Team Principles or Guidelines

One excellent source of information when thinking about appropriate guidelines and guiding principles for a virtual team is your own experience as a member of a virtual team. Consider your experiences in team assignments as well as experiences you may have had at work. What elements made those experiences particularly positive or negative? Were you part of a team that decided not to choose a project leader, for example? Did that work well for the team, or did you find that there was a lack of direction, resulting in a final product that you weren't happy with? Did the team communicate frequently and work well together, or was there conflict that created tension and made the project difficult to complete? It can be very difficult to build trust in virtual teams. One possible aid to trust-building is for virtual teams to incorporate social communication into their routines (Pinjani & Palvia, 2013).

Also think about how team size, composition, roles, and leadership factor into effective guidelines.

References

Pinjani, P. & Palvia, P. (2013). Trust and knowledge sharing in diverse global virtual teams. Information & Management, (50)4,144-153. doi:10.1016/j.im.2012.10.002