Virtual team dynamics

Virtual team dynamics, or distributed team dynamics, refer to the behaviors and psychology found in a virtual team and is a subtopic of group dynamics and is connected with virtual management. A virtual team differs from a regular team in the sense that interactions between team members occur only via communication technologies while they rarely or never meet in person. Virtual teams have become increasingly popular with the increase of offshoring and working from home in the information age, and they are at the core of practices like globally distributed software engineering (GDSE) and open-source software development projects. The dynamics of a virtual team share several similarities with that of a team meeting face-to-face, but the virtual environment has some differences that affect their development.

Background

Virtual Teams

Main article: Virtual team

A virtual teams is a group of individuals who may be spread across different time zones, cultures, languages, or ethnicities, and are united by a common goal, while they rarely or never meet in person. In the information age, with the rise of globalization, many aspects of traditional organizations are transitioning to distributed teams as there is increasing interest in practices like offshoring, outsourcing, or working from home. Hence the virtual team, as a fundamental part of distributed organizations, is also increasing in popularity. Remote and distributed work was identified as a talent trend in the late 2010's. According to a report by Greenhouse and HRWins, the following statistics emerged in 2019:

• "54% of employers surveyed say they offer employees the ability to work remotely. This includes working from home, co-working spaces, or remote offices on an occasional, part-time or full-time basis."
• "69% of employees surveyed feel working remotely would improve their work and their personal lives."
• "80% of survey respondents agree or strongly agree that they are willing to work remotely."

While various forms of work can be done in a distributed setting, virtual teams are commonly found in globally distributed software engineering (GDSE), which is a growing practice in the 21st Century. Virtual teams and organizations are a core aspect of GDSE because it often involves geographically distributed workers for whom meeting in person may not be feasible. However, geographic distribution is not the only reason to have virtual teams. During the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, working remotely became the mandatory norm for a large fraction of workplaces around the world, including tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and Apple. Some workplaces like Twitter chose to make the transition permanent, allowing employees to work remotely in general, showing that virtual teams can be a viable alternative to onsite teams.

Differences between virtual and onsite teams

The virtual environment mainly introduces some disadvantages compared to the traditional onsite working environment:

• Limited or unclear communication, which increases the chances of miscommunication
• Misunderstandings due to having no nonverbal information in low-bandwidth communication, such as email or text messaging
• Cultural differences between team members that lead to an unstable working environment

On the other hand, distributed working has many benefits which include:

• Providing access to scarce resources and expertise by not being limited by the local area
• Faster and round-the-clock development by taking advantages of different time zones, as with follow-the-sun development
• Lower development cost due to finding employees with lower wages
• Closer geographical distance to customers in different countries
• Enabling mergers and acquisitions involving companies in different regions

If the given disadvantages can be overcome with technology and proper methodologies such as distributed agile software development, the advantages may balance the disadvantages and even enhance the output of software development teams.

Team dynamics

Main article: Group dynamics

Team dynamics refer to the behavioral relationships between members of a group who have connected tasks within a company. Dynamics are affected by roles and responsibilities and have a direct result on productivity. Team dynamics are the unconscious, psychological forces that influence how a team interacts and their resulting performance. They are likened to unseen underwater sea currents, which can carry a boats to directions other than the ones they want to go. Team dynamics are contingent upon the nature of the team’s work, the different personalities of team members, the team's professional and personal relationships with other people around them, and the environment the team works in. Team dynamics are considered good when they improve the overall performance of individual team members or the whole team. They are considered poor when they cause unproductive conflicts, lack of motivation, and hinder the team from reaching its goals.

In order to build a good team dynamics, the following six factors are essential:

• Open communication
• Empowerment of the team
• Clear roles and responsibilities
• Goal clarity
• An effective leader
• A reward and accountability system for both individual team members and the entire team

Team dynamics are important to a virtual team just as they are to onsite teams. The leadership should keep an eye on the current team situation, taking care of those unacceptable behaviors like bullying, groupthink, and free-riding. Team leaders should also encourage positive behaviors like idea sharing, maintaining trust, and making everyone respect each other. A team with good group dynamics always have trust between each other. They will be constructive and productive, and it demonstrates mutual understanding and self-corrective behavior. In comparison, bad group dynamics lead to diverging ideas and working individually.

