The Impact of Fear on the Operation of Virtual Teams

Abstract

Distributed software development has become the norm for the software industry today. As a result many organizations are leveraging the expertise of their existing staff by establishing virtual teams. Here we outline the results from three independent case studies undertaken over a period of eight years. The first study considered the operation of virtual teams whose members were situated in two locations in the same country. The second investigated why U.S. and Irish team members who worked very successfully while collocated, experienced serious problems when operating in virtual teams. The third focused on virtual testing teams with members based in Ireland and Malaysia. The Irish staff had extensive experience of having projects offshored to them and were now responsible for offshoring part of their work. The results from each case study highlighted the importance and impact fear played and the consequences this had for the success of the respective strategies.