Abstract
The increasing global nature of IT projects and the virtual nature of project teams create numerous challenges for managers to effectively manage communication, and place a risk on project execution. But what exactly are these challenges? And how do Project Managers from IT organisation respond to these challenges? The aim of this dissertation will be to address these questions. In providing answers to these questions, we can then see to what extent current project management is effective in overcoming these challenges and to suggest recommendations for the cases in which management fails. This thesis includes qualitative research by providing a case-study of an Irish IT organisation that has a globally distributed work-force. The research focuses on the insights of Project Managers who each have a wealth of experience in dealing with the issues at hand. As a counterbalance, this study therefore includes observational research to objectively evaluate the day to day reality of virtual teams in global projects. However, even though a lot of communication management challenges are recognised by Project Managers, it seems that a clearly explicated communication plan is often lacking. To address this problem, this research attempts to synthesise the main strategies into a unified strategy. The major contribution from this research is to provide an in-depth theory about communication management within virtual teams in global projects. Author keywords: Communication, virtual team, management, global project