Team dynamics have an impact on the performance of a team including creativity, productivity, and effectiveness. Since group work is integral to organizations, addressing group dynamics can lead to better work outcomes, customer satisfaction, and improved throughput.

Team building

Main article: Team building

Team building is one of the most widely used methods for improving team dynamics and is considered as one of the "centripetal forces" of GDSE, meaning that it is central to overcoming challenges of virtual teamwork. A common strategy for many organizations is to have a team-building retreat, where team members engage in activities that are usually not part of their daily routine and try to address underlying concerns and build trust.

Among all organizational activities, one study found team-building to have the strongest effect (versus financial measures) for improving organizational performance. A 2008 meta-analysis found that team-development activities, including team building and team training, improve both a team's objective performance and that team's subjective supervisory ratings.

Team building mainly consists of 4 main approaches:

• Setting Goals
• Role clarification
• Problem solving
• Interpersonal-relations

For virtual teams, many traditional team building activities are much more difficult to arrange since they require bringing all the distributed team members together physically. Hence organizations tend to arrange team-building activities as part of large in-person meetings held on a quarterly or annual basis. In addition, organizations might turn to virtual team building methods.

The psychology of team dynamics

There are many ways one can approach the Psychology of Team Dynamics. There are certain psychological models to describe Team Dynamics which emphasize different psychological aspects. It is important to mention that most of the times an amalgam of these models serves with the closest description what is actually happening inside a group. This section describes a few example for these models.

Group dynamics

Main article: Group dynamics

To understand the basics of the psychology of team dynamics first we need to fathom one of its principle concept: Group dynamics. It takes into account typical behaviors and the psychological processes leading to these behaviors regarding two main scenario: inside a social group (intragroup dynamics), between social groups (intergroup dynamics). Studying group dynamics can help us understanding decision-making behavior from the level of an individual towards a group level. It can also help us to analyse the emergence and popularity of new ideas and trends, how the speed of emergence and the popularity affected by from which part the idea came.

Psychoanalysis

Psychoanalysis, developed by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud, can be also a good starting point to properly describe team dynamics. Compared to Group Dynamics the system of psychoanalysis is focused much more on the individual team member namely

the natural defensive behavior of an individual

— Jim Stewart, Pat Rogers, "Working with others", Studying Learning and Development: Context, Practice and Measurement (2017)

then on the team overall. However, from the superposition of these individual psychoanalyzes we can draw very important and informative conclusions about the entire team. Also very important, that the content of a psychoanalysis is a very private information about an individual, therefore it must be handled with utmost discretion.

FIRO/Human elements model

Yet another promising model is FIRO/Human Elements (Schutz) which according to J. Stewart and P. Rogers determines:

the compatibility between people using the behaviours of inclusion, control, openness, and how these behaviours relate to inner feelings of significance, competence, and likeability.

— Jim Stewart, Pat Rogers, "Working with others", Studying Learning and Development: Context, Practice and Measurement (2017)

Tuckman's stages of group development

The Tuckman model propose the following four phases which are essential for a team to grow:

• Forming:
  • The team members meet each other for the first time
  • They start to build relationships
  • Make agreements on the mission, the goals and start working on tasks
  • Team members are more independent and show behavior which they think acceptable by other group members
  • They tend to avoid conflicts at this stage

• Storming:
  • They start to express their opinions, which frequently leads to conflicts.
  • Storming usually starts when the first conflict arises
  • In this phase conflicts usually arise because of different opinions, values or personal working styles
  • Unfortunately in this stage, conflicts are usually not constructive but rather destructive causing anxiety and frustration in team members

• Norming:
  • Reaching this phase as conflicts resolved, the team members become positive regarding the entire team
  • Team members acknowledge each other and there is a high level of cooperation between them
  • Trust grows and instead of competing each other, they ask for each others help

• Performing:
  • Team members are able to work independently and make decisions within their authority without any supervision.
  • Conflicts still happen but they are resolved positively and can be constructive

A team can also revert to previous phases when reacting to changes of the team, goals or the project.

Team roles

The concept of role was developed by sociologists in order to explain how an organization function. It can be defined as a set of expected behaviour patterns attributed to someone occupying a given position in a social unit. Others refer to this as work preferences described as the different ways in which individuals in a team approach tasks.

