Managing globally distributed engineering teams: A case study on virtual industrial engineering

Globally distributed engineering teams face particular challenges regarding collaboration and communication. Spatial, temporal and cultural distances force a virtual cooperation that must adequately enable idea mediation and decision making within engineering teams. Thus, the engineering management plays a central role and therefore has to react to support and govern those teams. On this perspective, this contribution shares fundamental insights, results, challenges, and implications derived from a nine-month engineering project between students from Stanford University and Hasso Plattner Institute, their focus user group, and their client principal-a leading German engineering enterprise conglomerate.