problem solving virtual groups

Top 22 Virtual Problem-Solving Activities to Strengthen Any Team

We live in a fast-paced environment where challenges often arise, both personally and professionally.

Especially in today’s workplace, professionals have to deal with social, ethical, and organisational problems.

This is where problem-solving skills come into play.

Strong problem-solving tactics can improve creativity and help team members make efficient and informed decisions.

While every professional might not be a natural born problem-solver, there are a lot of resources to help develop these skills.

In this article, we’ll go over the definition of problem-solving activities, their main benefits, and examples that can be put into practice in the workplace.

What Are Problem-Solving Activities?

These activities require problem-solving skills, which help find solutions for difficult situations.

Like any other skill, these tactics are best learnt through practice.

To make problem-solving activities worth the ride, participants have to be open-minded, listen to others, and accept alternative ideas and solutions.

An agile mindset can also be beneficial when participating in such activities because they’re based on understanding, collaborating , learning and staying flexible.

As problem-solving games are group activities, participants must be willing to collaborate and embrace agility and flexibility.

Another critical aspect is creating the mindset that there are no winners or losers.

The goal of these activities is to share strategies and learn from each other, rather than compete against one another.

The Four P’s to Problem-Solving

By following the four P’s in the problem-solving guide, one can resolve almost any problem that comes along.

Problem-solving activities begin with a discovery phase, where the problem is identified.

This is the step where you understand, dissect, and learn about the problem you’re trying to solve.

Until the problem has been well defined, you can’t move forward and prepare to form the right solution.

After you’ve analysed the problem, you have to develop several courses of action to solve the issue.

This is the phase where you generate several possibilities to ultimately decide on the best course of action for your problem.

After the problem has been defined and resolutions have been listed, it’s time to take action.

This is the step where you find the best approach and implement a plan that needs to be followed with precision.

You need to first visualise your plan and then execute it.

When the problem has been solved, you need to evaluate the plan and assess whether it could be improved for future situations.

While you should do your best to solve the issue, the truth is that there is always room for growth.

Reviewing and checking for room for further improvement is essential because it can help you achieve even greater results in the future.

Benefits of Developing Problem-Solving Skills in the Workplace

Employees are often asked to think outside the box for projects or find alternative solutions for work problems.

Problem-solving tactics are a great way to practice valuable skills relevant in the workplace.

There are a lot of situations where processes and workflow in organisations need improvement. Or, when deadlines are tight, team members have to find ways to deliver on time.

These are the exact scenarios that can be overcome if the team is able to turn problems into actionable solutions.

After all, performance is closely related to employee efficiency as achieving companies’ goals on time is crucial to success.

Having team members with good problem-solving skills means they can use critical thinking to make better decisions and ultimately increase business productivity and growth.

There are a wealth of advantages that problem-solving activities can bring to teams.

Here are a few benefits you can expect from employees well equipped with problem-solving skills:

Better risk management

Simply put, risk management skills help people know what could go wrong, assess risks, and finally take action to solve an issue.

Some people are very good at handling risk, while others are afraid of risky situations.

Whichever way your team members are naturally inclined, problem-solving techniques are here to help.

Participating in problem-solving tasks trains the mind to handle stressful situations better.

It’s impossible to avoid risk, and this is why it’s essential to be confident that your team knows how to handle risk and turn it into opportunity.

Better thinking

Team problem-solving techniques stimulate better thinking by pushing people to find progressive alternatives.

Better thinking also develops analytical skills, which help people find logical explanations for problems and identify practical solutions.

Better communication skills

As mentioned earlier, problem-solving activities are group tasks that can only be performed if participants work together.

Humans are competitive by nature which can be problematic when trying to create a cohesive team. Problem-solving skills nurture understanding and collaboration within a company.

By solving problems together, employees learn how to better communicate and listen to others.

Having transparent and effective communication improves engagement and productivity and leads to better relationships .

Increased team cohesion

If your team already has good communication skills , this will likely lead to increased team cohesion .

Regardless of your business’s profile or size, success comes from having a united team.

Team cohesion reduces anxiety, brings motivation, and increases employee satisfaction.

Being on a cohesive team means that employees work together for the same goal, and everyone contributes to the group’s overall success.

People are social creatures, so it’s imperative that everybody feels heard, understood, and included.

Efficiency / increased productivity

Exercising problem-solving activities can boost performance and workplace productivity, leading to overall growth and profits.

Having solid problem-solving skills equips employees with the ability to find efficient solutions promptly.

By reducing the time spent solving specific problems, companies benefit from improved workplace productivity , leading to better profit margins.

Problem-solving activities foster creativity and encourage team members to express their ideas.

Creative thinkers know how to find the balance between analytical skills and innovative solutions, thus providing new perspectives.

No matter how well-established company processes are, there are always situations that require alternative ways of thinking.

Creative thinking skills boost people’s confidence in putting forth unique ideas.

List of the Top 22 Virtual Problem-Solving Activities

Virtual problem-solving activities for teams are meant to challenge participants to think outside the box and find solutions to problems while also having fun. Remember that these exercises should be playful and enjoyable.

Here is a list of virtual problem-solving activities that teams of any size can play:

• Dumbest Idea First
• Brainstorm Ideas
• End in Mind
• Stop, Start, Continue
• Idea Mock-Ups
• Be a Character
• Crossword Puzzles
• Online Escape Rooms
• Murder Mysteries
• Virtual Hackathons
• Treasure Hunts
• Moral Challenge
• Improv Games
• Poem/Story Challenge
• What Would You Do?
• Lost at Sea
• Coworker Feud
• Virtual Code Break
• War of the Wizards
• Ultimate Game Show

Online problem-solving activities can be played through video conferencing platforms, such as Zoom, Skype, Google Meet, Webex, etc.

Let’s take a closer look:

1. Dumbest Idea First

Dumbest Idea First, as the name suggests, is a problem-solving exercise in which participants are asked to think of the dumbest possible solutions to the problem presented.

After all ideas have been presented, look through the list.

You might be surprised to find that some ideas are not as dumb as first thought!

Helps with : creative problem-solving .

2. Brainstorm Ideas

One of the most common problem-solving activities is brainstorming ideas with your team.

Brainstorming ideas’ objective is to generate as many ideas as possible.

After the list is complete, team members review them and decide which is most suitable for the given scenario.

There are a lot of methods to aid the brainstorming process.

You can play word games, create a mood board, play improv games, or even doodle.

Helps with : lateral thinking.

3. End in Mind

The End in Mind technique is an excellent activity for solving group problems that require participants to start with the end.

In this exercise, you have to backtrack, finding solutions for the issue.

It challenges team members to think of the “what,” “why,” and “how” of a problem, thus coming up with alternative approaches.

Helps with : analytical thinking.

4. Stop, Start, Continue

“Stop, Start, Continue” is a technique used for delivering or requesting feedback.

This problem-solving activity consists of a list of three categories that each member has to think about:

• Stop: three things that the team should stop doing
• Start: three things that the team should start doing
• Continue: three things that the team should continue doing

This exercise aims to solve problems in new ways while also having fun.

Helps with : team cohesion, critical thinking.

5. Idea Mock-Ups

Idea mock-ups are processes in which solutions to problems are found via mock-ups.

It’s a virtual solving problem activity as you can use images from the internet that can be easily shared with the team members.

This exercise aims to have players try out a bunch of different scenarios until the perfect match for the problem is found.

6. Be a Character

Have you ever dreamed of being a character from a movie or a book? Then this is the perfect exercise for you.

By playing this group game, participants impersonate a character and approach problems through that person’s mindset.

Helps with : creativity , thinking outside the box.

7. Idea Trial

The Idea Trial is another fun virtual problem-solving activity that encourages participants to find solutions for a particular problem.

Players need to present their ideas to the “court.”

They can go through the entire process, such as opening and closing statements, and call witnesses to support their ideas.

Helps with : risk management, communication skills.

8. Crossword Puzzles

Everybody has heard of crossword puzzles, but not everyone has thought of transforming them into a virtual problem-solving activity.

All you have to do is use an online crossword puzzle to create a custom puzzle for your team.

To make it more exciting and engaging for your team, you should consider your company’s niche and your teammates’ interests.

Helps with : critical thinking.

9. Online Escape Rooms

Like in-person escape rooms, their online counterpart requires participants to escape rooms and work together to solve puzzles virtually.

Digital escape rooms provide two alternatives for players: either a Zoom room led by a host or from a specialised website.

These are significant virtual problem-solving activities that are both fun and challenging.

Helps with : cooperation, communication.

10. Murder Mysteries

Murder mysteries are story-based problem-solving activities that require participants to take on the roles of suspects and detectives.

The aim of the game is to identify the killer by searching for clues and occasionally solving small puzzles.

These group exercises are complex because they require players to be observant and search for hidden clues using logic.

Luckily for you, there are many options for playing murder mystery games online .

Helps with : observation, logical thinking.

11. Virtual Hackathons

Hackathons are events where a group of people pitch a product or service in a given period.

Even though it originated in the programming world, hackathons can be easily applied to any industry.

Virtual hackathons refer to the online version of these events, where participants work together via online meeting software to design solutions.

These are great virtual team problem-solving activities because they don’t require much organisational work.

You just have to announce the event’s theme, explain the problem when the hackathon begins, and set a timeline.

Helps with : efficiency, cooperation.

12. Treasure Hunts

Like escape rooms or murder mysteries, treasure hunts are group games that require players to find hidden objects by following a trail of clues.

Treasure hunts are fun problem-solving activities that teach participants how to collaborate and communicate with each other.

They can have specific themes or be a more general hunt.

Helps with : communication, cooperation.

13. Moral Challenge

While most group problem-solving activities focus more on finding alternative problem resolutions, moral challenges lean more towards ethics.

These group techniques are just as important as the others as not all problems are factual; some are ethical.

Moral challenge exercises are better played in a group because each participant can represent a different opinion or moral belief.

The moral issue becomes harder to resolve and implicitly forces team members to find common ground.

Moral challenges are equally important in decision-making processes as rational thinking.

Some of the most well-known moral challenges online are the Moral Machine or the Dilemma .

Helps with : communication skills.

14. Improv Games

Improv games have their roots in acting and comedy and are group activities designed around participants’ acting without a script, or improvising.

These problem-solving activities force players to keep the story going in an entertaining and logical way.

This kind of group exercise helps build collaborative skills while boosting team members’ confidence.

Helps with : collaboration, imagination.

15. Poem/Story Challenge

If most of the problem-solving activities mentioned are based on logical thinking, the poem/story challenge revolves around writing skills.

While not all businesses rely on this, it’s still an excellent exercise for groups, as it stimulates the imagination and improves public speaking.

All you have to do is ask participants to create a story or a poem using a limited word bank.

After they have crafted their stories, they read them aloud in front of the group.

Helps with : creativity, public speaking.

16. What Would You Do?

“What Would You Do?” is a hypothetical problem-solving activity that challenges your team to brainstorm ideas and react to different scenarios.

To play this game with your team members, prepare some problem-solving stories in advance, then read them one by one.

Participants have to say what they would do in these circumstances.

Helps with : lateral thinking, imagination.

17. Lost at Sea

Lost at Sea, also known as Stranded at Sea, is a team-building activity that encourages interaction and teamwork.

Give participants a scenario where they’re stranded on an island with just a handful of objects.

To increase their chances of survival, they need to rate the objects based on their utility.

Players should work individually first and then together to decide which objects are most important.

If multiple groups play this game, the moderator can ask each group to compare their individual and collective rankings.

They should also consider why any scores differ.

At the end of the game, players reflect and feedback on their choices.

Helps with : decision making, collaboration, critical thinking.

18. The Hunt

Its purpose is to challenge players to collaborate under pressure as they compete for glory.

This is a virtual problem-solving activity suitable for a business of any size.

It works best played in small teams of four or five, so players have the opportunity to interact with one another.

Helps with : team decision making, lateral thinking, creativity.

19. Coworker Feud

This game is a new take on the classic game show Family Feud, and it consists of multiple rapid rounds.

The players are asked to provide fast answers to a fun assortment of questions the host presents.

The aim is to guess the five most popular answers to win points for the round.

The team with the most points is declared the winner of the game.

Helps with : fast-thinking, communication.

20. Virtual Code Break

Virtual Code Break is a virtual team-building activity specially designed for remote players.

Its purpose is to challenge players to think outside the box, improve problem-solving skills, and leverage their own and each other’s skills.

This game uses an intelligent video conferencing solution so that teams of all sizes can play from anywhere globally.

Players compete against each other by answering trivia questions and solving riddles and puzzles.

Helps with : better thinking, collaboration.

21. War of the Wizards

War of the Wizards is a 90-minutes virtual team-building activity that promises to be both fun and creative.

To play this game, participants roleplay as powerful wizards to conquer evil forces through the power of storytelling.

They have to play mini-games and competitions, develop their characters, and make decisions together to win.

Helps with : teamwork, imagination.

22. Ultimate Game Show

In this 90-minute virtual event, players bond together as a team while playing different quizzes to win the final prize.

This competition works for hybrid teams, as well as for fully remote teams.

Helps with : collaboration, fast-thinking.

Plenty of organisations face daily challenges that affect team productivity and get in the way of attaining business goals.