Nowadays Team Roles usually synonymous with the Belbin Team Inventory or one of it's extensions. Belbin defines team role as a tendency to behave, contribute and interrelate with others in certain distinct ways within a team. Belbin's research identifies nine basic team roles and scores the individuals on how strongly they express behavioural traits from these roles. A person can show strong tendencies towards multiple roles. These roles are the following:

Belbin's Team Roles

Plant	• Creative • Bright and free thinking • Innovator but often has difficulty communicating ideas
Resource Ivestigator	• Gives the team a rush of enthusiasm with pursuing contacts and opportunities • Presents the Plant's ideas in an comprehensible and attractive manner to the customers
Co-ordinator	• Chairperson of the team • Able to see the big picture • Confident,stable and mature • They can recognize abilities in others • Good at delegating tasks to the right person
Shaper	• Task-focused • Enormous energy and a need to achieve • Goal oriented
Monitor Evaluator	• Logical observers, judges • Seeing all options with the greatest clarity and impartialty
Teamworker	• Good listeners and diplomats • Bridge between different roles • They can smooth over conflicts between different roles and help them to understand each other
Implementer	• They take suggestions and work on ideas from their colleges, (e.g. Plants) and make them reality • Efficient and self-disciplined
Completer Finisher	• Perfectionist • Need for accuracy • They're setting their own high standards and work alone rather than encourage others
Specialist	• Passionate to learn more in their field of specialization • Enjoy transferring this knowledge to colleges

TeamBuilder model

The TeamBuilder model is an extension of Belbin's model. Unlike Belbin's model, the TeamBuilder model describes non-judgmental, non-hierarchical, non-threatening roles making no prejudicial assumptions of intelligence and no assumptions about management skills. Whereas Belbin's team roles are distinguishable by status, importance and intelligence the TeamBuilder model identifies five roles equal along these features. These roles are the following:

Roles of TeamBuilder model

Driving Onward	• Seeing the big picture • Makes decision intuitively • Enthusiastic team organizers and team developers • Catalysts of improvement
Planning Ahead	• Clear and logical thinking • Setting specific and measurable targets • Careful planners paying attention also for potential failures • Estimating feasibility
Enabling Action	• Identify essential resources • Persuasive with good negotiation skills • Can influance the team and development in certain directions
Delivering Plans	• Turn plans into reality • Realistic, not influenced unduly by the big picture • Ensure tasks are done immediately • Organasing the flow of work, co-ordinating the team's effort and maintaining the team's moral
Controlling Quality	• Preferring facts over theory • Decision making based on careful analysis • Analyzing team performance and progress, thereby identifying the errors of a team • Evaluate results

Myers–Briggs Type Indicator

Description of each Myers–Briggs personality type and the four dichotomies central to the theory.

The Myers–Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI) is an introspective self-report based on Jung's theory of psychological type indicating differing psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions. MBTI distinguishes four principal psychological dimensions. When completing the indicator the person obtains 4 scores, one for each dimension. These scores will determine where the individual's personality stands between the two extremes of all 4 dimensions.

Four principal psychological dimensions of MBTI

I	Introverted	Direction of Energy	Extroverted	E
S	Sensing	Source of Information	Intuitive	N
T	Thinking	Style of decision making	Feeling	F
J	Judging	Lifestyle	Perceiving	P

In the process of understanding the basic dynamics of a team, we can use MBTI to determine how team members with different personality types interact with the team and contribute to the team's performance. As a team member, awareness of your personality type can be advantageous, as if you know your personality type you also know its weaknesses and strengths. With MBTI you can treat your weaknesses as features of your personality type not as general weaknesses, which can also increase self-esteem, confidence. As now you are aware, you can also address these weaknesses directly. For example, if you have a more judging and introverted persona, you can try to be more extroverted or sometimes more perceiving when you need to make a decision. You can also learn the personality types of other team members, and this way you can approach them and handle possible conflicts with them more effectively.

