Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools

by Brenda Huettner, Char James-Tanny

Virtual collaborative team environments face unique challenges because their communication is not face-to-face. Managing Virtual Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools provides practical advice for managers of distributed teams who must design the internal systems and meet deadlines with a diverse team, and for team members who want to develop and maintain professional relationships. To address these needs, this book is divided into three parts. Part I discusses team dynamics, project management and development, and forms of communication. Part II covers the types of tools currently available for collaboration such as wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, and more, and describes the different feature sets of each. Part III explains the various features of the book's companion wiki.

Genres: Reference, Business

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 2006

Reviews

[Toby · Rating 1 out of 5]

First off, the subtitle of this book is "Getting the most from..." and yet the tools part of this book is secondary to basic management concepts. Secondly, it talks primarily about basic management concepts, with only a nod to "Virtual Teams" and distributed participants. Lastly, even the information given was of only marginal utility. I know one of the authors' names from the technical writing community, and that sensitized me to notice that the book was also very centered on technical writing and software engineering, without straight out admitting the focus. That works fine for me, because that is my environment, but might not work for others. This might be worth a read for the odd morsel that you can pick out of the fluff, but I can't say that I recommend it.