While it’s impossible to avoid those situations, there are many ways to train team members to work collaboratively to resolve problems effectively.

Problem-solving activities act as educational tools that bring all participants closer as a team and help them develop problem-solving skills. By nurturing solution-generating capabilities, your team learns to communicate better, act fast in risky situations, and find creative solutions.

The virtual problem-solving activities listed in this article are excellent practices for real-life conflict resolution that can benefit everyone within an organisation.

Stefan is a Co-Founder and a President of Brosix. His many years experience as a programmer, give him an unique perspective to lead the team and build Brosix in a way to best serve the customers.

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Top 50 problem solving activities, games & puzzles for remote teams

Blockchain and Crypto / March 6, 2022 by admin

Here is a list of the top 50 problem solving activities, games & puzzles best suited for remote teams. Read on!

What are problem solving activities?

The success of a company or organization depends heavily on the managers’ ability to help workers develop their problem solving skills. Problem solving activities that address areas such as teamwork and cooperation, adaptability or reinforcement of decision-making strategies help.

All processes of problem solving begin with the identification of the problem. The team will then evaluate the possible course of action and select the best way to tackle it. This needs a profound understanding of your team and its core strengths.

Not only among corporates, but problem solving activities find their use in educational settings as well. Students who are good at solving problems will become much more successful than those who are not. Remote work and education are on the rise.

Enabling smooth interpersonal communication to solve problems can become a task in these situations. However, engaging all the people concerned in problem solving activities before shifting to the remote space can ease the process.

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Key skills evaluated in problem solving activities

Problem solving skills refer to the necessary thinking skills that an individual or group uses when met with a challenge. Many issues require the use of several skills; others are easy and may require only one or two skills. These are some skills that help to solve problems,

• Communication skills
• Decision-making skills
• Analytical thinking
• Negotiation skills
• Logical reasoning
• Persistence
• Lateral thinking

Problem solving skill examples

Several problems occur at the workplace. Problem solving skills can be technical problems that occur on websites or apps or addressing client concerns. Problems could be simple or complex. Business managers spend time and resources to solve problems.

They encourage their team to improve their analytical and logical abilities. Common issues in companies can be exploding data or changing technology, or financial management.

Did you know? Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in problem solving!

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Problem solving scenarios

Many problem solving scenarios occur at work. The basis to solve any problem is to evaluate and arrive at a solution. Analytical skill or problem solving ability is a skill many employers evaluate while hiring candidates.

Strong problem solving skills can be an asset to any organization. Organizations organize problem and solution activities to improve the problem solving abilities in the workplace.

1. Decision making games

Businesses are looking for new and innovative ways to stimulate their staff. Decision making games help employees to learn new skills and work effectively as a team. Decision making activities help to improve the creative problem solving and decision-making skills of the team. Here are some best Decision-making games,

1. Dumb Idea first – This game gives a hypothetical problem that could occur in your company. Ask each manager to think of the dumbest solution to the problem. After compiling the list of the ideas, the team reviews them.

You have a brainstorming session to make the “dumb ideas” feasible. This problem solving exercise underlines the importance of out-of-box thinking.

Benefits: Decision-making skill

Time duration: 10 to 15 minutes

Team size: 2 to more team managers

Material: Paper and pencil

2. Egg Drop Idea – The objective of the game is to build a container to protect the egg when dropped from a specified height using the material provided. Each team nominates a presenter who explains why the egg will survive the fall.

Once they have presented the idea, the team drops the egg to check if the idea has worked. Egg drop pyramid activities like the marshmallow challenge help teams to think on their feet.

Benefit: Decision-making skill and is a top problem solving skill example

Time duration: 15 – 30 minutes

Team size: 6 or more

Material: A cartoon of eggs, aprons to protect clothes, material for packing (cardboard, tape, elastics, plastic straws, etc.), material to clean up.

Instructions:

• Every team gets an egg and should choose from the building materials. 
• Grant everyone 20-30 minutes to build an egg carrier and guard against breaking. 
• Remove each egg carrier from a ledge (that is, over a balcony) to see which carrier prevents it from cracking. 
• If several eggs survive, continue to heighten until only one egg remains.

3. Dog, Rice, and Chicken – The dog, rice, and chicken game can be fun decision-making activities for adults. In this game, one team member plays the farmer, and the other team members are villagers who advise him. The farmer has to take three items chicken, dog, and rice across the river by boat.

There are the following constraints:- only one item can be carried on the boat. He cannot leave the chicken and dog alone because the dog will eat the chicken. He cannot leave the chicken alone with the rice because the chicken will eat the rice grains.

Benefit: creative problem solving examples that are applicable at work.

Time duration: 10-15 minutes.

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2. Teambuilding puzzle

Team building exercises are fun and creative ways to get your team to work together and improve problem solving skills.

1. Lost at Sea – In this game, you and your friends have chattered a yacht to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. Since you do not have any navigation experience, you hire a captain and a two-person crew. Unfortunately, the crew and captain die when a fire breaks out on the yacht.

The yacht is severally damaged and is sinking. You and your friends have managed to save 15 items and a lifeboat. Your task is to rank the 15 items while you are waiting to be rescued. The activity lost at sea team building underlines the importance of problem solving skills in the workplace.

Benefits: Team building exercise and interaction

Time duration: 30 to 40 minutes

Team size: 4 to 6

Material: Lost in sea ranking for interaction chart for each member

2. Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower – The marshmallow team-building activities have the goal of building the tallest tower as quickly as possible. To make the task more challenging the marshmallow is placed at the top of the tower. This is a fun puzzle activity for team building.

Benefit: Teambuilding puzzle

Time duration: 30 minutes

Material required: 20 sticks on raw uncooked spaghetti, a marshmallow, masking thread, and yarn of thread.

3. Go for Gold – This is an example of a marshmallow challenge similar to activities. The objective of this exercise is to create a structure using pipes, rubber tubing, and cardboard to carry a marble from point A to point B using gravity.

Benefit: team building problem solving scenario examples

Team size: Minimum 6 persons

Material required: Each member has different material

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3. Work Problem Solving

Work problem solving activities help to use the skills you used in problem solving activities in your workplace.

1. Create your own – this game aims to create a brand new problem solving activity for the organization. The team can brainstorm for 1 hour. After one hour each team has to give a presentation about their activity outlining the key benefits.

Benefit: Understanding the problem solving process. Build creativity, improve negotiation, and Decision-making skills

• When the participants arrive, you declare that they will create an original problem solving activity on their own, rather than spending an hour on an existing problem solving team-building exercise. 
• Divide members into teams and encourage them to develop a new problem solving team-building exercise that will fit well with the organization. The activity should not be one they have engaged in or heard of before.
• Every team has to show their new activity to everyone else after an hour and outline the main benefits.

2. Shrinking Vessel – make a shape on the floor using a rope where all the team members can fit. Reduce the size every 10 -15 minutes. The real challenge for the team is figuring out how to work together and keep everyone together.

Benefits: Adaptability and cognitive diversity

Material: Rope and large room

• Place on the floor a big circle of rope. Position your whole team inside the circle. 
• Lessen the circle size steadily. When it gets smaller, advise the team to keep the entire team inside the circle. Nobody must move out of the loop. See how small you can make the area until it cannot remain inside.

3. Legoman – the team is divided into groups of two or more people. Select an impartial individual who will make a structure in 10 minutes. Each team will compete to recreate it in fifteen minutes. Only one person is allowed to see the structure. They need to communicate vital parameters like color, shape, and size.

Benefits: Communication

Tools: Lego

4. What Would X Do – This problem solving activity stimulates teams to think of new ideas.

• Benefits: Instant problem solving
• Time Duration: 10-15 minutes
• Materials Required: N/A
• Let every team pretend to be someone famous. 
• Every team needs to address the issue as if they were a famous person. Which are the choices they would consider? How will they do this? 
• It helps all to consider options they may not have initially thought of.

Tip: Before you decide, a problem is worth solving, weigh the risks of solving it versus not solving it. 

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4. Team building riddles

Team building riddles are a great way to show the team group problem solving is usually more effective.

1. Barter puzzle – the team is broken into groups. Give each team a different jigsaw puzzle to solve. The groups have to complete the puzzle at the same time. The twist in the game is that some pieces of their puzzle belong to other puzzles.

The goal is to complete the puzzle before the other teams. Each group has to come with their method to convince other teams to handover the pieces they need, either by bartering pieces or donating time to the other teams. This puzzle piece team-building activity helps teams to collaborate.

Benefit: Team building and negotiating.

Material: Jigsaw puzzle for each team

Time: 30 minutes

2. Scavenger Hunt – in this game, each team has a list of the article to locate and bring back. The goal of the game is to finish the assigned list first. In the scavenger hunt, the team has a time limit to make the game more challenging. You have the flexibility of having the hunt outside or within the premises. The team-building puzzle game helps the team to look for creative solutions.

3. Escape – the goal is to solve clues and find the key to unlock the door in a limited time. Hide the key and a list of clues around the room. The team has 30 to 60 minutes to figure out the clues and unlock the door.

Benefit: Team building exercise

Material: Rope, key, lockable room, 5 to 10 puzzles

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5. Work together problems

Work together on problems helps to underline the need to collaborate while solving issues at work. Group challenge activities help the team work well together.

1. Bonding belt – each group is divided into 5 to 6 participants, who are bound together with rope or tape so that their movements are limited. The team has to reach from point A to point B, and the time is recorded. The teams collaborate to beat their previous score.

Benefits: Helps the team to collaborate and skills for problem solving scenario/

Time: 20 to 30 minutes

Material: Cling film, belt, or rope

2. Scramble puzzle – the team members with blindfolds sit in a circle with the puzzle. The teammate without the blindfold sits outside the circle, with their back to the group. The blindfolded group tries to assemble the pieces of the puzzle. The outsider who has the same puzzle gives the team instructions to solve it.

Benefits: trust, leadership, and communication

Material: Preschool-level puzzles and blindfolds.

3. Flip it over – this is a classic work-together problem. In this game, 6 to 8 participants stand together on a blanket/towel/tarp. The challenge is to flip over the blanket or reverse it. The rule is that none of the participants can leave the blanket.

Benefit: Work together exercise

Duration: 30 minutes

Material: Blanket

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6. Team building survival games

Team building survival games helps to fine-tune problem solving scenarios that may occur at work. The activities encourage creative problem solving and decision making.

1. Stranded – Stranded helps in building effective communication. In this setting, the team is stranded in an office. The rooms will be locked, and doors and windows cannot be broken down. The team is asked to make a list of 10 items that they need to survive.

They need to rank items in the order of their importance. The team has to agree on the items and the order. Stranded is one of several popular survival team-building exercises.

Benefit: Team building and Decision-making exercises

• Your team is stuck inside the building. Doors are closed, so there is no option to kick down the doors or smash the windows.
• Grant the team 30 minutes to determine what ten things they need to thrive in the office and list them in order of importance.
• The goal of the game is to get everyone to agree in 30 minutes about the ten things and their ranking.

2. Minefield – you randomly place items around the room or hallway and there is no clear path from one end of the room to another. The team is divided into pairs. One team member is blindfolded, and the other team member is the guide.

The guide navigates the blindfolded person across the minefield. The two partners cannot touch. This survival team-building activity underlines the need for clear communication.

Benefits: Communication and collaborative problem solving

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Material: Blindfold, empty room or hallway, and collection of random items.

3. Frostbite – in this survival scenario team-building exercise the team is trapped in Siberia. Each team has to elect a team captain. The team has to build a storm shelter with the material provided.

The twist in the game is the team captains cannot help physically since they have frostbite. Other team members are suffering snow blindness and are blindfolded. The electric fan will be turned on in 30 minutes to see if the shelter built will survive the storm.

Benefit: Leadership, skills action plan, and team building survival games

Team size: 4 to 5 members

Material: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

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7. Group decision making games

Group decision making games help encourage creative problem solving and decision making at work. Here is a bunch of group decision making games

1. Reverse Pyramid – the team members stand in a pyramid shape. The next step is to flip the base and apex of the pyramid. The limiting factor in only three persons can move.

Benefits: Group Decision-making and collaboration

2. Tower of Hanoi – in this game, there are three towers/posts/rods with 5 or more discs arranged conical shape with the smallest shape at the top. The objective of the game is to move the entire stack to another location retaining the shape. Some conditions of the games are only one disc can be moved at a time. Only the top disc can be moved. Another rule of the game is larger disc cannot be put on a smaller disc.

Benefits: This team-building exercise helps problem solving within the participants.

3. Human Knot – the team stands in a circle every person holds hands with a person not standing next to them. When everyone is cross-connected, the aim is to untangle the structure without letting go of anybody’s hand.

Benefit: group problem solving

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8. Funny problem solving games

We need to solve problems for personal and professional lives. Funny problem solving exercises are a light way. Funny problem solving can help reduce stress levels.

1. Pencil drop – in the pencil drop challenge, one end of the pencil is tied to a pencil and the other is tied around the waist of a team member. The other team member puts the pencil into the bottle placed below. The participants are not allowed to use their hands.

