Collective Wisdom from the Experts 131
• Set up a common location for sharing project artifacts among the teams
(documents/reports/templates).Besides enhancing your communication strategy, there are logistics issues that
need to be addressed to promote superior communication among distributed
teams:
• Invest in high-quality speakerphones for all locations. When participating
in conference calls, assurances of stable phone connectivity between dif-
ferent teams will go a long way toward building camaraderie.
• Place the phone in a spacious room equipped with a large table, as you want
to seat people comfortably and perhaps provide food for those participants
meeting at unusual hours. Add whiteboards so notes from phone conversa-
tions can be jotted down quickly for everyone in the room to view.
• Budget funds for a few team members to travel to other team sites, perhaps
during the initiation phase or quality assurance processes.
• Create a project dashboard (use any collaboration tool) for teams to com-
municate their issues. Share these dashboard images among the teams,
whether they use online tools or only have the technology for digital
photo sharing.
• Publish the overall goals and targets of the project at a common location
for everyone to see, even telecommuters.
• Arrange presentations by business sponsors and insist that key team
members from every location participate in these presentations.As virtual and distributed teams become more common, you can increase
your chances of success with innovative communication techniques.