Customer Reviews

Managing Virtual Teams: Getting the Most from Wikis, Blogs, and Other Collaborative Tools (Wordware Applications Library)

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As an independent consultant working exclusively from home, all of my teams are virtual, even if they are located a few miles away. I bought this book not to enhance my relationships with those team members but rather to help me develop two training classes on this book's subtitle: "wikis, blogs, and other collaborative tools." While I pored over chapters 12-18 attempting to organize my own thoughts, I enjoyed the authors' writing style and found the depth appropriate for a high-level understanding of each topic. I am now reading the remaining chapters, sure that I will uncover a nugget or two that will help me in my daily work life.

This book has a lot of suggestions for effective team management over distances. The book itself was written as a distance collaboration using many of the same techniques and technologies written about. However, the book doesn't always give clear definitions. Some of the definitions are overly simplistic or of dubious origin. In my reading (this was a textbook for a class of mine) I found at least two uses of Wikipedia as a source for definitions. I find this not only sloppy, but lazy, and my biggest issue with the book. As a college student who is forbidden, by professors and by better judgment, to use Wikipedia as a source, the concept of learning things directly from Wikipedia makes me uneasy. Wikipedia has its uses (it is effectively used once to show where an updated listing of web-lingo can be found online), but not as a source.

If you are unfamiliar with different collaborative technologies (VoIP, VPN's, Version Control Systems, etc.) this is not the place to find specific information about them. The definitions are too vague. This book will give you examples of their usage in corporate circumstances. It will also give you suggestions for managing conflict over distances and avoiding issues when project members rarely meet face to face.

I did not find this book useful. It seems to be geared for pointy haired manager types who have never heard of the Internet. There was very little information that was not either obvious, outdated or both.