GB526 Unit 5 Virtual Team Plan Example

Sharing the Unsociable Hour Across Chicago, Dublin, Pune and Manila: A Unit 5 Virtual Team Plan

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

GB526: Global Management and Leadership

Unit 5 Virtual Team Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The insurer, the team and its schedule are composite; the time-zone facts and sources cited are real.

The Team

The team builds one claims platform for a composite Chicago insurer, Lakeshore Mutual. It has [eleven] people: the product owner and two engineers in Chicago, two engineers in Dublin, three engineers in Pune and three quality engineers in Manila. English is the working language, and it is the first language of only four members. Chicago and Manila are thirteen hours apart in the northern summer and fourteen in the winter, because the Philippines and India do not change clocks.

Until now, the team's weekly meeting has been held at 8:00 in Chicago, which is 9:00 at night in Manila and 6:30 in the evening in Pune. The Manila engineers have attended it every week for a year.

Exhibit 1: The Meeting Calendar

The team keeps three kinds of meeting.

The weekly all-team meeting rotates among three anchor slots. In northern summer, the slots are 6:30, 7:30 and 9:00 in Chicago, which fall at 7:30, 8:30 and 10:00 at night in Manila, with Dublin in its working afternoon and Pune in its early evening each time. The 6:30 slot moves the burden to Chicago; the 9:00 slot moves it to Manila; the 7:30 slot splits it. The rotation runs weekly, so no site takes the hardest hour more than one week in three.

Paired working sessions use natural overlaps. Dublin, Pune and Manila share a comfortable window in the Dublin morning, Pune's early afternoon and Manila's late afternoon. Chicago and Dublin share a window in the Chicago morning and Dublin afternoon. Most technical work happens in these sessions rather than in the all-team meeting.

The all-team meeting has a written agenda posted a day ahead, and notes and decisions are written up within four hours for anyone who missed it or wants to read rather than listen.

With four sites, every all-team slot is hard for someone; the plan's choice is to make that someone change each week rather than stay the same people indefinitely.

The Clock-Change Weeks

The United States moves its clocks on the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November, and Ireland on the last Sunday in March and the last Sunday in October. For two or three weeks each spring and autumn, the gap between Chicago and Dublin is an hour different from usual, and India and the Philippines do not change at all. The calendar is published in Coordinated Universal Time with each site's local times listed, and the scheduling lead checks those weeks in advance so that no slot moves into the middle of anyone's night without notice.

Exhibit 2: Decision Rights by Site

Distance makes waiting for a meeting to decide everything slow and unfair to whoever cannot attend. Decisions are therefore assigned:

Chicago, product owner: priorities, release scope and anything affecting the insurer's customers.

Dublin: features for the insurer's European business and data protection requirements.

Pune: the rules engine and its design.

Manila: test strategy, release readiness and the decision to stop a release that fails testing.

Shared decisions, such as architecture changes, go through a written proposal posted to the team channel with a two-working-day comment window that covers every site's workday, after which the owner decides and records the reason.

Neeley (2015) argues that distributed teams work better when members share an understanding of each other's context and when written communication carries much of the load, because it lets non-native speakers read and respond at their own pace. Written proposals with comment windows apply that directly.

Language and Participation

For members working in a second language, fast, unscripted discussion is the hardest form of participation. The plan sets four norms: speakers slow down and avoid idioms; the agenda lists questions in advance; the chair asks each site for its view by name; and anyone may reply in writing after the meeting. Meyer (2014) notes that cultures differ in how directly people disagree in meetings, and that written channels can bring out views that would not be voiced aloud, which suits a team where some members are reluctant to contradict the product owner in a live call.

Exhibit 3: The Monthly Ledger

The scheduling lead keeps a simple ledger each month: for each person, the number of meetings attended before 7:00 or after 8:00 at night in their local time. The ledger is shared at the first all-team meeting of each month.

Target: no person attends more than four such meetings a month, and the totals for each site are within two of each other over a quarter.

Response when the target is missed: the next month's rotation is adjusted toward the site that carried more.

Building Shared Context

In the distributed teams Hinds and Mortensen (2005) studied, there was less conflict where members shared an identity and understood each other's working context, and where spontaneous communication was possible. The plan adds three practices for that reason: a short monthly session in which one site describes its current pressures, such as release deadlines or local holidays; an open chat channel where members can ask quick questions without a meeting; and a visit by at least one member from each site to another site each year.

Risks

Rotating slots can confuse people, so calendar invitations are sent a month ahead with local times. The Chicago members may resent early calls they have not had before; the product owner should explain the reason and take the first early slot. If decision rights are not respected, with Chicago overruling decisions assigned to other sites, the plan will lose credibility quickly, so overrides must be explained in writing.

Review

The plan will be reviewed after three months using the ledger, a short anonymous survey on fairness and participation, and the team's delivery record. If the survey shows that members at one site still feel they carry more than others, the rotation and decision rights should change.

References

Hinds, P. J., & Mortensen, M. (2005). Understanding conflict in geographically distributed teams: The moderating effects of shared identity, shared context, and spontaneous communication. Organization Science, 16(3), 290-307. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1050.0122

Meyer, E. (2014). The culture map: Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business. PublicAffairs.

Neeley, T. (2015). Global teams that work. Harvard Business Review, 93(10), 74-81.