Virtual Team Project: Project Retrospective Memo

Your team has worked through a fairly complex virtual collaborative project and has developed valuable knowledge of best practices in intercultural virtual teamwork. To help you get the most out of the experience, this final assignment asks you to discuss the lessons learned as a team and to write a project retrospective memo.

Assignment Goals	This assignment is designed to help you do the following: - Capture the knowledge the team has developed about effective, efficient, and ethical communication processes in intercultural virtual teams. - Reflect on what you have learned through the collaborative experience. - Reflect critically on how digital technologies have facilitated or constrained your teamwork.
Deadlines and Deliverables	Please submit the final team memo with recommendations for team members, instructors, and future students by December 2.
Audience	The primary audience of your memo consists of your team members. The secondary audience consists of your instructor and future students in the course.
Purpose	The purpose of the memo is to articulate the lessons learned, so that team members can draw on them in future virtual team projects and others can learn from your experience.
Content	As you discuss your virtual team experience as a team, use the following questions to help you generate your recommendations: What part or aspect of your team process worked well? Why do you think it worked well? - Team dynamics: What about the team process worked well? For example, how was your team able to profit from the diversity of its members (e.g. in expertise, working styles, experience, communication styles, technology use, understanding of different cultural, local, professional, or industry contexts)? - Technology use: What use of communication technologies best enhanced your teamwork (e.g. at the different stages—forming, storming, norming, performing or different parts of the communication process, e.g. analysis, design, creation, and verification)? What would you change or do differently in your next virtual team project? - Team dynamics: How did or would the team revise the team policies memo drafted earlier in the project? - Technology use: How would you change the technologies or your use of them in future virtual teamwork? What surprised you about working on your virtual team project? - Team dynamics: What surprised you about your team processes, communication preferences, individual approaches, team dynamics? - Technology use: What did you find surprising about your use of communication technologies? Overall, what are the most important lessons learned? What recommendations would you give to your instructors and future students?
Evaluation Criteria	To assess your memo for effective communication, use the evaluation criteria in your syllabus.
Resources	Management Communication, all chapters, especially 10 and 11.