Coping with Virtual Teams

It's not unusual in this day and age to be part of virtual teams. By this we mean having other members that are not located in the same place (and at times timezones) as the rest. This poses a lot of challenges to the team that are sometimes downplayed by management as being easily resolvable by having conference calls and video calls. Not so. In reality, there are just so much at stake in virtual teams.
So how do you cope with them? Here's a few tips:

• Understand what technology tool works best. It would be ridiculous to assume that a video con or a conference call would always solve the issue. Think of situations wherein members of the team are from different countries, not all speak good english. Instead of improving the communication process, the inability to properly speak up causes more confusion. Sometimes, a simple team blog (or just an email chain) works best.
• Define ground rules. This is more important for virtual teams than co-located teams because it makes the whole project more determinable. Simple things such as agreeing on a meeting schedule or having a standard issue escalation procedure helps tremendously. The more synchronized the team is, the lesser the impact of the separation of locations.
• Assign a project lead for each location. Someone has got to be accountable for a specific area /location. This is so that communication flows smoothly and does not get lost in the translation (or journey). If you're obviously the only one on the location, you're it then.
• Plan for longer turnaround times. This is often missed out by noob PM's. Work done in co-located environments are much simpler to accomplish than that of virtual teams. That's just the way it is. Don't let anyone fool you otherwise. It seems all too obvious but is hardly ever practiced.
• Have a contact list. phone, email, IM, mailing address, work schedule, etc. Simple things to keept things going.