Benefit: Team bonding

Team size: 2 members each

Material: Some pencil and bottle

2. Blind drawing – this game requires two players to sit back to back. One participant describes an image in front of them without giving stating anything obvious. The other participant needs to draw it using the description. The outcome can be fun.

3. Be the character – in this activity, you pretend to be an imaginary character while trying to solve a problem. This game gives a unique perspective on your solution and whether the solution is feasible for other members.

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9. Group problem solving activities for adults

Group problem solving activities are very efficient, especially for adults. These can be used in any setting to enhance problem solving skills. 

1. Human Knots

• Benefits: Communication skills, collaboration
• Time Duration: 10 – 15 minutes.

This is one of the most straightforward group problem solving activities that can be done with any group. It facilitates communication and critical thinking in the face of a challenging and complex question. Various group members will possibly suggest a variety of solutions, and each will need to be reviewed and adopted by the organization as a whole.

• Have the group stand in a small circle (make several circles when you are a larger group). Every person in the loop will hold the hands of 2 other people who are not directly next to them. That would make a messy crossed arms knot.
• Ask the group to disentangle themselves without moving their hands at any point in time. They may be unable to disentangle completely to form a circle again. Still, they would have begun to work together to solve the problem by the end of the activity.

2. Frostbite 

• Benefits: Leadership, decision-making, trust, adaptability
• Time Duration: 30 minutes.
• Materials Required: An electric fan, blindfold, simple building materials like cardboard paper, rubber bands, toothpicks, masking tape, straws, sticky notes, etc.

Your group is trapped in the barren deserts of Siberia, and a sudden winter storm is approaching. You have to create a shelter with only the materials in hand that can survive the storm’s harsh winds. The leader of your expedition was afflicted with frostbite in both hands, sadly, and all the others experience severe snow blindness.

• Divide the group into clusters of 4-5. Every group will have to elect a chief. 
• Group leaders are not allowed to use their hands to support the group in any way, and group members should be blindfolded during the exercise. 
• The groups have 30 minutes to build a small tent structure that can withstand the wind from the fan’s highest location. 

3. Dumbest Idea First

• Benefits: Critical thinking, creative problem solving, quick problem solving
• Time Duration: 15 – 20 minutes
• Materials Required: Pen or pencil, a piece of paper.

Dumbest Idea First is one of the most creative problem solving activities for groups. This can encourage your creativity by thinking out of the box and lead you to ideas that would typically sound too insane to work. You can broaden the possibilities by looking at these crazy solutions first, and find potential alternatives that might not be as obvious.

• Present your team with a question. It could be a real-world dilemma facing the group, or it could be a created scenario. For example, your company attempts to beat a rival to win a high-paying customer contract, but the customer bends to your competitors. You have a short period before they make the final decision to change their mind.
• With the given question, advise your group to come up with the dumbest ideas to tackle the issue. Anything can be written down. 
• After each person has put forward a few ideas, go through the list, and analyze each plan to see which are the most feasible. List them from the highest level of feasibility to the lowest level.  

4. Wool Web 

• Benefits: Leadership, communication
• Time Duration: 30 minutes
• Materials Required: Some balls of yarn.

As hard as replicating the magnitude of the real-world problems is, that is no excuse not to try! Wool web creates a dilemma that appears complicated at first, but groups will learn to break down complicated challenges into solvable problems one move at a time.

This happens by using the right strategy and working together. Undoubtedly, this is one of the most stimulating problem solving activities for adults.

• Split the group into similarly large teams. Every time, it receives a yarn ball. 
• Tell each team to turn the yarn ball into a vast web. Give them around 5-10 minutes to do this. When done, rotate all the teams so that every team is on a yarn web they have not set up. 
• Every group must choose one person to untangle the web. That individual would be blindfolded and be guided by the rest of the team on how to unwind the web using only verbal instructions. The first team to achieve it wins the game.

5. Tallest Tower 

• Benefits: Creative thinking, collaboration
• Materials Required: 1 bag of marshmallows, one packet of uncooked spaghetti.

Simple building projects can help group members create strategies to overcome box issues. Tallest Tower is another one of the most creative problem solving activities. Groups will compete with only two materials to make the tallest tower in a fixed period.

• Divide the group into two, which have an equal number of players. Provide 20 – 30 uncooked spaghetti noodles and 3-4 marshmallows to every team. 
• Groups must compete in the provided period to build the tallest tower using only the materials supplied. A marshmallow has to be set at the top of the tower.

Also Read: Struggling with blockchain – find an expert blockchain analyst now!

10. Problem solving activities for students

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for students and kids,

1. Brainstorm Bonanza – Brainstorm Bonanza is one of the best problem solving activities for students. As a teacher, making your students create lists relevant to something you are teaching at the moment can be a fantastic way to help them expand their knowledge of a subject when learning to solve problems.

• Benefits: Problem solving
• Materials Required: Pen and paper

1. If you are discussing a real, current, or fictional occurrence that did not work out well, let your students imagine ways that the protagonist or participants might have produced a better, more favorable result.

2. They can brainstorm independently or in groups. 

2. Clue Me In – this is one of the most enjoyable problem solving games. It facilitates logical thinking and cognitive development.

• Benefits: Cognitive development, logical thinking
• Time Duration: 20 minutes
• Materials Required: A bag, clues, items as necessary
• Select a collection of things relating to a specific occupation, social phenomenon, historical incident, object, etc.
• Assemble individual objects (or pictures of things) commonly linked to the target response.
• Place all of them in a bag (five-10 clues ought to be enough).
• Then, have a student reach into the bag and take out clues one by one.
• Select a minimum number of clues to draw before they make their first guess (two-three).
• After that, the student should guess, pulling each clue until they think it is right.
• See how quickly the student can solve the riddle.

3. Survivor Scenario – Create a hypothetical situation that allows students to think creatively to make it through. One example may be being stuck on an island, realizing that three days of help would not come.

The community has a small amount of food and water and has to establish shelter from the island’s objects. This would undoubtedly be one of the fascinating problem solving activities for students.

• Benefits: Logical thinking, collaboration
• Encourage working together as a group.
• Listen to each student who has an idea about making it safe and secure across the three days.

4. Moral Dilemmas – Create several potential moral dilemmas that your students can face in life, write down, and place each object in a bowl or container. These things may include items like, “I’ve seen a good friend of mine shoplifting. What is it that I would do?” or “The cashier gave me an additional $1.50 in change after I purchased candy from the shop. What is it that I would do?”

• Benefits: Logical thinking
• Time Duration: 5 minutes per student
• Materials Required: Container, bits of paper with moral dilemmas written
• Ask every student to draw an item from the bag one after the other and read it aloud. 
• They must then tell the class the response on the spot as to how they would handle the situation.

5. Problem solving box – this is an activity that will help on both cognitive and emotional levels for students. 

• Benefits: Logical thinking, decision making
• Materials Required: Box, paper, pen
• Have your students design and decorate a medium-sized box with a top slot. Name it as the “Problem Solving Box.”
• Invite students to write down anonymously and apply any concerns or problems they may have at school or at home, which they do not appear to be able to work out on their own.
• Let a student draw one of the things from the box once or twice a week, and read it aloud.
• Finally, as a group, let the class work out the best way students can approach the problem and eventually solve it.

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11. Problem solving activities for kids

Below is a bunch of problem solving activities for kids,

1. Puzzle-solving – Solving puzzles is one of the best problem solving activities for kids out there. Essentially, every puzzle is a big collection of muddled-up items to figure out and bring back together again.

Kids must be introduced to puzzles with regularity. These are useful for improving skills in reasoning. The best kinds to choose from are wooden puzzles with a wooden frame. They last long, and the structure serves as the foundation to direct children during construction. 

• Benefits: Reasoning skills
• Time Duration: Varies
• Materials Required: Puzzles according to the age level

Instructions: 

• Show the kids a demo of how a particular puzzle can be solved. 
• Then, let them choose a puzzle of their liking from the available choices. 
• Ask them to solve their chosen puzzles. 

2. Memory Games – Memory games will improve memory and attention to detail for your child. 

• Benefits: Attention to detail
• Materials Required: Matching pairs of images
• Using matching pairs of images and turn them all face down, shuffled, on a table.
• Take turns to pick any two cards, and face them on the table.
• You hold the cards if you turn over a similar pair, and if the pair does not match, turn the cards over before it is your turn to try again. 
• A teacher/parent must encourage the kids to concentrate on where the pictures are, and seek to find a matching pair on each turn.

3. Building games – Construction toys like building blocks, wooden blocks, or legos should be a staple in a kid’s home every day. Playing with them is one of the most fun problem solving activities for kids. Anything that your child builds is a challenge as it involves thinking about what to create and how to put together the parts to get a workable and usable design. 

• Benefits: Decision making
• Materials Required: Construction toys.

1. Let your child build a challenge openly and often, and ask him/her to build a particular structure, with conditions. For instance:

• Create two towers with a bridge that connects them.  
• Create a creature that stands alone and has three arms.

2. Observe how your child uses trial-and-error before finding a way to bring the idea into motion.

4. Tic-Tac-Toe – this is an excellent game for teaching decision-making skills. It encourages kids to think before they act and weigh the potential consequences. 

• Materials Required: Pencil, paper
• Draw a simple tic-tac-toe table on paper or chalkboard.
• Take turns to add a nought or a cross to the table to see who is the first to make a line of three.
• Your kid will likely catch on in no time before placing their symbol and start thinking carefully.
• Coloured counters or different items can be used to play this game as well.

5. Building a Maze – This activity is fun and fits for any age. It will also be a lot more enjoyable than doing a maze in an activity book, particularly for younger kids. 

• Materials Required: Chalk
• Draw a big maze with jumbo chalk on the paving. Make passages, including one or two, which end in an impasse. Teach your kid how to get out of it.  
• Make the maze more complicated and add more dead-end passages as your child gets better at figuring out a path and finding the way out.

Also Read: Developing a blockchain – hire an expert blockchain developer now!

What is a problem solving process?

When a team or person faces an issue or obstacle, it can be tempting to quickly track a potential solution and set up a fast fix. This could happen without understanding the complexity of the problem and pursuing a systematic approach to seeking a solution.

The attempts to address issues or obstacles may become unstructured and frustrating without a consistent method. End-to-end processes for problem solving offer a mechanism for a community to tackle any size or nature, and see results. Problem solving activities for adults, kids, and students can help make the problem solving process very useful.

Army problem solving process

There are 7 steps to problem solving army model,

• Recognize and define the problem – The first step army problem solving process is defining the problem precisely and determining the root cause.
• Gather facts and make assumptions – You need to gather all information you have at your disposal. Common resources for information may be documentation and policies. Assumptions are unsubstantiated facts. Use facts rather than assumptions when you need to analyze the scope of the problem.
• Generate alternatives – One of the key steps in military problem solving is finding ways to solve the problem. Ideally, it best to have multiple approaches to solve the problem. Take input from peers and subordinates if possible.
• Analyze possible solutions – Analyze each possible solution with advantages and disadvantages. You evaluate each solution according to screening and feasibility criteria. Reject the solution when it fails in the screening process.
• Compare Alternatives – Another crucial step in the army problem solving model is to evaluate alternatives for cost and benefits. You need to consider your experience and immediate future. Tabulating each solution with the pros and cons will help clear the picture.
• Make an executive your decision – Make a decision and prepare an action plan, and put it in motion.
• Assess the result – You need to monitor the implementation of the plan and modify it if required. Establishing critical steps and milestones will help to ensure success.

Army problem solving games

• Capture the flag – the game helps in team building and army problem solving. Two teams compete against one another to retrieve a flag or object from the opposing team camp base and get into their camp base. This game is flexible, and ground rules need to be set before the game starts.
• Paintball – Paintball is a fun military problem solving activity. You can have many modifications and variations of the paintball game. The aim is to fire paint pellets at the opposing team. Laser tag is another variation of the game.
• Firing blind – Firing blind is a game where each team has a large number of water balloons. At the other end of the field has to hit the target is protected by a tarp from direct firing. The team has to hit the target that is covered. One team member acts as the observer and directs the team to hit the target with the water balloons.

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Obstacles to problem solving

Problem solving can take time and patience, one of the best ways to solve any problem is pausing and evaluating the problem. Obstacles to problem solving are,

• Misdiagnosis – Misdiagnosis is a common problem can occur due to preconceived idea, biases or judgments. Defining and having a concrete understanding of the problem is the first step in the problem solving activity. This can be difficult. If you are not careful, you may spend your time and resources solving the wrong problem and finding the wrong solution.
• Communication bias – Communication barriers are caused when we are unable to explain the problem to the team, or presuming we know more than everyone else. Everyone on the team must be on the same page. You may need to acknowledge you have a limited understanding of the problem.
• Solution bias – A common obstacle in problem solving is thinking there may be a universal solution or thinking the same solution can solve multiple problems. You need to evaluate a problem independently than try to force-fit a solution that worked previously.
• Cognitive bias – One of the barriers to finding an effective solution is cognitive bias, or the tendency to jump to conclusions. To find solutions fast firms often end up with an irrelevant solution. This may cause more problems down the line.
• Lack of empathy – Every problem is associated with human emotions or abilities. It is important to identify and recognize people affected by the problem or it will be difficult to find a solution that will solve help.

