Collaborative Analysis among virtual teams: an experience

Abstract

The contemporary age is characterized by rapid and deep changes in the various areas of society. The organizations are affected by the increasing level of competition and the fast changes of the ever-increasing competitive environment. Thus, they bind themselves in producing innovating products and services through projects developed by a teamwork of qualified professionals, ready to deal with multidisciplinary knowledge in flexible ways of working and supported by modern means of communication, interaction, and project managing. Virtual groups are being used more frequently to generate projects rapidly and under lower costs, enabling the companies to have a better view of the changes imposed by the new economy. The virtual work modifies establish habits of teamwork, therefore the experience is lived deeply not to be physically together in workstation while tasks are carried through. This new form to work extends the concepts of space and time. Nowadays, innovations in communication area and computer science generate new behaviors and new organization styles resultant by new kinds of dissemination of knowledge and new social interactions. Thus, these innovations in the services of communications' nets come reinforce cooperative work, especially the one based on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). In this context, this chapter presents an analysis of application boarding of CSCW in a virtual environment developed by two separate work groups for the distance.