Skills for effective communication and work in global product development teams

This paper presents a systematic discussion of the specifics of communication and work within a virtual development team, which is of crucial importance for competitiveness in the course of globalization. With advances in technology, work within virtual teams is gaining ever-greater importance. However, in this process, special knowledge and skills of virtual team members are a greater obstacle than technical equipment. Work within a virtual product development team requires intense communication, which is possible via videoconferencing. The contribution of this paper consists of a set of recommendations on how to develop necessary skills for effective communication and work in virtual development teams. The recommendations can be applied in both university and industrial environments. The paper is based on experiences from the international course on European Global Product Realisation that provided students with initial experiences in working within a global team. The authors believe that skills and technical equipment will need to be constantly supplemented and upgraded so that they will become practically independent of personal meetings (i.e. the distance between team members).