MBTI personality types can be mapped several ways into team roles in order to understand team dynamics. For this first we need to identify team roles. Using the TeamBuilder model's five distinct role, the correlation between these roles and the personality types results in the following mapping:

Mapping of team roles to personalty types

I	Introverted	Enabling Action
E	Extroverted
S	Sensing	Controlling. Quality	Delivering Plans
N	Intuitive	Driving Onward
T	Thinking	Planning Ahead	Driving Onward
F	Feeling	Enabling Action
J	Judging	Planning Ahead
P	Perceiving

Management Team Roles Indicator.(MTR-i)

MTR-i is a team role model which is compatible with and complementary to MBTI. It also uses Jung's theory of psychological type in order to define a range of team roles. The team role of an individual is determined by the main products he or she can contribute to the team. Everyone can and does perform each team role to some extent. However, there are one or two team roles that is typical to a team member. The team roles and the corresponding products are the following:

MTR-i team roles and their corresponding products

Curator	Clarity of information and ideas
Sculptor	Bringing things to fruition, through action
Innovator	Imagination of new ideas or perspectives
Explorer	Exploration of potential in people/situations
Scientist	Forming explanation of how things work
Conductor	Introducing organisation into the way things are done
Crusader	Giving importance of ideas/beliefs/information
Coach	Building harmony/agreement in the team

As MBTI and MTR-i compatible with each other we can map MBTI's personality types to MTR-i's team roles.

Mapping of MBTI personality types to MTR-i team roles

ISTJ	ISFJ	INFJ	INTJ
Curator		Innovator
ISTP	ISFP	INFP	INTP
Scientist	Crusader		Scientist
ESTP	ESFP	ENFP	ENTP
Sculptor		Explorer
ESTJ	ESFJ	ENFJ	ENTJ
Conductor	Coach		Conductor

Psychology of virtual teams

When looking at MBTI in the context of virtual teams, the team roles and personality types does not change. However they extend with new attributes, with things they prefer or trying to avoid. According to a research, individuals with I, S, F, and P preferences responded most often that they work virtually 10% of the time or less. Put another way, those with ISFP preferences are most likely, perhaps surprisingly, to report working in a traditional fashion. The figure also shows that those with preferences for E, S, F, and J are most likely to report spending 91–100% of their time working virtually.

	Personality Type	Preferred type of work	MBTI® preference tips for remote and virtual working suggested by The Myers-Briggs Company
I	Introverted	traditional fashion	• You should create a work environment that is quiet and free from distractions. • Don't get to absorbed with your work, go for a walk, or just leave the computer for a while. • As and introverted person you should also focus on to be a little extroverted. Make time to communicate with your colleagues, especially those with Extraversion preferences.
E	Extroverted	virtual work	• Extroverts need to connect and communicate frequently with others. A possibility for this in a distributed team is to schedule regular informal remote meetings and get-togethers. • Extroverts can experience introvert behavior as a lack of interest participating in the community. That is most of the time not true, therefore extroverts should pay particular attention to include and connect with Introverted colleagues too. • A stimulating work environment (e.g. background music) van be beneficial for extroverts. • When they need to do focused work, they should make schedule an exclude any distractions.
S	Sensing	traditional fashion	• Against their nature, they should sometimes try considering the big picture. • Sensing people can focus too much on getting the little sometimes unimportant details of their work right, creating a physical workspace where every detail is perfect. • They should only assign a predetermined amount of time for researching or developing a project. When this time is over they should stop and move on to the next topic.
N	Intuitive	virtual work	• Important to find the available channels to communicate their ideas. • Working remotely, it is easy for ideas to go into a ‘black hole’. Follow up, seek feedback, and check there has been action. • There may be a temptation to over-complicate things, piling one idea upon another. Getting together (virtually) with someone with a Sensing preference may help move things forward. • They should make full use of online tools for collaboration, brainstorming, and idea generation with others.
T	Thinking	virtual work	• Without the social cues of face-to-face contact, the online communication of Thinking individuals can be very direct, task-focused, and impersonal. So, don’t forget greetings in emails – allow time for social niceties in video or voice conversations. • Misunderstandings can easily occur in remote communication, for many reasons. Don’t immediately assume that the other person is incompetent. • State things clearly and persevere when communicating remotely. Without direct contact, you need to bring others along with you in order to achieve your goals. • Make the reasons for the decisions you take clear and allow time for others to comment.
F	Feeling	traditional fashion	• Ensure attention is paid to your own needs. These may not be as visible to others when working remotely. • Build on your existing network of relationships to gain co-operation. • Misunderstandings can easily occur in remote communication, for many reasons. Don’t immediately assume that the other person has a hidden agenda or is out to get you. • Find ways to make sure that your team and organization celebrate success and show appreciation for effort – including your own contribution.
J	Judging	virtual work	• If you find you are suddenly and unexpectedly working from home, get into a new home-working routine quickly. Make sure that your organization facilitates this. • Maintain a structured day and set boundaries around working hours to keep ‘work’ and ‘home’ separate. If possible, have a separate area or office for work. • Set clear, realistic goals and priorities at the start of each day. • Some of your Perceiving colleagues may begin to adopt more flexible working hours. If you receive an email or IM from them late at night, it’s not necessarily urgent!
P	Perceiving	traditional fashion	• Working remotely, it might be difficult to be casually playful or light-hearted with colleagues. Make full use of video conferencing and other media to keep in touch. Be spontaneous. • Keep sight of overall deadlines, but maintain variety day to day – for example, by moving between projects. • While remaining aware of meetings and other commitments, allow yourself breaks and make use of the flexibility of home working. Go for a walk, bake a cake, do whatever works for you. • With flexibility comes responsibility. Be respectful of other’s working patterns; for example, set a delay if you are sending an email at midnight