Also Read: Developing an NFT – hire an expert NFT developer now!

Famous virtual problem solving software

Traditionally watercoolers chat is a great way to bring people together and help team members interact with one another. A virtual water cooler has a similar concept where people interact in a similar virtual setting or a dedicated virtual room. It allows remote teams to bond. Software that offers virtual water coolers services,

• unremot.com – provides users with a unique water cooler experience. The app provides unique solutions to remote teams.
• Microsoft Teams
• Informal Whatsapp group
• Donut over slack channels

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18 virtual team building activities and games

This isn’t academic theory or some stuff we just made up. This is how real remote teams have fun and stay connected.

5-second summary

• Building bonds between teammates is extra-important when you’re in remote or hybrid mode, as a growing body of research confirms.
• Whether an activity is just for fun or helps move your work forward, taking time to help your virtual team to get to know each other is an investment that pays dividends in team cohesion and performance.
• We collected a list of activities used by real teams at Atlassian that can help virtual teams get to know each other as people and colleagues.

The bad news: team building is a lot more challenging when all or some of your people are working remotely. Try as you might, you just can’t do trust falls over Zoom. (Also, no one likes trust falls anyway.)

The good news: we have a trove of the best virtual team building activities to share with you. These are the same super-creative, road-tested, remote-team-approved activities that we use here at Atlassian.

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What is virtual-team building?

Virtual team building means creating human-to-human connections between your remote team members. Forging these bonds not only promotes team harmony, it can also help streamline communication and increase productivity.

Distributed eam bonding is a topic that matters deeply to us. We have a  Team Playbook  of exercises and workshops to help teams work better together (not to mention a guide to hybrid meetings for when it’s time to get down to business). It’s important to take time out to build connections while having fun, too. And, as a company of several thousand people distributed across five continents, we’ve had plenty of chances to act as test subjects for both flavors of virtual team-building activities.

Keep your virtual team connected with these proven rituals

How do you do team building virtually.

The best way to connect remote teams is to help them feel seen and heard, literally, and in ways that directly address the challenges of a dispersed workforce.

In mid-2020, we ran a survey on remote work , which uncovered the real-world complications we’re all facing with distributed work: feeling that our work is “invisible,” navigating new barriers to organic collaboration, and having less access to our managers. When we ran a similar survey in 2021 , we found that, although some of the initial challenges we faced have eased up a bit, teams are still struggling with belonging and cohesion.

The common thread here is that working from home can be lonely. Spending less time in an office environment means fewer built-in opportunities to form social bonds and build trust with colleagues. That can lead to disengagement, which, in turn, can lead to poor performance on the job.

That’s no small deal. In fact, 94 percent of  workers we surveyed  said that mutual respect and connection were critical to their team’s success, and 19 percent said it’s the most important factor in their sense of well-being at work. Understanding each other on a personal level means we can communicate more effectively and have an easier time distributing roles and responsibilities across the team.

So how can teams overcome these hurdles?

Tools of the trade

We use Trello boards as sort-of a virtual whiteboard, Slack as our chat tool, and Zoom for video conferencing. You’ll need at least one of these tools (or their equivalent) for each of the activities shared here.

Fun remote team building activities for any occasion

Choose what’s right for your team based on these categories:

Real-time vs. asynchronous – Do you need to do this simultaneously, or can each person participate at whatever time works best for them?

Practical vs. just for fun – Is the activity intentionally unproductive (which is not necessarily a bad thing), or does it serve the dual purpose of building social bonds and improving the way you work in a more tangible way?

18 ideas for virtual team games and activities

1. don’t overlook the classic: icebreaker questions 🧊.

Type: real-time, just for fun, on the regular

Time: 5 minutes

Tools required: video conferencing

Before you roll your eyes and go “Duh … like I hadn’t already thought of that,” understand that some of our distributed teams (my own included) do an icebreaker at the start of our team meetings every week. Even though we’ve been working together for a couple of years and feel pretty connected already, there are always more interesting tidbits to learn about each other. Some recent favorites include:

• Who was the last artist you searched for on your music streaming service of choice?
• What are your parents’ best qualities?
• Put these morning routine items in order: breakfast, coffee/tea, open up your laptop.
• What was something that always frightened you as a child?

Small talk at work has big benefits

2. have an online lunch date 🍱.

Time: 60 minutes

This one comes from the engineering team that built the Trello app for Android. Once a month, the team links up via video conferencing over lunchtime. Team members can even expense up to $25 so they can join from their favorite cafe, order delivery, or cook up a little something special at home (because, real talk: heating up leftovers gets old).

Only have 15-30 minutes to spare? No worries. Virtual coffee chats and virtual happy hours are fun variations on this activity.

3. Socialize over group chat 💬

Type: asynchronous, just for fun, on the regular

Time: varies

Tools required: Slack, Teams, or other group chat app

Group chat is an ideal way for distributed teams to stay in touch, but who says you have to keep it strictly business? Pre-pandemic, Atlassian set up a channel in Slack called #social-remote where we remote workers (which is now pretty much all of us), talk about what we had for lunch, compare notes on standing desks, share articles related to remote work, and generally discuss anything but the projects we’re working on.

There are even off-shoot channels for cities or states where clusters of “Remote-lassians” live. Let’s just say that more than a few hot-dish recipes have been swapped in the #minnesota channel.

4. Have a messy-desk photo contest 📸

When you work in an office, you feel compelled to keep your desk at least minimally clean: no used tissues, three-day old cereal bowls, or constellations of coffee rings.

But when you work from home, there’s no such social contract to uphold. So one of our rituals in the #social-remote Slack channel is “messy desk Thursdays” in which we out ourselves for the abysmal state of our workstations while the ROTFL 🤣and 🤦🏽‍♀️ facepalm emojis fly fast and thick.

It’s also a chance for your preternaturally tidy teammates to do some humble bragging about their austere, magazine-worthy office spaces.

5. How do you make online meetings fun? Presents 🎁

Type: real-time, just for fun, one-hit wonder

Tools required: video conferencing, Trello board

Whether your team prefers white elephant style or something more thoughtful, you can pull off a gift exchange even if you’re not at an offsite. Start by copying this handy Trello board template and inviting your teammates to join. It has full instructions in the “Rules” column, but here’s the gist. Each team member buys a gift that can be shipped easily. Instead of announcing what the gift is, you’ll add a card to the board with a picture and title that provides a hint.

During the game, you’ll take turns clicking on cards to reveal what the gift is. Once you turn over a card, you’ve claimed that gift. You’ll also get chances to steal a gift someone else has already claimed. After the game is over, mail the gift you contributed to the person who ended up with it.

6. Teach people how to work with you with “My User Manual” 📋

Type: asynchronous, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Tools required: Keynote or PowerPoint

When you’re just forming as a team, or when a new member joins, it’s worth taking the time to share your personal workstyle. Do you prefer chat or email? What time of day do you do your best heads-down deep work? Are you cool with impromptu video calls? Check out this example from the CEO at CultureAmp:

Inspired? So were we. That’s why we created the My User Manual play, where you’ll find instructions on how to run this exercise in your team. Set up a meeting to review everyone’s “user manuals” in real-time, or share the decks so people can review them asynchronously. Either way, collect the decks in a central repository where future team members can access them.

7. Expand your professional skill sets together with “Learning Circles” 📚

Type: real-time, fun but practical, on the regular

Time: 30-60 minutes

Tools required: video conferencing, study materials as needed

It’s easy to get so caught up in executing on your work that you forget to expand your horizons, especially when working from home with no office banter happening around you. Plus, remote work can be isolating if you don’t make a point to connect with your teammates on a personal level.

Our Learning Circle play can address both issues. Choose a topic related to your work that you want to learn more about – anything from SQL to leadership styles to trends in recruiting practices – and find colleagues who share that interest. Each month, gather over video conference to discuss a book or article, or have someone in the group give a short presentation. The best part about learning circles is that you can extend them beyond your immediate team and connect with people across the entire organization.

8. Take your team’s pulse with “Health Monitor” 🩺

Tools required: video conferencing, Confluence, or Google Docs

Health Monitor is a variation on the classic agile retrospective. It prompts you to examine how you’re working together, instead of what you’re working on.

Through extensive research, we identified eight attributes that healthy, high-performing teams tend to have in common, then developed the Health Monitor as a framework for assessing how your team is doing in each area. Do you have the right balance of skills on the team? Are you making decisions effectively? Do you understand the dependencies around your work? Here’s a one-minute overview, staring yours truly.

Although this activity was not designed specifically for remote teams, it’s amazingly beneficial. When your team doesn’t sit shoulder-to-shoulder, it feels easier to sweep issues under the rug rather than address them head-on.

But little problems have a way of growing larger while you’re not looking, and eventually, you’ve got a crisis on your hands. Health Monitor prevents this by prompting teams to self-assess on a regular basis and keep their weaknesses from becoming full-blown liabilities.

9. You can’t have Nerf wars, but you still have .gif battles 💥

Time: 15-30 min

If you’ve ever been jealous of the Nerf dart wars waged by your co-located colleagues and friends, you’ll love .gif battles. Copy this Trello board template and invite your teammates to join it. (Click on the “How it works” card to see full instructions for the game.)

The game consists of four rounds, each with its own theme. You’ll use Giphy.com or Google Images to find a .gif that fits with the theme for that round and attach that gif to a card. Once everyone has their .gifs in, you’ll vote on the round’s best submission. At the end, the person who wins the most rounds will be crowned the Ultimate .Gif Battle Champion of All Time™. Just think of the glory! Don’t be afraid to add a tiebreaker round if needed.

10. Uncover your superpowers 🦸🏽

Type: real-time, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Time: 30 min individual prep, 60 min as a team

If you think “water cooler moments” unlock creativity, you’re focusing on the wrong thing

If you’re ready to go beyond surface-level connections with your team, this is the activity for you. Each person will prepare for the session by taking an online strength finder assessment such as Clifton Strengths . During the group session, everyone hops on a video call and takes turns sharing their results.

When my team did this, each person shared top three strengths, lowest-ranked strength, and something in our results that surprised us. Then we’d discuss as a group how that person’s top strengths contribute to the team already, and how we could make even better use of them.

This is an intensely personal activity. You’re going to feel a bit vulnerable and exposed, so it works best if there’s already a sense of psychological safety amongst teammates. But because you’re discussing each other’s strengths, the conversation tends to be very positive and affirming. Chances are, everyone will walk away with a deeper sense of belonging and an understanding of the unique value they bring to the team.

11. “How you doin’?” 👋🏽

Time: 5 min

(This one is so much better if you say the words “How you doin’?” in a low, Jersey mobster voice – think Sal from “The Sopranos.” But I digress… ) The team that looks after the Atlassian Community website and our user groups added this five-minute ritual to the beginning of their weekly team meetings.

The board they use to track agenda items includes a space for each person to add a card representing how they’re feeling that week. Maybe they’re struggling with something in their personal life and are a bit low-energy. Maybe they finally ran that 10k over the weekend and are PUMPED for the week ahead. It’s an easy way for teammates to let each other know when they might need some extra support or patience, or when they’ve got good vibes to spare.

12. Make sweet music together 🎶

Tools required: Spotify or Google Play, Slack or other group chat app

Raise your hand if you and your remote teammates talk about music. (Thought so. Pretty much everyone does.) The content team at Trello is no different… but they’ve gone next-level with it. Using Spotify, they create collaborative playlists that anyone on the team can listen to and help curate.

Try creating an upbeat, “get $#!t done” playlist, a soothing “de-stress” playlist, or any other theme that suits your team.

13. DIY boba tea 🧋

Type:  real-time, just for fun, one-hit wonder

Time:  2 hrs

Tools required:  video conferencing, kitchen

Y’know how boba tea (sometimes called bubble tea) costs like $6 at a retail shop? It sounds overpriced until you realized how labor-intensive it is! About 50 members of our marketing team learned this first-hand when we did a virtual boba-making session. Each participant received a kit containing all the ingredients (we used this one ). Then, an expert guided the whole group through the process – it really does take two hours to make a batch! But that provided plenty of time for icebreakers and general chit-chat while ingredients cooked and/or cooled.

14. The fellowship of the traveling plush toy 📦

Type:  asynchronous, just for fun, on the regular

Time:  varies

Tools required:  Slack or other group chat app

A cross between the gnome prank in Amélie and the Flat Stanley craze, this ongoing activity yields months of fun. Choose a plush toy or doll that will be easy to pack up and mail – we had a custom plush made in the shape of our logo, and named it “Ace” – and set up a rotation so it travels between team members. When it’s your turn, use your chat channels to share photos of the plush hanging out with you, then pack it back up and mail it to the next person after a week or so.

15. Birds of a feather read books together 🤓

Type:  real-time, just for fun, on the regular

Time:  30-60 min for discussion; reading time varies

Tools required: video conferencing, Slack or other group chat app

Calling all bookworms! If you’re like me, then you know that the only thing better than reading a good book is discussing it with friends. Or, in this case, colleagues who also enjoy books (which, really, is pretty close to friends anyway).

Our brand content team runs a casual book club where the only parameter is that the books we choose must have nothing to do with our jobs. We use a Slack app called Polly to vote on book selections and when to meet over Zoom (and drinks) to talk about it.

