projects successfully what approaches, skills and tools could be used.
Kovar et al. (2016) also pointed out that as the virtual teams are geographically disbursed
teams (GDT), hence for efficient virtual project management advance electronic communication
technology is required for connecting different work stations. There are some benefits of virtual
project, such as, it enables the multinational companies to establish a remote work environment
for collaboration of diversity of skills and talents irrespective of any locational boundary to bring
growth and the success to the company. In the recent years it has been seen that many large as
well as small companies are adopting the idea of virtual projects and getting talent from different
domestic regions or parts of the world to accomplish the project goals in a more efficient

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manner. However, these virtual projects have the challenges of effective leadership in team
management, that is, leading the team members located in different geographical regions,
delegating the tasks, conducting meetings and supervising the people in the most efficient
manner. The advantages of virtual projects are that these are cost effective, employ diverse
talents without geographical boundaries, these reduces travel time, and enhances creativity and
innovation (Barnwell et al. 2014).
On the other hand, Ghaffari, Sheikhahmadi, and Safakish (2014) highlighted that as there
are many complexities in running the virtual projects, there is a risk of failure of these projects.
Factors like unstable management process, lack of coordination, poor leadership, lack of tools
and resources and cultural barriers attribute to the failure of the virtual projects. Communication
is the most important tool in virtual project management and there should a very concrete plan to
manage the team members dispersed in different locations. Ruppel, Gong and Tworoger (2013)
highlighted that business process outsourcing is a major application of virtual projects. People,
residing in different parts of the world, work on a same project and thus, effective
communication plays a major role in the success of the project. Without effective and
uninterrupted communication, the project will fail, and hence, virtual networks, such as, social
media also plays a major tool for communicating across the team members.
Barnwell et al. (2014) focused on evaluating the effectiveness of the leadership in
managing and controlling the complexities of virtual projects. The authors mentioned that
effective leadership is required to address the cultural barriers and self-directional teams in the
virtual work environment. It has been stated that project variables such as objectives of the
projects, size of the teams, frequency of the team changes and duration of the project are
significant factors in creating the perceptions regarding project difficulties and leadership styles

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must be appropriate to handle these complexities. According to the authors, situational leadership
is highly effective for managing the virtual projects, as this leadership style allows the leaders to
take measures as per the demand of the project complexity or challenges.
Another challenge for the virtual projects is the digital network. As the team members are
located in different locations, advanced technology is required at all times to keep the members
connected. The success of the virtual projects can be hampered due to failure of the connecting
technology (Alin, Iorio and Taylor 2013).
Thus, Verburg, Bosch-Sijtsema and Vartiainen (2013) addressed some critical success
factors for virtual project management. From the study, it has been found that clarity and
transparent rules of communication, style of project management and leadership, nature of goal
setting, competences of the managers in team management, leadership styles and trust on the
team are the most critical factors for the success of the virtual projects. Along with the internal
factors, both the technological and corporate support is also essential for achieving success in the
virtual projects.
Thus, it can be said from the above discussion that, complexity in the virtual projects
arise from the factors like poor communication, technological challenges, cultural differences,
poor leadership and management styles. Hence, to be able to deliver successful projects, the
organizations must focus on these above challenges. Esteves, Granville and Boutaba (2013)
stated that for success of these projects, high quality communication technology tools should be
installed. Such tools and techniques include emails, videoconferencing, groupware, fax, chat,
intranet, telephone communications and communication through social media and social
networking sites. The communication technology should always be upgraded to avoid any type

