Making virtual work teams successful: measuring the ´interactive demand´ of tasks and fitting it to the demands of technology, people, and structure

Virtual problem-solving teams are becoming a fixture in both the work and educational environments. However, the advent of work teams, particularly within the virtual realm, has posed a number of challenges to the success of these groups. Research has, of yet, failed to identify and understand the myriad number of variables that can affect the performance of a virtual group. One of these concerns the shifting characteristics of the task at hand. Based on a synthesis of available research, including their own, the authors have devised a task typology that gauges the "interactive demand" of specific tasks for group members. Appraising these demand factors in conjunction with the demands of the technology involved, the composition of the group, and the overall structure of the problem-solving situation can aid in determining the processing "energy" required from the limited store possessed by any group. This, in turn, can help planning for the success of these teams.