As the main theories of team roles strongly correlate with personality type theories, additional attributes of certain team roles can be determined according to MBTI's extended personality types for virtual environment.

The role of meeting in-person for virtual teams

Virtual teams use electronic communication channels and have minimal opportunities of meeting in-person in their daily activities. While these communication channels allow for the formal transfer of data and information, informal communications such as hallway and water cooler conversations do not occur. Thus, valuable communication opportunities are lost. Further, nonverbal aspects of communication such as body language and other visual cues are missed or misinterpreted if team members never meet in person to develop their social relationships. In-person meetings allow feedback on the spot, which is usually not possible using electronic channels. Also, the permanence of written records in electronic media sometimes hinder people to respond to situations in the same way that they would when meeting in-person.

To address communication problems arising from the limitations of electronic communication, one approach used is to favor video conferencing as much as possible instead of emails, because it allows for communicating in real-time and exchanging some nonverbal cues. Furthermore, virtual teams can consciously create space for informal communication by allocating time for it, such as by doing daily "swarm" meetings over video, where the purpose is simply to talk with team members, about work or personal life.

While the mentioned solutions may help, in order to effectively bridge the gaps of electronic communication, team members should meet in-person in order to develop interpersonal bonds between people and tackle miscommunication. Furthermore, these meetings may open additional channels supplementary to the technical solutions mentioned earlier, which can improve collaborative work. In these in-person meetings (also referred to as "face-to-face" or "F2F" meetings), members get to know each other, learn about cultural differences between members of the team, discuss and agree on ways to resolve tensions, set up procedures to coordinate work activities and start working together toward a successful completion of a project.

Although, there is a general consensus throughout the literature that at-least some form of in-person meeting is necessary, the timing of this meeting with regards to the stages of the project may differ. Some studies suggest to meet in-person as soon as a new team is formed while other suggest to continue working in-person at the initial stages of a project. Another study suggests to meet in-person regularly at various intervals in order to foster continuous social bonding. Based on these, it seems ideal that face-to-face meetings should be held in the early stages and periodically throughout the project.

Stages of in-person meetings

Stages of Face to Face meetings

Most studies agree that the full lifecycle of social ties (and thus in-person meetings) consists of 3 main stages. These are:

• Introduction
• Build-up
• Maintenance and Renewal

In the context of social bonding, there are some limitations posed by in-person meetings that the managers should be aware of. These are:

1. In-person meetings are short (last less than a week) and tend to offer only limited social space for various cultures.
2. Most time spent in these meetings is dedicated to solving technical issues and developing project road maps (i.e. they deviate towards formalism).
3. Sometimes, not all team members may be invited to these meetings due to budget constraints.
4. Short and infrequent in-person meetings offer sporadic interpersonal interactions between team members, thus hindering building of inter-personal relationships.

