The Future of Virtual Teams
I’ve recently become acquainted with Michael Sampson’s blog on “Improving the capability of teams that can’t be together, to work together.”
In a recent post on “The People Part of Enterprise Collaboration and Virtual Teams” he quotes a study commissioned by Novel that surveyed IT executives on their experience and plans for collaboration software. Not surprisingly, 80% of them said it is critical or of high importance that individuals in their companies have the ability to collaborate securely within and beyond organizational boundaries. Here’s what I found more interesting. Less than half said their current solutions are extremely or very effective in enabling collaboration among workers, teams or virtual teams.
I think this is a critical point. Organizations are realizing that secure, controlled interaction among people who work in different physical places is important, but they are just now finding the tools to get the job done. Michael mentions several applications that are part of this technology trend, including eXpresso.
In all, I think I enjoyed Michael’s blog so much, not only because eXpresso is in the business of enabling virtual teams, but because we are a virtual team. We have team members in 7 states and in 4 countries. The eXpresso team is somewhat unusual in a lot of ways, but not this one. As organizations become more distributed and the roles of partners and external contributors become more and more integral to success, understanding and managing the virtual team will be something that everyone must achieve.
Amber, thanks for talking about the virtual team at eXpresso. I am looking forward to learning more about your work and product offering.
M.
Amber, Have you met the team members at a physical gathering?
Hi Martin,
Great question! The members of our team in the US get together quite frequently, but there are quite a few from other parts of the world who I have “met” only virtually. For personal reasons, I hope to meet everyone face to face one day, but our distance has not hindered our ability to work together.
Amber,
Thanks for your reply! Do you have team members in Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and Australia?
Amber: I dont think I am in the right spot, but hopefully you can help me.
How can I prevent a user from using Control-C to copy the entire worksheet — I have cell and workssheet Protection on an Excel worksheet, but this does not remain once I have uploaded?
I dont want to only allow VIEW, I want the user to type in input variables in one part of the worksheet, and then view and print the output.Please commnet back,
Colleen
Hi Colleen, I’ll reply to your questions via email. I think you will find eXpresso’s Regional Sharing capabilities helpful.
Amber