Virtual Team Maturity Curve

Abstract

Imagine that you live Chicago, and your best friends live in Texas, Florida, California, and Paris. Overall, do you think this is a good thing or a bad thing? Some people might think, “It’s a bad thing because I can’t see my friends whenever I want, and we can’t get together and do things as often as I’d like. We can only talk on the phone and write to each other.” Other people might think, “Well, I don’t get to see them all the time, but now when I want to go on vacation, I have people in four different places I can visit and maybe even stay with.” This is an example of the level of comfort—of preference—that an individual has in a particular situation. For virtual teams, we characterize the level of comfort and readiness to operate in a virtual environment on the “virtual team maturity curve.”