Define globalization, outsourcing, and virtual teams and describe how these trends are changing IT project management.

With a rapid spread of a more global civilization and ready access to world spanning communication, Globalization is more and more becoming a fact of everyday life.  Globalization is the phenomenon that has been popping up the past few years of a world-wide interconnected society.  Twitter, facebook, linkedin, these are all applications with one simple goal; ensuring that people worldwide have access to instant communication with one another.  It’s not only shaping how we communicate with each other, but how our society evolves over the coming decades.

Meanwhile, it provides a ready avenue for outsourcing.  Outsourcing allows employers and project managers to acquire labor from outside sources, such as 3rd party companies or contractors in world spanning locations.  With globalization and outsourcing, it’s not out of the question for a project manager in America to get instant updates from a team in New Zealand about the production of the software needed for the next phase of their project.

Globalization also allows more in-depth long distance communication, including face-to-face interaction via video chat software and schedule sharing.  This allows a manager to put together a virtual team, getting the best people for a given job from anywhere in the world and having them work together seamlessly.  Mind you, it does not have it’s downfalls; virtual teams do lack the more personalized and constant interactions that a local team would have.  However, it can be readily argued that a virtual team’s advantages outweigh the disadvantages in many situations.

-Matthew Tridento