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of interruption. There should be transparent communication regarding planning and task
delegation and to handle any type of miscommunication and mismanagement of teams.
Technological support is also necessary so that the virtual assistants or the consultants are always
available whenever the team members need them.
Similarly, Lee (2016) highlighted that leadership style should be different in virtual
projects than in the traditional projects. In the traditional work environment, the leaders can
influence the team members through face-to-face interactions while in case of virtual projects,
the leaders can communicate through digital channels and hence, speech content is highly
important. Along with that the leaders must have flexible leadership skills to understand the
cultural boundaries and build trust among the team members located in different regions.
Aarseth, Rolstadås and Andersen (2013) conducted a study on the management of organizational
challenges in the global projects. It has been found that in global projects or virtual projects
cultural boundaries often play a major role in the success of these projects and hence, the leaders
should have the cultural understanding and management skills to address the cultural issues in
team management. Wise (2016) supported this argument by saying that in the set up of
geographically and culturally dispersed environment, virtual team trust is highly important. In
the virtual work environment, trust factor is more important than in the traditional work set up as
people are connected through technology only working together to achieve a common goal.
Hence, the managers and leaders must take extra measures such as quality assurance programs
and cautions to build trust among the members to utilize their full potential and achieve the
project objectives.
Lilian (2014) addressed the need for highly advanced technology for success of the
virtual projects. As the base line of these projects is to connect talents and resources from

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different parts of the world, the connective technology must be advanced. Inadequate planning
and poor technology can result in the failure of these projects. Thus, it can be said that effective
virtual project management is necessary to address challenges like communication, technology
and leadership and trust building among the geographically dispersed team members to deliver
successful virtual projects.
Thus, it can be concluded that clear communication and advanced information
technology are the fundamentals of the success of the virtual projects. It is essential to establish a
system which could connect the talents located in different parts and timezones of the world to
achieve the goals of a project. There are challenges due to the geographical and cultural barriers
in these virtual projects, but with an effective technology and communication system, the
challenges could be overcome to deliver successful virtual project.

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References
Aarseth, W., Rolstadås, A. and Andersen, B., 2013. Managing organizational challenges in
global projects. International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, 7(1), pp.103-132.
Alin, P., Iorio, J. and Taylor, J.E., 2013. Digital boundary objects as negotiation facilitators:
spanning boundaries in virtual engineering project networks. Project Management
Journal, 44(3), pp.48-63.
Barnwell, D., Nedrick, S., Rudolph, E., Sesay, M. and Wellen, W., 2014. Leadership of
international and virtual project teams. International Journal of Global Business, 7(2).
Esteves, R.P., Granville, L.Z. and Boutaba, R., 2013. On the management of virtual
networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 51(7), pp.80-88.
Ghaffari, M., Sheikhahmadi, F. and Safakish, G., 2014. Modeling and risk analysis of virtual
project team through project life cycle with fuzzy approach. Computers & Industrial
Engineering, 72, pp.98-105.
Kovar, J., Mouralova, K., Ksica, F., Kroupa, J., Andrs, O. and Hadas, Z., 2016, December.
Virtual reality in context of Industry 4.0 proposed projects at Brno University of Technology.
In 2016 17th International Conference on Mechatronics-Mechatronika (ME) (pp. 1-7). IEEE.
Lee, M.R., 2016. Leading virtual project teams: Adapting leadership theories and
communications techniques to 21st century organizations. Auerbach Publications.
Lilian, S.C., 2014. Virtual teams: Opportunities and challenges for e-leaders. Procedia-Social
and Behavioral Sciences, 110, pp.1251-1261.

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Lohle, M.F. and Terrell, S.R., 2014. Real projects, virtual worlds: Coworkers, their avatars, and
the trust conundrum. The Qualitative Report, 19(8), pp.1-35.
Ruppel, C.P., Gong, B. and Tworoger, L.C., 2013. Using communication choices as a boundary-
management strategy: How choices of communication media affect the work–life balance of
teleworkers in a global virtual team. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 27(4),
pp.436-471.
Verburg, R.M., Bosch-Sijtsema, P. and Vartiainen, M., 2013. Getting it done: Critical success
factors for project managers in virtual work settings. International journal of project
management, 31(1), pp.68-79.
Wise, T.P., 2016. Trust in virtual teams: organization, strategies and assurance for successful
projects. Routledge.