The recent trend in globalization of business operations has increased the need for global teams in different aspects of a company’s activities, including idea conception, product design and launch. These teams are faced with a variety of challenges, which need to be considered and resolved. This paper discusses the experience of distributed teams made up of participants from the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Technology and Stanford University in carrying out a design and development assignment. Ways of taking into account differences in culture, in time and experience were found out in the process of coming up with a new product. It was also found out that having at least one face-to-face meeting tended to improve teamwork and personal understanding. A major challenge was the finalization of the prototype using data and information from distributed sources. This was found to be more complex as new information continued to emerge in the last stages of the project. Most of these problems were overcome by setting deadlines for agreed milestones and the frequent use of electronic media. Even then, large documents circulated in time, were not always read by all of the team members. Timely use of telephone and video conferencing was found to be a very useful way of bringing everyone to the same page. It was found out that distributed design and development teams were more effective if they used modern information and communication technologies. The lessons learnt can be useful for distributed teams in other functional areas of a global enterprise.
2nd International CDIO Conference, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden, 13 – 14 June 2006
Conceive
Design
Implement
Operate