16. Monday JAMM sessions 📆

Time:  5 min

Tools required: Slack or other group chat app

“So, how was your weekend?” The Atlassian brand and events teams took this time-honored Monday morning question into the virtual world by sharing stories and photos from their weekend over chat – but with a twist. To help put themselves in the best mental space possible for the week ahead, they focus on sharing the most positive and rejuvenating aspects of their weekend that will help them power through the week. Each entry starts with JAMM, which means “just another manageable Monday.” For example, “JAMM because I got to an amazing hike on Saturday!” Think of it as part gratitude practice , part pep-talk. It’s been such a hit that it’s spread to other teams, too!

17. Enneagrams for everybody 🥸

Type:  real-time, fun but practical, one-hit wonder

Time:  2+ hours

How well do you really know each of your teammates? Take time out for a deep dive into your personalities by using the Enneagram system . You’ll walk away with a better understanding of what makes everyone tick, and you’ll probably get some juicy insights into your own personality as well. (I sure did!)

Unlike finding your Myers-Briggs type or your zodiac sign, Enneagram asks you to self-identify your personality type based on the descriptions for each one. From there, you can explore how to best get along and communicate with other types. It’s a self-awareness + team harmony win-win.

18. A lightning round of mini-games 🕹

Time:  1-2 hours

Game apps for tools like Zoom and WebEx can be a ton of fun. (Hot tip for Zoom users: try the Kahoot! trivia app .) It’s a great way to add extra flavor to your virtual team lunches or kill a few minutes while you’re waiting for people to trickle in at the start of a meeting.

Now go forth and bond!

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23 Problem-solving games for busy work teams

Problem solving is a skill that can serve almost anyone, in any role, in any industry. The ability to think critically, and resolve issues is a welcome talent that is helpful for every organization. How can you encourage such thinking in your team? In this article, we are talking about our favorite problem-solving games, activities, and exercises for work. Use these activities to sharpen the reasoning and decision-making skills of your department or your entire company. Without further ado, let’s dive into the best problem solving games for getting the most of your next work event. 

In-person problem solving games

If you have the opportunity to get your team together in person, that’s a gift! Perhaps you are planning a company retreat or a department-wide in-person meeting. Whatever the circumstances, in today’s more digital workspace, it’s not always easy to have everyone in the same room. When you actually do, make the most of it! These activities are set up for in-person groups. They are part team-building activity, part icebreaker, and all fun! All of these activities are guaranteed to get people thinking, communicating, and having fun. If you have a particularly big group, you may want to browse our article on large group games too. 

1. Treasure hunt

Similar to a scavenger hunt, a treasure hunt is a lot of fun but with a bit more intention. Rather than collecting a random list of items, participants use clues to find more prompts and hints, until the group solves a mystery (or finds a treasure). You can also create a treasure map if you want to play into the “pirate” fantasy a little more. The important thing is that only clues point toward the next stop - areas of the map should not be spelled out, but involve some problem solving and critical thinking to figure out what the clue means. 

2. Story challenge

For the language lovers on your team, try this version of an ongoing story icebreaker. To play, each person receives a number of words (a word bank) that they can use to create a story. Then, everyone reads their piece out loud or presents it to the group. To come up with the words available for each person, you can use a random word generator online, or get creative. For example, consider instructing participants that they can only use words from the company website, or from the emails they received in their inbox yesterday. 

3. Moral dilemma

Similar to a “ would you rather ” game, this activity centers on ethical dilemmas. Players should try to flex their moral problem-solving muscles by tackling a social issue. For example, Scruples is a popular board game that can be played. Or, you can look online for versions of games like Dilemma or Quandary. This is a great way to learn more about your colleagues while getting a peek at the way they think. 

4. Build a shelter

How would you survive if you were stranded in an isolated place with a blizzard coming? Use this activity to find out! As an added complication, you can pretend that everyone is blinded by frostbite (by using blindfolds). The team leader must give the group instructions for building a shelter that can withstand the arctic winds. To play, you need a large space and some supplies. Then, select a leader (who can see) and blindfold everyone else. You’ll also need a large fan. The leader guides everyone in putting together their shelter (remember, while blindfolded). When everyone feels confident that their shelter is up to the test, turn on the fan and see if the structure can withstand the wind! This game is sure to lead to a lot of laughs and you’ll be surprised at some of the clever ideas that people come up with. This is also a powerful exercise for effective leadership - it’s not easy to reach a goal with a group that is blindfolded! Check out our article on team activities especially for leadership as well.

5. Improv games

You may think of improv games as more of an icebreaker activity, but the truth is there is a lot of brain power that goes into well-done improv. Look for ways to add both logic and entertainment to your next improv effort. Consider scenarios like banned words, where people cannot use a certain list of words, or “miracle cure”, where one person shares a problem they’re having and the other person must come up with the solution on the spot. Both are fun and easy ideas that don’t require anything but willing participants! If you need some other quick and easy team building activities , make sure to follow our blog. 

6. Spaghetti tower

In this classic team building game, users try to build a tower using uncooked pasta noodles and marshmallows. The instructions are simple: use the tools at your disposal to design and build the tallest tower in order to win the challenge. You can judge on height alone, or weigh other factors like innovation, number of towers, or stability. For more simple team building activities , make sure to follow our blog. 

7. What would you do?

Another classic icebreaker, this game involves coming up with some scenarios that require brain power to address. Here are some prompts you can use with your group: 

• What would you do if you were at the zoo and all the animals escaped? 
• What would you do if you were the first person to find out about an upcoming zombie apocalypse? 
• What would you do if you were in line for a really important item, and a person cut in front of you, getting the last item? 
• What would you do if you were invited for dinner at the home of someone you really needed to impress, and the food was terrible? 
• What would you do if an imposter that looks and acts just like you infiltrated your organization? How can you convince everyone that you’re the “real” you?

8. “MacGyver” challenge

MacGyver is an older television program where the hero escaped sticky situations by improvising tools made of unlikely materials. You can recreate this set-up in your event space or office. To play, challenge participants to use 3-5 items to reach a desired end result. For example, something like “a way to pick the door lock” or “escape vehicle” are fun options. You can either set out some various equipment, or have people collect their own based on what they can find around the office. Note: if you are doing this in a conference room or other rented space, it makes sense to have a table set up with random odds and ends for people to pick from. 

9. Egg drop challenge

This one will take you back to high school physics class! Break a larger group into smaller teams and challenge them to come up with a container that will protect an egg even when it’s dropped from up high. You can either let people know far enough in advance that they can discuss, design, and collect materials; or you can have supplies ready and have everyone build their creation on the spot. If you go that route, you’ll want to provide a variety of boxes, packing supplies, rubber bands, fabric, etc. Then set up a ladder and have each team drop their container and see if their egg remained intact. 

10. Shrinking circle

Adaptability and flexibility are huge in the business world. One way to focus on both of those items is by playing this simple and silly game. Start out by using a rope to create a large circle that everyone can fit in. Then, every few minutes, make the circle a bit smaller. Depending on how large the circle is in the first place, you can take away an inch or a foot each round. The challenge is for everyone present to stay inside the circle. This will require some serious innovation once the circle gets small, and lots of laughs almost always ensue. Note: People are likely to end up touching each other in this exercise. It’s difficult not to once the space gets small, like a game of Twister. You know your colleagues best - if that level of closeness would make anyone uncomfortable, it’s probably best to try a different exercise. 

Out-of-the-office problem-solving activities

Everyone once in a while, it can be really valuable to get out of your usual work environment and into a new mental space. If your team is planning a multi-day retreat, don’t be afraid to include an organized activity that will help everyone to think more critically. Most towns have at least one option for getting your group together and learning some new ways to problem solve. Do some research on what you have available locally, or work with an organization like Surf Office who can plan your next retreat - including the fun elements that your employees will be talking about for months to come! If you know that you can’t get out of the office right now, stick to this list of indoor team building activities . 

11. Escape room

The goal of an escape room is to follow a series of clues and take on some challenges in order to unlock the space that everyone is locked in. There are usually 5 - 10 puzzles that teams will work together to figure out. Typically finishing one leads to another clue, so that participants can move onto the next phase. Only when they’ve successfully completed all of the tasks can they find the key and escape. While you can definitely set up an escape room on your own, we think it’s worth finding a local version in your town (or wherever your retreat is taking place). These are professionally set up and usually in really cool spaces like an underground bunker or a historic building. An escape room is a good excuse to get out of the office and spend time with coworkers in a new environment. 

12. Murder mystery

These story-based games have people take on a role in a pretend scenario. They may take on a role like detective, dinner guest, or even killer in their dinner. Most of the time the games involve reading lines from a script, searching for clues, or even solving some simple challenges to move onto the next phase. Participants have to pay attention to conversations and context clues in order to get an understanding of who the killer might be. Observation and logic are key to catching the killer. Some murder mysteries involve getting dressed up and having a nice dinner, so if you’re looking for an idea for a big night out capping off your next retreat, this is perfect. 

13. Ax throwing

What do axes have to do with problem solving? You might be surprised. This is definitely an activity you’ll want to go to a professional venue for. Ax throwing outfits have everything you need, plus the right safety precautions. They have everything set up with the proper distances, buffers between throwing stations, safe ax materials, etc. Plus, many of them offer food and drinks! Ax throwing can help with problem solving because most people don’t excel at it their first time. It takes some practice and careful consideration to figure out where to stand, the best stance, the force of the throw, etc. As you take turns, you’ll make adjustments and also consider new methods based on observing your teammates. The more you watch and the more you try, the better you’ll get. In fact, instead of having people compete against each other, we suggest having the team compete against themselves, aiming for a higher total score in their second or third consecutive game. This activity allows you to observe others and then optimize - essentially learning from each other. 

14. Paper boat race

If you are able to visit a location by water, you can try this really fun activity. In this fun and creative exercise, participants build a small boat with paper (and other supplies) and then race them in a small body of water like a pond or stream. The boats are usually made by folding paper into a boat shape, but you can also try offering cardboard, balloons, popsicle sticks, or other crafty materials. You’ll also want to supply materials for decorating so that everyone can really have their creation stand out. Obviously the person who reaches the finish line first is the winner, but you can offer a few other prizes just for fun, like most beautiful boat or best effort. Make sure to check out our article on other creativity and innovation games , too. 

Problem-solving puzzles

When it’s just not possible to get everyone together, you can still encourage your team to put on their thinking caps and hone their skills. There are tons of critical thinking games, puzzles , and even apps that people can use to practice problem solving. You can encourage your team members to play these games in their spare time, or even set up a competition where people log minutes playing such games or using the apps. If you’re feeling really generous, give everyone a small stiped to be used on a problem solving app of their choice. This special touch makes a nice addition to a holiday gift, too!

Sudoku has become one of the most popular problem solving games for adults. There are dozens of free app options, as well as paperback books that you can pick up. The goal of this game is to fill each box on a 9×9 grid so that every row, column, and letter contains each number from one to nine. It sounds tricky - and it is - but players tend to find it addicting and the game has grown a huge following in recent years. Encourage people to play on their own by downloading an app or purchasing a puzzle book, or as a team by having the puzzles available in your office or at your next event. 

16. Crossword puzzles

These classic word games have players fill out words based on clues. Words interconnect, and people must think critically about the context clues of what they’ve filled out so far. These puzzles are super versatile and one of the best things about them is that you can make them yourself so they are themed. You can use an online crossword puzzle maker to create a custom puzzle with clues about your business or other relevant subjects. For your next event, it might be fun to have a custom crossword puzzle about your company history or trivia! 

17. Tic-tac-toe tournament

It sounds a little silly, but tic-tac-toe requires more brain power than one might think. Set up an ongoing tic-tac-toe board in your office and encourage people to use it on their breaks or when they have a few minutes to kill. You can set up a scoreboard and keep track of the leader; it’s a lot of fun to see the rankings change and to challenge the top performers. If you need an even simpler version of the same concept, simply set up the Connect Four game board in your break room and let people have at it! 

Problem-solving for virtual teams 

If your team is a bit scattered, it doesn’t mean that you can’t practice solving challenges together. In our digital world, there are plenty of options for online activities that teams can work on either independently or as a group. In the section above, we shared some ideas for independent work. These ideas are designed to bring your team together, no matter where they are. Set a time and have everyone hop onto your preferred communication tool, and then work together tackling these challenges. 

18. Virtual hackathon

A hackathon normally refers to an event where participants have a set amount of time to design and pitch a new product or solution. It’s normally used in the tech space for pitching things like new apps, but you can apply the concept in lots of other ways too. In this online version, teams work with each other using virtual meeting software and pitch ideas to a panel of judges. This type of event requires some advance notice for the participants, as they’ll want to collect a team and come up with some designs. If you want to raise the stakes, offer a prize for first place.

19. Online escape room

Just like an in-person escape room, in an online version people must solve a variety of puzzles in order to make it “out”. Digital escape rooms normally come in one of two ways: in a Zoom “room” led by a host, or in a choose-your-own-adventure style via Google Forms or other websites. To play virtually, staff will enter the meeting and follow the prompts they get, and it might involve screen sharing some Google tools to work on puzzles together. Because of the platforms and tools that may be involved, this activity is better for teams who are a bit more tech-savvy and comfortable with online meetings, apps, etc. 

