Virtual Project Management: Benefits and Challenges 

Introduction

Post-pandemic, remote work became a trend and managing a virtual project became normal. A virtual team can be a considerable advantage to both the employer and the employees.  

 
Alongside globalisation, vast technological advancements, and the huge revolution after the appearance of AI, virtual projects have become a standard approach for businesses. So, if you are a project manager or a team leader, you must be prepared to handle what is coming your way from the other side while managing a virtual project and leading a distributed team. 

What is Virtual Project Management?  

Virtual project management is the process by which a geographically dispersed or virtual team works together to complete tasks, accomplish business goals and achieve success. Managing virtual projects is not very different from traditional project management; the main difference is that sometimes, team members work from different regions of the world with different time zones. Virtual project teams are becoming necessary in this new environment where team members connect over time, space boundaries, geographical and other boundaries using information and communication technology.     

What is a Virtual Team?  

A virtual project team has geographically dispersed members whose communication is maintained in a virtual environment. The team members are from different countries, nationalities, languages, and cultures, which gives the team a competitive advantage.  

Due to the complexity of virtual tasks and team diversity, it is a must to establish effective team leadership and management behaviours alongside the use of communication technologies to communicate, where virtual communication determines the quality of projects and the effectiveness of virtual collaboration. Moreover, team leaders should be technologically clever, inclusive, easily accessible and communicate frequently with all members.  

This trend of virtual project management offers various benefits and presents unique challenges that project managers must be prepared to face.  

Benefits of Virtual Project Management 

1. Lower Costs 

A virtual office can save money and space and reduce the cost of running an office where there is no need to deal with expenses such as rent, utilities, taxes and office needs.

2. Higher Productivity  

Eliminating travel time to the office increases the productivity of remote employees, freeing them from office politics and rules, micromanagement, and sometimes toxic environments and cancelling unnecessary meetings.  
The research shows that virtual members take less vacation time than onsite members, and their productivity is higher than that of those working from the office.  

3. Wider Talent Pool  

Virtual project management is not limited by location; it gives access to global talents and allows the selection of the best and top candidates without the need to relocate.  

4. Greater Work–Life Balance 

Working from home, wherever and whenever you are, as long as the requested tasks are completed. This helps to create a greater work-life balance, to be aware of work and family commitments, to increase satisfaction and flexibility, and to be less likely to leave or struggle sometimes in a toxic environment. 

Most Common Challenges 

The management of virtual projects is fundamentally different from that of onsite projects; there are consistent differences in how to deal with communication, control or tracking and collaboration in virtual projects, which are challenges and can impact the journey of projects and project managers must overcome these challenges and be prepared to handle what is coming on their way. So, the three most common challenges are the following:

1. Ineffective Communication 

Communication is critical in collaboration, coordination, control and performance tracking. It is essential for building trust, providing feedback, problem-solving, motivating, supporting, and mentoring. Communication is a fatal challenge for a virtual team where they don't interact in real-time, sometimes due to time zone differences, resulting in ineffective and poor communication. So, it is important to facilitate communication by providing them with the necessary tools to communicate, attend online meetings, discuss issues or opportunities and/or brainstorm. Nowadays, it has become easier to establish virtual communication due to the advancement in technology and communication applications. Moreover, managing a virtual team requires more effort to keep the communication effective, create transparency, share knowledge, encourage and motivate them, create a collaborative environment and know each one by engaging them in discussion during team or one-to-one meetings. In addition, effective communication can boost team trust, which is essential for any team to function properly. Building virtual trust is not an easy task as long as the team members and managers cannot meet face to face, but still it can be done by clear communication, shared understanding, setting explicit expectations, enhancing credibility and determining commitments.  So, as a virtual project manager, it is important to improve your communication with your team and bridge this gap by using effective communication tools and setting up weekly virtual meetings to discuss goals, achievements and issues, as well as daily meetings when necessary.  

2. Inefficient Collaboration  

It is difficult to keep the team accountable and to bring them all to one place to open discussion about the project, especially when project managers struggle to convey their expectations to their virtual teams, and their teams struggle to understand their roles and responsibilities, and it is difficult to monitor the project progress. With this misunderstanding and unclear goals, a virtual team can be irresponsible and miss collaboration, where conflicts can arise, and trust is lost. This lack of cooperation can be overcome by defining clear project goals, having a shared understanding of project tasks, encouraging group participation, working together on one platform and keeping an eye on everyone's progress. Also, team-building exercises to bring them all together and let them collaborate and interact can reactivate your team and make them feel more accountable and responsible. 

3. Monitoring Project Progress 

It is not easy to follow the team's progress and to have clear visibility of their day-to-day performance. It can represent an obstacle sometimes for managers, and sometimes, this can lead to missing project deadlines. In virtual project management, managers see the completed work, and it is essential for them to have sufficient visibility into team performance to keep things under control, follow up on tasks, give feedback, offer help and support and reduce conflicts. This tough situation can be challenging when managing virtual projects; consistent follow-up is needed to know where every team member is in the project and what still must be done.  

To overcome this situation and keep tracking project progress and performance, you must hold regular meetings to discuss team performance and check if your team members are on the right track. You must also allow them to discuss and share the challenges they are facing daily, try together to find solutions, and get feedback; this can increase their productivity and level of engagement, strengthen their trust, and boost their confidence.  

Conclusion

With technological advancement and AI tools, the use of virtual project management will increase in the coming few years; thus, the number of teams working virtually will increase too, which demands changing organisational strategies, redefining virtual communication strategies, and using remote technologies to improve virtual team productivity and engagement and meet the needs of a dispersed team.  

Finally, the management of virtual projects remains a challenging endeavour; it is similar to a puzzle where you have to collect the pieces from many places and put them all together in an integrated framework to understand the whole picture that lies back on the virtual project manager's ability to identify the difference of a defined virtual project and to integrate people with technological resources in the best beneficial way for the project, team, stakeholders and thus organisation.