Hence, It is imperative that the team managers take these into account and carefully plan the activities before, during and after the meeting in order to reap the benefits. A subset of suggested activities in each stage are listed in the table below:

Suggested activities at each stage of lifecycle of social ties in the context of "Face-to-Face" meetings

Before in-person meeting (Introduction)	During in-person meeting (Build-up)	After in-person meeting (Renewal)
Increase awareness of team composition Introduction of new team members Appoint contact person per remote team Setup mini-teams Distribute agenda and newsletters Conduct virtual F2F meetings	Create space for one-on-one interaction Conduct kick-off meeting Discuss differences between cultures Offer team building exercises Organise social events Discuss organisational structure	Facilitate reflection sessions Facilitate progress meetings Conduct virtual face-to-face meeting Encourage direct and real-time communication channels Conduct virtual round-the table discussions periodically

The activities described above provide ways for managers to supplement collaborative tools and methodologies with human-related activities to ensure the build-up and renewal of social ties between distributed team members. Furthermore, each team member differs in the way they bond with others, thus requiring a different set of activities that support the renewal of these social ties. Hence, considerable efforts need to be put to sense, analyse and apply the most appropriate activity at the right time. Thus, ensuring that social ties are enhanced and the collaborative work is improved.

Virtual team building methods

For newly forming teams, a popular approach for initial team building is to conduct icebreaker activities. Meanwhile, conventional team building activities include team members doing sports together or collectively working on creative side-projects. The activities requiring little to no physical interaction may translate to the online environment via telecommunication technology to become online activities. Alternatively, activities that are online to begin with, such as online games, can be modified or directly used for virtual team building.

Online activities

Through means like video conferencing, several team building activities can easily be translated to the online environment. Meanwhile, other activities take advantage of the environment and offer more exclusive interactions. The activities can serve as icebreakers or team building exercises that can be done during online meetings. Studies have shown that simply giving people opportunities to have non-work-related conversations, or to have them casually draw pictures together, can have positive effects on team cohesion.

For getting team members to bond, some suggested online team building activities are:

• Rock paper scissors tournament - A fast and simple competitive activity that can be managed via video conferencing. Players play a few rounds of rock paper scissors in pairs, and afterwards the winners among the pairs play with each other until there is a champion.
• Five minute life stories - An activity where team members are organized in pairs and given 5 minutes each to tell their life stories to each other. Afterwards, the whole group gathers together and every participant tells the life story they listened to.
• Two truths and a lie - An icebreaker activity where each team member tells the group three statements about themselves, where two are true and one is a lie. The other members try to figure out which one is the lie. The game encourages people to introduce themselves in a brief and interesting way, while making the team focus together for the truth analysis.
• 10 common things - An activity where the team is divided into small groups, and each group is given 10 minutes to come up with 10 things the group members have in common. It may start with simple truths but it is an opportunity to be creative. Afterwards, the groups come together to share their common things. The activity is a brainstorming exercise and also brings the team closer together because of learning their similarities.

To strengthen team dynamics in the context of the work ahead, some online team building activities are:

• Writing a team working agreement together - If it has not been done already, the (entire) team can brainstorm and discuss together to come up with a working agreement, which is a set of guidelines for how the team members will interact throughout the project. It is a conscious effort to define some of the core dynamics of the team. By having the team come up with its own rules on how to communicate and work, the team members are empowered and well-informed about how to work together and why the rules are the way they are. When developing the agreement, there are several factors to consider and different approaches that can be taken, but a quick method is to have the team leader present a first draft of the agreement and allow everyone to discuss the points. The working agreement could be saved in a common folder and revisited over time.
• Examining cultural value differences together - Multicultural teams may benefit from setting aside some time to actively examine the different values of the cultures present in the team and their effects, such as how to communicate with supervisors. For this purpose, useful tools are Meyer's Culture Map and Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory.
• "The aliens have landed" - An activity particularly useful for bridging cultural or language differences. The group imagines an alien has arrived, wanting to learn about the team's work without knowing their spoken languages. Hence each team member needs to draw five symbols or pictures to explain the team's goals. Afterwards, the pictures can be brought together in a shared folder, where the team can reflect on each others' interpretations.
• One word exercise - A meeting warm-up exercise. After picking a topic for the exercise, such as a goal or theme of the meeting, every team member writes down a word they relate to the topic. Then everyone shares their word. With this exercise expectations and concerns about the topic may be expressed.