20. Survival plans

Prioritizing is an important mental exercise. You can work on this with a game about survival. Have everyone imagine they are stranded on a desert island, and they must decide the correct order to perform life-saving steps in. Have this list handy, and ask everyone to pair off or get in small groups and number the list according to the best likelihood of survival: 

• Set up shelter
• Look around the island
• Signal for help
• Create weapons for self-defense
• Build a raft for water
• Start a fire
• Select a group leader
• Find other survivors
• Anything else you think of! 

The catch is that everyone must agree on the order of events!  That will typically involve discussion and coming to some sort of consensus. Once everyone is done with the exercise, have them present to the larger group and explain their reasoning. This exercise is good for team-building, communication, and problem resolution. Plus, you will be better prepared if you ever get stuck on a deserted island! 

21. Online role-playing games (like Dungeons and Dragons)

Seeing how people react in real-world situations is a really interesting way to get to know them better. Find an online game that has real-world actions and consequences, like Dungeons and Dragons. Or, you can make things even simpler by hopping on a Zoom together and reading a Choose Your Own Adventure book aloud, with the reader getting group consensus before making a decision. The important part is the discussion that will occur before choosing the next action. This is helpful for bonding and also helps you to see how your colleagues tick. These activities can be difficult to organize for big groups, so if you have a substantial team, try some of these team building activities for large groups instead. 

22. Google Docs story

Similar to an ongoing story icebreaker, this game is easy to do online as people have time. You start by creating a Google Doc that everyone on the team has access to. Then, have people go into the Doc and add to the story that’s developing. If you want, you can pick a prompt to kick things off - or you can just let the first person get creative and go for it! The more specific or bizarre the scenario, the more creative and clever people will have to get to add their portion. 

23. Model UN

Chances are you might be familiar with this concept from high school. Fortunately, adults can have a lot of fun with it too. You can play this virtually as long as everyone is a strong communicator. Each participant should take on the role of an international diplomat, and work together to form alliances and solve crises. Come up with a potential scenario that the UN must work through. Consider things like a global food shortage, natural disaster, or cyber-security threats. If your group is particularly large, you can have multiple people assigned to a country and they will have separate roles. If politics is a sensitive topic on your team, you might want to tweak this exercise to be focused on a business and treat participants like board members - or even a musical group! 

Set the tone of your next company retreat

These problem solving games and activities are great virtually any time - there is something for everyone, whether you’re remote or in person, on a large team or a small one. One of the best ways to implement a problem solving exercise is at the beginning of a team retreat. If you have organized a large meeting or team building event, consider getting things started with such an activity. Many of these problem solving games will get everyone thinking and make people more comfortable, plus a lot of them also serve as a form of icebreaker.

The next time you plan a work retreat , consider including a few of these on the agenda to set the tone for a fun, energizing event. Need help ensuring that your retreat is, in fact, fun and energizing?

Let Surf Office help ! We can help with organizing your next team retreat or all-company meeting so that you can focus on the fun.

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Virtual Remote Group Problem Solving and Process Improvement

By: Scott Converse

Working remotely with virtual teams isn’t new, but with the recent pandemic, it’s become the new normal. While there are dozens of articles and blogs about how to be more effective in virtual meetings, a common question I’m fielding is, “how do I perform a group problem solving session or do an entire process improvement project when each of us is working remotely?” Here are some tips to help with your remote meetings and problem-solving sessions.

What’s the Problem?

A benefit of working with diverse teams is that each member has different experiences and viewpoints. Unfortunately, that strength can be an early roadblock. Even in face-to-face meetings there is often uncertainty about what it is that the group is supposed to analyze and improve. With remote gatherings it can be even more confusing.

The tools listed below have been around for decades and I find they are even more important to use with online meetings and remote problem-solving sessions. However, they should be created in advance, shared in advance, and then updated to reflect the information shared in the session. This list assumes you are working on a process; I have separate suggestions for non-process environments at the end of this message.

Tools to create a better understanding of the process problem:

• A current state high-level process map that shows the start and end points, in addition to the steps required to create the output . If the map is less than four objects, it’s too simple. If it’s greater than a page, slide, or more than nine steps, it will require additional explanation and context for the whole group to have a shared and similar understanding.
• A performance-based goal statement. SMART goals are nice, but in a process improvement problem solving session, I prefer to modify the SMART format. In performance-based goal statements, I include: • A description of the process that will be analyzed where boundaries are described, as well as the primary output and some description of the frustration or problem the end users are experiencing. This helps provide context for the goal statement as well as for the high-level process map discussed earlier. • An estimate of the current state performance. If you have any quantitative or qualitative data to support this, refer to it. If you don’t have data, don’t skip this critically important activity. Have the team use their diverse experience to make an estimate and assign the data collection as an action item after the meeting to capture relevant data or create an experiment that helps to show what is current state performance. Without a baseline for your process performance, you’ll have no insight as to whether you improved the system in future state. • An estimate of the future-state performance needed to reduce frustration and meet end-user needs. Same rules apply for your future state estimate as do for your current state estimate. • A timeframe for the goal to be reached. I also like to include any key milestones or key phases that require completion. For example, if you follow PDCA , when will each phase be completed?

Who’s Doing What?

It’s easy to bring everyone into a video conference, it’s much more difficult to have everyone agree on accountability related to the problem-solving analysis after the meeting. A roles and responsibility discussion is important. For small groups that meet frequently on other projects, this can be short and informal.

For newer and larger teams, it should be planned out in advance. Your planning should help create a conversation around how decisions are made, what is “good enough” or how quality levels will be determined for the work assigned, who should be consulted prior to decision making, and how the decisions should be shared with the group and the whole organization.

Classic tools used to foster a good conversation around roles and responsibilities include a RACI chart . At the end of the article I’ve included a template for a modified RACI chart optimized for a process improvement project.

What’s Not Going To Be Worked On?

Scoping is critical for any project. For virtual teams that are working on smaller or less complex projects there’s a tendency to not use classic scoping tools like a project charter or a statement of work. Be careful if you do decide to skip these tools.

At least create an In Scope/Out of Scope table that answers these questions: • Are there certain customer types that we will be focusing on? • Are there certain geographic regions that we will be considering? Certain branch locations? If not geography what about work shifts? Time zones? • Are there special product or service offerings that should be excluded? • Are there extremely complex requests that should be excluded from the group’s analysis? • Are there certain functional groups within the organization that we’ll be optimizing the system for at first?

How Long Is This Journey?

Part of goal setting and scoping is creating time estimates for project completion. If you know that you must resolve the issue in only one or two meetings, this signals to the team that “perfect is our enemy; very good is what we are trying to achieve.”

If you know you’ll be meeting 10-20 times, that doesn’t mean everyone should over-analyze or try to reach perfection, or worse yet, everyone can procrastinate because there’s so much time in the schedule. But this additional time does mean you have more flexibility in the level of analysis, the types of technology used, and the amount of parallel activity happening concurrently. Naturally, estimates on day one will be less accurate than later in the project lifecycle, but setting some reasonable timeframes that reflect business and end-user need is important and helps to level-set for the team.

Smaller Groups Whenever Possible

Large meetings are hard to manage and run effectively. Large virtual meetings are even more difficult. Divide the large team into smaller subgroups and work off-line whenever possible. Many technology platforms allow you to do this within the meeting. I find it just as productive to make the large meeting shorter and then have the smaller groups meet online afterward to do their important work tasks, brainstorming, idea vetting, diagram building, or group discussion.

What If You Don’t Have A Process?

Processes have a beginning, an end, a series of steps, and they repeat over and over again. What if the issue being analyzed has never happened before (no current state), there are no “steps” or flow yet determined, and begin/end/output is uncertain? Many of the tools and tips described earlier will be unusable when you aren’t dealing with a process (for example the high-level process map.)

For highly uncertain initiatives that are more about new process design or new product development, use incremental and iterative approaches. Don’t try to build the whole solution or solve the whole complex issue. Instead have the group work on one small piece of the puzzle with the goal of creating something of value or a minimum viable solution. Use the small item of value to gather feedback from end users and the organization. Then create another small piece of value in the 2nd, 3rd , 4th, iteration. After each iteration, improve the way the team works, how technology is used, how they share information, and how decisions should be made. In highly uncertain environments, this incremental and iterative approach often outperforms more classic methods of problem solving.

Additional Resources

For deeper dives into each of the topics discussed, please visit the following professional development programs offered at the Center for Professional & Executive Development : • Business Process Improvement Using Lean Six Sigma and Performance Metrics • Managing Teams Effectively • Effective Meeting Management and Facilitation

Please visit our blog for more articles to help you and your organization during periods of great change and transition.

Scott Converse teaches Process Improvement and Project Management programs for the Wisconsin School of Business Center for Professional & Executive Development. To learn more about these programs, view our Lean Six Sigma and Project Management Certificates .

20 Non-Cheesy Five-Minute Virtual Team Building Activities (+ Bonuses)

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Key takeaways.

• Team building in remote environments can be more challenging than in-person.
• Remote workers are more prone to loneliness and disengagement.
• Remote team building can be fast and fun with the right tools and approach.

Every remote manager knows how important it is to find the right team-building activities for their team, as remote team building comes with unique challenges. Remote teams are dispersed across locations and time zones, often lacking the casual interactions that unite teams who share a physical workspace. Moreover, remote teams may struggle more with loneliness and isolation, which puts team spirit and well-being in managers’ focus.

Many managers will schedule long team-building exercises and virtual happy hours to try and unite their teams. But these long meetings are often inconvenient because they get in the way of finishing work and require remote workers to meet outside of working hours. Also, most of them are painfully cheesy.

You don’t need to schedule full hour-long Zoom meetings for effective remote team bonding. The fun games and activities below can fit at the beginning or end of regular team meetings or even as ongoing Slack conversations. 

Keep reading for 20 unique activities to help your team:

• Break the ice
• Bond and build trust
• Enhance their problem-solving skills
• Get their creative gears working
• Boost morale
• Increase engagement
• Build a healthier work environment and company culture
• and more...

Build connections on Slack

Spark conversations with a remote team with meeting roulettes, watercooler prompts, and interest groups, all in Slack.

The 3 resources all teams need to bond successfully 

To organize successful virtual team-building activities, you only need three things.

You can't expect your employees to work for eight hours straight and then stick around for two more hours for a team bonding exercise. They are most likely tired, hungry, and their loved ones, who have been patient all day, require their attention. This is why you need to include them in your daily schedule.

2. Resources

While you can have an amazing team building activity for remote teams without spending a single dollar, you must provide them with the right tools. Platforms like Skype, Zoom, Slack, Google Meet, etc., can be very useful for video chats, and make sure you have good tools for messaging  since you will definitely use that a lot. Try a couple of different ones to see which one works best, and then choose one and stick with it.

3. The right attitude

Nobody likes change, at first. Implementing something that requires your remote employees to talk, draw, or reveal personal details won’t necessarily be met with great enthusiasm. If you really want to achieve your desired results, you need to assign a dedicated person to encourage participation and help your coworkers relax and enjoy themselves.

Make sure you choose someone who is well-liked and knows most of the employees, so their message will get across more easily.

Virtual team-building activities for new teams

New teams can feel a bit awkward in the beginning. Ice-breaker games and group activities can help your team feel more comfortable from their very first team meeting. 

Here are four quick team-building activities to get past the awkward phase of guess-who and start building the foundations of camaraderie in your team. 

1. Hot Seat

Hot Seat is a great team-building activity to introduce an individual to the rest of the team. Get everyone on a video conference and ask specific questions about their background. Make sure the questions stay fun and light and that everyone is comfortable participating.

Some icebreaker questions to ask: 

• What was your favorite band growing up? 
• What’s on your bucket list?
• What is the first vacation you remember? 
• What book would you bring to a desert island?
• How did you feel when you landed your first job? 
• Is there any notable accomplishment you remember from middle school? 

2. Seman Drawkcab

Seman Drawkcab (“Backward Names,” spelled backward) is a simple way for new remote employees to learn one another’s names. You can play the game, even with large groups of people, in 5-10 minutes. 

The rules: 

• Every person pronounces their name backward, one by one
• The group has to guess the real name of each person that has said their name backward

3. Two truths and a lie

Two truths and a lie is an excellent way to show off your team members’ creativity, sense of humor, and unique personal history. You can play this game with large groups but if your team exceeds 20 people, consider splitting into breakout rooms.

• Ask each team member to write down two truths and one lie about themselves on a sheet of paper before the meeting
• Make sure these facts are personal anecdotes rather than work-related facts 
• During the meeting, take each set of two truths and one lie and read it in front of the entire team
• Ask each member of the team to guess which are facts and which are lies
• The person who makes the most correct guesses wins the game

4. Dinner Party

Dinner Party is a quick trivia game that prompts new team members to reveal fun personality facts. You can limit the game to five minutes or play longer. 

• At the beginning of your meeting, ask each team member to name three people, living or dead, they would invite to a dinner party
• Have them explain why, especially if it’s a unique choice 

Virtual team-building activities to challenge problem-solving skills

The following team-building games will help your team get their problem-solving skills on point—just enough to “warm up” for the real business problems your team solves. 

