One of our most important senses is our sight.  Many people fear the loss of sight nearly as much as loss of life.

Yet more and more we are engaged in virtual teams trying to accomplish Herculean project tasks without seeing our teammates on a regular basis.  This is further exasperated by the other favorite form of communication that blocks our sense of hearing:  Email.  I am certain if I developed virtual project management software to block sense of smell too I would join the ranks of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs!

Ironically, I see five terrible mistakes made every day in meetings of virtual teams and it kills team productivity and moral.

Listed in reverse order in dramatic David Letterman like suspense!

#5) Not defining why each person is on the call.

Do your team members know why they are participating on the call?  Do you have defined rolls for the meeting?  So many times I have witnessed meetings with virtual teams and the team members had no expectations placed on them before, during, or after the meeting.

It appeared to me that if asked why they are participating on a Virtual Team meeting, many people would say:

○  A) To place the phone on mute and catch a quick nap

○  B) To see how quietly I can surf the Internet without getting busted

○  C) To listen to the project manager and team leads drone on about how hard they are working

○  D) To raise my blood pressure to dangerous levels and ruin productivity for the rest of the day

○  E) All of the above

You need to decide early on if someone is going to sit in on the meeting and more importantly why.  All too often participants only have a liaison role whose only job is to "communicate back to their stakeholders".  Hello?  Have you heard of email, intranets, and web based status reporting?  Do we really need 15 people on the call whose only job is to pass along information?

Keep your teams small and only of people at the top of the stakeholder chain and your meetings will see an immediate improvement.

#4) Having too structured an agenda

No - you are not seeing things.  I actually wrote that one of the top problems when meeting with virtual project teams is having too structured an agenda.

When teams meet over and over again, month after month, with the same boring item by item meetings that our grandparents had 50 years ago, they tend to tune out for the 95% of the meeting.

Instead, use a virtual program management intranet to track:

• risks
• key deliverables/tasks,
• milestones,
• issues,
• change requests,
• feedback, and
• status reporting. 

In this way people can update their project artifacts online and allow the focus of the meeting to mitigating risks and resolving hot issues that stand in the way of succeeding on your projects. 

#3) Going 1 second over allotted time

Nothing is more demoralizing for your team members then the "never ending meeting".  It demoralizes team members and keeps them away from completing their deliverables.  Nothing is more energizing then getting through all the important issues on a meeting and giving back time to the team.  Make meeting time management your mantra and beware of overhead.

Please take the following test to see if you understand the concept of "overhead".  The following are all overhead on a project:

○  A) Team meetings

○  B) Filling in status reports

○  C) Leveraging the project management software/tools

○  D) The project manager's salary, desk, and literally everything they touch

○  E) All of the above

Did you answer E - All of the above.  Good - your getting it!  Now before you scroll to the bottom in the Comments field and raise heck that I am undermining the value of project management note I didn't say it is not valuable.  It is just that overhead should be minimized and time on deliverables maximized.

I know it is hard to do in practice but try it!  Keep a timer and regardless of where you are at in your next meeting end it exactly on time.  I assure you with practice your team members will become more adept at policing the conversations and you will have their respect.

#2) Sending minutes after the meeting instead of before

Now your thinking, "Are you kidding me?  How can you send minutes before the meeting and not after!"

Sit back down and let me explain...

How many times do you stress out after a meeting to get out the meeting minutes.  You look over at the stack of hand written notes you made during the meeting and type them in to another Microsoft Word document that will end up in the endless void of Word meeting minutes.  Is this why you went into project management - to dictate people's notes all day long? 

You argue "but the team needs to know the agreed outcomes of the meeting?".  Have you ever put a read receipt on our post project meeting notes to see how many team members even open it for one second?  On second thought - you better not lest major depression set in.

So what can you do?

Send meeting minutes before the meeting.  Have the expectation that people update their virtual program management software before the meeting and compile your status report ahead of time.  In this way meetings are opportunities to solve problems and assign action items.

#1) Having formal team conferences with virtual teams in the first place

I saved the biggest mistake PMs make in meetings with their virtual teams for last.  Why are you even having regular conference calls with your virtual teams IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Sometimes I wonder if when the world went virtual if PMs were all studying for their PMPs or something.  We trap our teams into limbo between cutting edge virtual project management techniques and 1940's style meetings.  Remember our little talk about overhead?  Is it worth your companies time and money to invest in your meeting?  I would venture to guess that 90% of the time it isn't critical to the schedule, quality, or scope of the project so why have them?

A better approach is to foster "communication times".  These are times when the team clears their schedule so they can quickly call each other, host a webinar, mash up on a virtual PMO site, or otherwise get work done.  Again, web-based project management solutions are available to foster knowledge management and collaboration.

You can otherwise save your meeting time for the end of the project for a meeting everyone loves - a celebratory party!

So that is my top 5 worst mistakes but by no means is this an all inclusive list. 

Do you agree with me?

Do you have others you would like to mention?

Please use the comments below to argue, support, or offer other interesting points of view.  I would love to hear from you!

Virtually yours,
Nick Matteucci, MBA

Author:  Nick Matteucci is a co-founder of VCSonline.com a web 2.0 project management software company headquartered in St. Louis Missouri. Mr. Matteucci is also an active board member and the Chief Technology Officer for the PMI ISSIG.  When not obsessing over virtual project management best practices Mr. Matteucci enjoys spending time with his wife and three small children. He also enjoys travel, running, and all things automotive.

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