The increasing
global nature of IT projects and the virtual nature of project teams
create numerous challenges for managers to effectively manage
communication, and place a risk on project execution. But what exactly
are these challenges? And how do Project Managers from IT organisation
respond to these challenges? The aim of this dissertation will be to
address these questions. In providing answers to these questions, we can
then see to what extent current project management is effective in
overcoming these challenges and to suggest recommendations for the cases
in which management fails. This thesis includes qualitative research by
providing a case-study of an Irish IT organisation that has a globally
distributed work-force. The research focuses on the insights of Project
Managers who each have a wealth of experience in dealing with the issues
at hand. As a counterbalance, this study therefore includes
observational research to objectively evaluate the day to day reality of
virtual teams in global projects. However, even though a lot of
communication management challenges are recognised by Project Managers,
it seems that a clearly explicated communication plan is often lacking.
To address this problem, this research attempts to synthesise the main
strategies into a unified strategy. The major contribution from this
research is to provide an in-depth theory about communication management
within virtual teams in global projects. Author keywords:
Communication, virtual team, management, global project