5. Word Association

Word Association is a fun team game that only takes 5-10 minutes, even with a large group. The goal is to stimulate your team’s creativity and show how everyone thinks differently.

• Give your team a word and ask them to say (or write) the first thing that comes to mind 
• Continue associating based on the previous word
• After a few rounds, compare responses to see each person’s association journey

6. Object Memory

Object Memory is a five-minute team-building activity that will train your team’s brains while teaching an important lesson about the power of teamwork and communication skills. Small teams can play the game in under five minutes. It may take longer for larger groups.

• Write down 30 words on a virtual whiteboard and share your screen for 30 seconds with the team 
• Ask the team to write down as many words as they remember in 30 seconds 
• Split the team into small groups 
• Ask each group to work together to remember more words and pool together everything they find

7. Get Them to Draw It 

Get Them to Draw It is a fun activity that only takes about 5-10 minutes. The game’s primary goal is to help everyone pay attention, challenge assumptions, and think outside the box. 

You can play the game in large teams, but it works best in groups of fewer than five people.

• Select one remote team member and secretly show them an image of overlapping triangles, circles, and squares drawn on a piece of paper
• Ask the selected team member to get the rest of the team to replicate the drawing without mentioning its elements (circle, triangle, and square)
• The team may struggle to perfectly replicate the image
• In the end, point out that you never mentioned whether or not the describer can show the original drawing to the team during the game

8. Dog, Rice, and Chicken

Dog, Rice, and Chicken is a logic and problem-solving game you can play in Slack or over video calls. Regardless of the group size, it will only take 5-10 minutes. 

The basic rule is simple: one of the team members is the Farmer, and the others are the Villagers. The Farmer has “a dog, rice, and chicken problem”, and the Villagers have to find a solution.

The Farmer’s problem:

• The Farmer needs to get a dog, bag of rice, and chicken across the river to get home but can only carry one item at a time on the boat 
• If they leave the dog alone with the chicken, the dog will eat the chicken
• If they leave the chicken alone with the rice, the chicken will eat the rice 
• How can the farmer safely get all three items on the other side of the river? 

The solution:

• First the farmer should carry the chicken, leaving the dog and the bag of rice behind
• Next they should go back and carry and pick up the rice
• Once the rice is safely on the across the river, they should carry the chicken back to the starting point
• Then they should leave the chicken at the starting point and pick up the dog
• Once the dog is across the river, with the bag of rice, the farmer will simply need to go back one last time to take the chicken across the river

If you enjoy Dog, Rice, and Chicken, check out this   collection of similar riddles .

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Ongoing virtual team-building ideas.

Some team games can be played one time, but these games and activities can be a throughline for weeks, months, or even years.

9. Meeting Roulette

Meeting Roulette is a fun way to help your teammates get to know each other. The game is beneficial for full-remote and   hybrid teams   where people from different departments might not interact with each other much.

You can use   Connections (by Deel)   to automatically connect random teammates to introduce themselves and chat for a few minutes. You can set up Connections to run for as long as you want to, and it can also help   onboard new teammates   by introducing them to the rest of the group. 

10. Articulate

Articulate takes five minutes for groups of 15 or fewer people. You can play it over several weeks, taking turns as the main character. 

• Give your main player a list of 10 words 
• Ask them to describe the words in front of the other team members
• They cannot use the actual words you’ve given them, but they have to give the other members clues that indicate what the words actually are
• If the main player manages to have the team guess one of the words, they move on to the second, third, etc.
• Once all words have been guessed, select a new main player 

For an additional level of challenge, have the main player describe the 10 words with charades instead of verbal clues. 

11. The Slipper Dilemma 

The Slipper Dilemma is one of our favorite 5-minute team meeting ideas. It can be played by 5-10 people, and it’s a fun way to incorporate the unique “work from home” vibe into your team games. 

• During any of your meetings throughout the workday, if someone in your team shouts “Slippers,” everyone has to move their camera to their feet, showing what they are wearing 
• Make sure people are aware of this activity before you kick off the game!

12. The Jukebox

The Jukebox is an excellent game for teams of all sizes. The facilitator creates a Spotify playlist each month, following a theme. They ask the team members to add a song to the playlist that fits the theme.

Some “Jukebox” theme ideas could include: 

• The first band I saw in concert in high school
• The band I will always like listening to
• One song that always energizes me
• Summer vibes
• Halloween jump scares

Create a playlist with a new theme every week or every two weeks to make this a recurrent team activity. Not sure where to start? Check out some of the playlists we like to listen to at Deel for inspiration.

Virtual team-building games for large groups

Larger groups and teams will require quicker and more simple games and activities if the goal is to keep them short and fun. Below is a selection of activities we find very effective for big teams.

13. Virtual scavenger hunts

Scavenger hunts energize a team, improve teamwork, and bring a bit of humor into your remote-working life. The good news is that you can play them as virtual activities too, and many versions are available—including five-minute ones. 

Create a list of items people typically have around the house and give the whole team five minutes to find those items. Whoever finds them first wins the game.

14. Meme Chat 

Meme Chat is another five-minute team-building activity people get a kick out of. Ask team members to find a meme representing the company, the day, or the project they are working on. 

You can discuss the memes in meetings (allowing no more than five minutes for each description). Alternatively, ask everyone to post their memes in a Slack channel and have the rest of the company vote for the best one. It works with emojis too!

15. This or That

This or That helps people spark discussion and get to know each other better. You can play it with a group of any size, via video chat or in your preferred chat tool. Ask a “this or that” question every week and let people discuss their answers. 

Set a time limit for all the chats or move them to a dedicated Slack channel where people can chip in whenever they have a few minutes.

Connections   is a great tool to help you automate and schedule your questions!

Possible questions include:

• Mountain or ocean?
• Jazz or rock?
• Comedy or action?
• Breakfast or lunch?

16. International Holidays

One of the best things about remote teams is their diversity. Bring this diversity into your company culture by allowing people to share their culture and holidays. 

Ask each team member to enter their country’s holidays in a spreadsheet and set up automated Slack messages a couple of days before every event to notify team members. During the next team meeting, ask the team member who added the holiday to share a quick overview of how they celebrate it back home. 

Self-managed remote team-building activities

Some activities don’t need to be part of a meeting, conference call, or team-building event to effectively strengthen your team’s cohesion and engagement. Enabling employees to participate in their own activities and interact with their team members in the ways they see fit is an equally powerful tool for remote teams to bond.

While these activities aren’t strictly five-minute ones, they don’t need much time allocated either and can be easily adapted to fit any schedule.

17. Virtual book club

This is a rapport-building classic. Readers in your team can interact during virtual meetings, in their own Slack channel, or even asynchronously via email to suggest, discuss, review and discover books they love.

Similar   interest groups   can be started for any other topic, not just books. You might have musicians, gamers, amateur cooks, or arts and crafts experts in your organization. Give them a place to discuss what they love.

18. Virtual coffee

A lot of face-to-face bonding happens at the water cooler or by the coffee machine. You can maintain the benefits of these relaxed moments of interaction by having quick virtual coffee calls, where people from different teams or departments can have a chance to quickly get to know different members of the organization.

19. Online games

While gaming might not be for everyone, there are many online game options for all skill levels and preferences. From Pictionary to pool, to virtual escape rooms, to murder mysteries, to the latest viral success, online bonding options through gaming are truly limitless.

Letting employees wind down while playing something fun and interactive can be a great way to build connections and re-energize the team (and remember to have a company leaderboard!).

20. Show and Tell

Sometimes, simple ideas are the most effective, and this one is straight from primary school. Have a member of the team show and talk about something they are passionate about or interested in.

You can allocate just a few minutes per person, so the whole team gets a go, or ask one team member to present each week or month.

Bonus ideas to take your virtual team building to the next level

Virtual team building in Paris

Ever wished you could whisk your team off on an extravagant trip to Europe? Okay, who're we kidding - ever wished you could just treat yourself? Well, now you can and guilt-free.

Woyago Teams specializes in providing high-quality virtual team building experiences. And we're not talking about the kind of virtual reality where you put on a headset and flail your arms around an empty room. Woyago's team will take you on a guided tour of some of Europe's most iconic landmarks from the comfort of your office chair all while bringing your team closer together. 

Guinness world record

Raise the stakes and go for fame on this unusual team building idea by challenging your team to a Guinness World Record. On our to-do list as a team, beat the current world record of fastest office at 87 mph.

Don’t forget a good virtual office party

While most of our suggestions here are about short and easy activities that can be sprinkled into daily video conferencing and meetings, don’t forget that a good virtual event can work wonders. From virtual trivia to karaoke and game show activities, it’s never a bad idea to dedicate an hour to a good party.

The Amazing Online Race

If you are working with a competitive bunch, this game will definitely be the right fit. The Amazing Online Race is one of the best virtual team building activities for inspiring collaborative and competitive spirit.

Split everyone into teams, and come up with a list of challenges they need to do. On a virtual whiteboard, track their success and the number of points they've achieved. Set a fixed number of challenges or a time period, so they know they don't have all the time in the world. Come up with a prize for the winning team. Teams race to complete online assignments such as "beat the high score in Pac Man" or "make and upload a lip-sync video to Total Eclipse of the Heart."

Throughout the day, you and your group members will check-in via video call to gauge each other's progress. The team that completes all challenges first wins!

Personal User Manuals

Have you ever thought to yourself - Oh, I wish these people knew how I like to work! Or wandered that about someone else, but you were too afraid to ask? Well, now you don't have to! The goal of this game is to get to know each other better, without the pressure of revealing too much or the fear of public speaking. Have everyone in your team create a personal user manual - what they like, prefer, and can't stand when working with others. Attach them all in a single file, and share them with the team. This will guarantee better cooperation and understanding. 

It's always a great time to start a challenge!

Working with others can be highly beneficial because you can always count on support, advice, and friendship. And that can all be part of your team's culture even if you are working remotely. Start by coming up with a list of possible challenges - exercise, healthy lifestyle, vegan diet, books, number of taken steps, or water drunk throughout the day... Don't pressure anyone into participating, and let them join groups of their own volition. Track the progress in real-time and make sure that everyone who is struggling has enough support and encouragement. 

Long-term remote team activities 

But what if your company has always been remote, and the global shift to remote work didn't change anything in your way of working? Well, that is great since it probably means you have already tried most of the games we have offered so far. But no worries. We are ready to take you to the next level. Once you are done with the easier and less time-consuming activities, you can start implementing games and initiatives that require more time, energy, and participants.

We suggest looking into these ideas to get started.

Debate club

If you have a lot of strong-willed, opinionated people in your company, this is a great activity for you. Let everyone interested sign-up, come up with teams, and give them a topic to debate about. Assign moderators, judges, audience, get as many people involved as you can. This is a great way to promote constructive and argumentative thinking that can help any business. Make sure that you choose neutral topics so the discussion doesn't get too heated. 

Virtual time capsule 

Burying time capsules has been a tried-and-tested way to get communities, classes, and teams to bond and enjoy a shared activity. Just because your team is remote, that doesn't mean that you can't enjoy this as well! Have everyone contribute with a digital item - a picture, a letter, a video... Zip all the files and set up a password. Hide the file, so only one person has access to it. Set a time limit and let everyone get excited about it. Remind them occasionally about it, to keep the interest high and the conversation frequent. 

Pen Pal Club 

And while we are on the topic of letters, and long-forgotten traditions, have you ever been a part of a pen pal club? Modern times allow for new traditions, but that doesn't mean that the old ones should be forgotten! Simply adjust this long lost custom by paring up employees that don't really cooperate or have the need to work together. Give them instructions - send at least one email every week to your Pen Pal about anything you would like. There are no limitations nor mandatory length. It is important to get them to start writing. They will do the rest themselves!

Collaborative craft projects 

If your team has been forced to work apart after spending countless days together in the office, then this is a great idea for you. Providing that you are able to use the local post office, assign them this task, and see their reaction. The idea is for the team to work on a single, physical project together. How? Well, first you should agree on what you will make, together. Then you get to organize the order. The first person starts crafting, and at a certain point, they mail the project to someone from the team. This goes on and on until the project is finished. You can even take the game to the next level by encouraging them to send little gifts and notes, as well. 

Bring your remote team together with Deel

Want to achieve true team bonding even when your team lives thousands of miles apart and has little time to interact? 

Deel makes remote work feel less   remote , helping you build your company culture and keep your teams engaged and organized. 

Discover   Connections , and start building the best team today.

Deel makes growing remote and international teams effortless. Ready to get started?

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Foster Teamwork Online: 42 Virtual Team Building Ideas

• Engagement & Interactivity
• Published: January 6, 2024

Join the Virtual Event Revolution!

Let our crew of creative tech wizards cast an online engagement spell to mesmerize your audiences into a virtual frenzy! 

Collaboration is the lifeline of effective teams. 

But fostering seamless teamwork can prove challenging, especially for virtual teams separated by distance. 

How can teammates cultivate the cohesion, communication, and camaraderie needed to unite as one virtually?

The answer is team building – with a digital twist. 

Creative online activities allow dispersed groups to spark engagement and forge bonds within this new remote work world. 