Online games

Online multiplayer games are often environments where people collaborate to reach common goals as part of play. Compared to other online activities, they tend to feature more depth or additional single-player elements. The level of interaction between players may range from anonymously competing/collaborating in quick online minigames, up to attending virtual parties solely for the purpose of socializing with online friends.

Players interacting in online games may report benefits such as:

• Bonding with other players over similar interests within and outside the game
• Testing and uncovering their skills
• Being engaged via the challenges
• Being encouraged to think and come up with new strategies

With such benefits, the experience of playing together helps team members get to know each other and build dynamics that may not develop as well in the more formal and limited context of the work environment. Classical team-building exercises may also translate into online game environments, where parts of or entire games are designed specifically as team building exercises or have closely similar aspects.

Quick games

There are many games that can work effectively for team-building, both in the short and long term. For an online game to be suitable as a short-term team building exercise, the following properties are advantageous:

• The game is easily accessible, such as via web hosting or purchasing from online stores.
• The game is easy to set up for play, with an automatic or simple installer.
• The game is intuitive or otherwise easy to pick up and learn.
• The game offers clear goals or challenges.
• The game is not demanding on computer resources, such as having low disk and memory usage.
• The game clearly requires interactions with other players in the form of collaboration or competition.
• The game includes voice chatting or is played while other applications host voice chat.
• The roles and responsibilities in the game loosely resemble the interactions of the team in the work environment.

Some examples of quick games:

• Party games - By their nature party games are easy to learn and considerably social, making them good at bringing people together. Online variants of such games can be found hosted on game websites or fore sale on online game stores. Examples of party games that can also be played in a distributed setting are:
  • Taboo - A team-based word guessing game where a player must have their teammates figure out a word without saying it or any related words on a list. The game can be hosted online via conference calls.
  • Charades - A team-based word guessing game where players need to act out a word with gestures but without speaking, until their teammates figure it out.
  • Pictionary - A team-based word guessing game, where one player needs to draw the assigned word and others need to guess it. While this is ordinarily done on paper, the same concept is facilitated by some online games.
• Lightweight online browser games:
  • Cooperative or team-based ".io" games - The ".io" name refers to a genre of browser games characterized by quick multiplayer sessions, simple graphics, and near-immediate access to the game environment (popularized with Agar.io). Not all such games are ideal for team building, while some of them stand out by having the properties listed above.
  • Cooperative or team-based "flash games" - A large variety of browser games are run by web plugins such as Adobe Flash. A subset of such games feature the properties listed above.

Long-term games

Long-term multiplayer online games may also be played by team members over the course of days to weeks or longer. Interaction in such games gives team members regular interactions and common investments outside of work, allowing them to establish more personal relationships in an informal environment. Various types of games can be considered for team building, featuring collaborative activities like building, exploration, puzzle solving, or survival. The following aspects may be considered when evaluating a game for the goal of team building:

• The game needs to appeal to everyone in the team, because everyone in the team needs to participate for the experience to be effective. This is easier if the game basics are easy to learn and the game can be accessed easily. Additionally, it would help to have themes and game mechanics that would interest everyone.
• The game's complexity and depth should be at an appropriate level. Games with too little depth may not inspire players to interact meaningfully and players may start viewing the game more like a chore after a while. Games with steep learning curves may not be appealing to some team members. Games that have a great deal of content or depth, if not carefully managed, have the risk of taking too much attention and damaging the productivity of team members at work even though they have strong dynamics.
• Games with collaborative elements, or with a mix of collaboration and competition, would encourage developing team dynamics. For games to be effective in improving team dynamics, the game needs to be set up such that success in the game is difficult unless team members successfully work together and communicate.
• Games that enable considerable power imbalances between players need to be considered with caution, because they may lead to exploitative relationships between team members that may upset balances in the work environment in exchange for benefits in the game.
• Games with surprise mechanics, paywalls, or similar microtransaction-based elements should be considered with great caution, as certain business models involving them encourage competitive spending rather than meaningful social interactions.

See also

• Distributed development
• Communication in Distributed Software Development
• Virtual Team
• Virtual Management

References

This article "Virtual team dynamics" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:Virtual team dynamics. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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