From virtual trivia and digital scavenger hunts to remote painting parties and virtual escape rooms, opportunities abound for sharing laughs, solving problems collaboratively, and creating shared experiences.

This guide will explore 42 innovative virtual team building ideas to strengthen your remote team. 

Ready to infuse some fun into your online workplace? Let’s get started!

Why Virtual Team Building Matters

Let’s first look at why remote team building really matters for performance.

• Sets the stage for collaboration – These activities break the ice so teammates can get to know each other on a more personal level. This provides a foundation for more seamless collaboration.
• Promotes communication – Open and frequent communication is key for virtual teams. Games prompt teammates to interact regularly.
• Encourages camaraderie – Playful activities create inside jokes and shared experiences that spark a sense of camaraderie, even from afar.
• Boosts morale – Having fun together relieves stress and reminds teammates why they enjoy working together.
• Enhances problem-solving – Challenges and games promote out-of-the-box thinking and teamwork.
• Supports company culture – Virtual activities allow you to maintain your culture by connecting people across distances.
• Improves team cohesion – Shared experiences strengthen relationships and the team’s sense of unity.

With the stage set on why virtual team building matters, let’s explore 49 idea options to foster collaboration online.

42 Fun Virtual Team Building Ideas

1. Virtual Trivia

A game of trivia is a fantastic way to liven up your next virtual meeting while allowing teammates to showcase their obscure knowledge.

How to play:

• Use a free trivia app or PowerPoint to display questions. Have players submit answers in the chat or via an app.
• Customize questions around pop culture, your industry, company history, or employees’ interests.
• Split into teams or go head-to-head for some friendly competition!
• Consider using apps like Kahoot!, QuizBreaker, or TriviaMaker which gamify the experience.
• Give the winning team members small prizes like gift cards.
• Ask teammates to submit trivia questions beforehand so everyone can contribute.

2. Remote Charades

For some playful antics at your next virtual meetup, give the classic game of charades a remote twist.

• Use a random word generator to come up with topics. Have one person act it out on camera for others to guess.
• Consider using props or backgrounds for an added challenge!
• Split into teams and have one person act out multiple words within a time limit.
• Screenshare your charades word list so everyone (but the actor) can see the word.
• Set a timer to keep the game moving quickly.
• rejection and rejoicing — it’s sure to get everyone laughing together!

3. Digital Scavenger Hunt

Send your virtual team on a scavenger hunt across the internet for this screen-based activity.

• Create a list of digital challenges like finding a meme, identifying a song, googling trivia answers, etc.
• Teams complete challenges and provide screenshots as proof within a set time.
• The team who completes the most tasks wins!
• Use a shared spreadsheet to keep track of completed tasks by each team.
• Leave some challenges vague to encourage creativity.
• Brainstorm challenges as a team and draw from a hat so there’s variety.

The telephone game gets a makeover in Drawful , where teammates try to guess each other’s artistic (and ridiculous) drawings.

• Players take turns drawing prompts from the app on a shared screen.
• Everyone submits a funny caption for the drawing, then tries to match captions to pictures.
• The caption voted most accurate earns points. The funniest caption also earns points!
• Use the online Jackbox.tv app which provides prompts and records points automatically.
• Remind players to keep it PG-13 to avoid offending colleagues.
• Let your inner budding artist shine through with your drawing skills!

5. Remote Pictionary

Another artistic activity, Pictionary will unleash your teammates’ creative sides as they try to illustrate challenging words and phrases.

• Split into teams with one person as the illustrator.
• The illustrator draws a word from the list while their team tries to guess it before time runs out.
• Teams get a point for correct guesses. Switch illustrators each round!
• Use a whiteboard and marker for easy sharing on video calls.
• Pick categories tailored to your team like office terms, pop culture, or company lingo.
• Keep some drawing supplies on hand to get those creative juices flowing!

6. Two Truths and a Lie

Two Truths and a Lie helps colleagues get to know each other better in this classic icebreaker game.

• Each player shares 3 statements about themselves – 2 truths and 1 lie.
• The rest of the team asks questions to try to guess which statement is a lie!
• Reveal which one was the lie after everyone guesses.
• Encourage silly or surprising facts to make it trickier.
• Share stories related to your statements after the reveal.
• Try introducing yourself with truths and a lie if you’re joining a new team!

7. Virtual Escape Room

Work together to ‘escape’ the online room by solving puzzles and finding clues in this immersive game.

• Using a virtual escape room app or website, teams complete challenges like scavenger hunts, word puzzles, and coded messages.
• Solve all the puzzles within a set time limit to figuratively break out of the room!
• Many apps like Escape Room Master let you customize rooms to suit your team.
• Assign roles like ‘communicator’ and ‘note taker’ so everyone has a job.
• Schedule a video call during the experience so you can celebrate successes together!

8. Virtual Bingo

Call out common virtual work phrases like “You’re on mute!” for a round of laugh-inducing bingo.

• Generate bingo cards with silly work-from-home occurrences (dog barking, tech issues, etc).
• The caller reads scenarios from the list. Mark squares on your card if they apply to you!
• First player to complete a row or fill the whole card wins.
• Share funny stories related to your bingo squares.
• Offer prizes like gift certificates to keep participants engaged.
• Play over video chat so you can see everyone’s reactions.

9. Guess the Baby Picture

Can your team correctly match colleagues with their adorable baby pics? Find out in this popular game!

• Have teammates submit baby photos of themselves ahead of time.
• Compile the photos and share the slideshow, asking players to guess which baby belongs to which coworker!
• Make wrong guesses “cost” players by tallying points. Most points at the end wins!
• Ask parents to share what they remember from that photo.
• Follow up with current baby pics – have they changed?!

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10. Virtual Water Cooler

Simulate casual chit chat around the water cooler with this simple discussion game.

• Pose an open-ended question related to lighter topics like favorite snacks, travel destinations, etc.
• Go around your virtual room, giving everyone a short turn to answer.
• Repeat with various questions to keep the conversation flowing.
• Share a discussion question ahead of time so teammates can ponder.
• To make it spicier, have people anonymously submit questions that get randomly picked.
• Try integrating into your regular meetings as a shortener.

11. Digital Scrabble

The classic word game gets updated for the digital age in online Scrabble. Can your team create the highest-scoring words?

• Use an online Scrabble platform like Scrabble GO which allows group video chat.
• Take turns creating words on the virtual board, scoring points based on letter value.
• Player with the highest score after all tiles are used wins!
• Set a timer for turns to keep gameplay moving.
• Screenshare to show your updated Scrabble board after each turn.
• Host a team tournament over several rounds to determine the word master!

12. Finish the Lyric

Put your song knowledge to the test by completing lyrics from popular tunes in this online music game.

• Select iconic song lyrics and share just the starting lines with your team.
• Players privately submit the next lyric line to finish each phrase.
• Award points for correct lyrics. Person with the most musical knowledge wins!
• Tailor your lyric selections to genres or decades your team will know.
• Consider classic songs that most people would recognize.
• Encourage teammates to sing the lyrics out loud once revealed!

13. Virtual Morning Meetup

Start your workdays on an upbeat note with a casual virtual morning meetup before diving into work.

How to host:

• Set a regular morning video call where all teammates can pop in, optional attendance.
• Greet each other and chat about lighter topics like plans for the day, home life, or news stories.
• Keep the tone positive and energy high to start the day united.
• Occasionally play an icebreaker game during the meetup like Two Truths and a Lie.
• If schedules allow, make it a walking or coffee meetup by video.
• Record meetings so those in different time zones can watch later.

14. Zoom Scavenger Hunt

Send your team on a hunt for items around their home with this engaging  scavenger hunt  activity.

• Create a bingo-style card with random household items (pet toy, spoon, left shoe, etc).
• Set a timer and have players race to find items on their card and show them on camera.
• First player to complete a row or fill the whole card wins!
• Make it themed around holidays, seasons, or office items for a fun twist.
• Consider using a digital scavenger hunt app to keep score automatically.
• Encourage silly presentations of items, like balancing a spoon on their nose.

15. Guess Who?

This fast-paced guessing game challenges how well your team knows each other and their interests.

• One player thinks of a famous person, object, place, etc. that they associate with a teammate.
• Others ask yes or no questions about that person or thing to guess the associated teammate.
• First person to correctly guess, wins! Rotate choosers.
• Encourage outside-the-box connections between teammates and choices.
• Set a timer to keep the pace quick.
• Reveal why you associate that item with the person. Do they agree?!

16. Virtual Campfire

Recreate gathering around the campfire for spooky stories or heartfelt discussions in this remote activity.

• Set the mood with a virtual campfire background, ambient nature sounds, warm lighting, and cozy clothes.
• Have each person share a story, meaningful experience, or cherished memory. Or roast marshmallows together!
• Provide emotional support and reactions using chat or displays of affection.
• Send a campfire treat box ahead of time so everyone can snack together.
• Incorporate games like Two Truths and a Lie or Story Starters.
• Share your favorite camping memories and bucket list destinations.

17. Murder Mystery Party

Act out an intricate murder mystery by assigning everyone a character and puzzling through the clues.

• Select a murder mystery scenario or purchase kits with pre-made character scripts and clues.
• Assign each player a character. Read your pre-written scripts together over video.
• Follow the story prompts, moving between group and private video chats to share secrets.
• Uncover the murderer based on the provided clues before time runs out!
• Have players dress up and decorate their video background to match their character.
• If needed, summarize longer mystery scripts into a shortened version.

18. Team Yearbook

Look back on your virtual year together and celebrate achievements by making an online team yearbook.

How to create:

• Collect memories like screenshots from meetings, project successes, and fun times together.
• Ask teammates to submit superlatives for one another based on positive work attributes.
• Compile everything into a digital yearbook or slideshow with comments and inside jokes.
• Gather virtually to present and reminisce before starting the new year.
• Send the yearbook as a printed book or calendar as a meaningful gift.
• Share fond memories about the big moments as you review the yearbook together.

19. Deserted Island

Get creative deciding which luxury items you would bring if stuck on a deserted island together.

• Imagine your team is about to be stranded on a deserted island for one year.
• Each person can bring one luxury item. Go around and share what you’d choose and why.
• As a team, pick 3-5 additional survival items you’ll need from a provided list.
• Discuss why these would be most helpful and how you would work together.
• Make sure to also pick survival items, not just fun luxury choices.
• Tally votes for the survival items to reach group consensus.
• Talk about how you’ll split up responsibilities on the island.

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20. Virtual Coffee Break

Enjoy each other’s company during a casual virtual coffee break , just like you would around the office.

• Hop on a video call while making and drinking your favorite coffee beverage. Chat casually while sharing your coffee culture.
• For a change of pace, invite a guest speaker like a coffee shop owner or barista to share knowledge.
• Discuss new types of brews to try and exchange recommendations.
• Send coffee care packages containing beans, samples, or sweet treats to enjoy together.
• Make it weekly and set up an informal coffee club.
• Have everyone prepare coffee on camera to learn techniques from each other.

21. Virtual Cooking Class

Spice up your next virtual meetup by taking a team cooking class led by a professional chef.

How to attend:

• Hire a private chef to lead a virtual cooking class. They demonstrate recipes everyone can make from home.
• Have ingredients and equipment on hand to follow along with recipes in real time.
• Enjoy the finished dishes together over the video call.
• Pick fun recipes that suit skill levels yet offer a challenge.
• Mail members ingredient kits ahead of time so everyone’s prepared.
• Share kitchen disasters and chef tips throughout the class.

22. Hidden Talent Show

You’ll be amazed by the unexpected skills your coworkers have up their sleeves in this talent show.

• Have teammates demonstrate their off-work hobbies and hidden talents through a video or live performance.
• These could include juggling, speed stacking, breakdancing, singing, etc.
• Clap and cheer for each performance, then vote on awards for most surprising, funniest, etc.
• Make it family friendly by inviting kids or pets to join the performances!
• Consider award categories like “best quarantine hobby” and “most likely to go viral.”
• Record it to create an internal talent show reel to rewatch later.

23. Virtual Ping Pong

Relieve stress and get active together with this virtual version of table tennis.

• Download the app VR Ping Pong which uses VR goggles to simulate playing in a shared virtual room.
• Players around the world can join the same table to rally and compete. The VR makes it incredibly lifelike!
• Organize a team tournament bracket to crown your ping pong champion.
• Take turns wearing the VR goggles and rallying from home.
• Set up real tables and use paddles to make it more physically interactive.
• Stream matches so those waiting their turn can watch and cheer.

24. Guess the Jargon

How fluent is your team in its industry’s lingo? This game will test their expertise.

• Pull 5-10 pieces of industry jargon, abbreviations, acronyms, etc.
• Share the list, and have everyone privately guess what they mean or stand for.
• Reveal answers and award points for correct guesses. Most points wins!
• Research terms related to your niche or look for internal company terminology.

25. Virtual Game Night

Gather your teammates remotely for some classic board and video games.

• Select games that work well virtually like Jackbox Party Games, Skribbl, Codenames, Heads Up!, or Among Us.
• Organize a series of short game “stations” that pairs rotate through.
• End the night by coming together as a large group for games like Quiplash.
• Set up video chat on a separate device so you can interact while gaming.
• Take screenshots of funny in-game moments to look back on later.
• Award small prizes to the winning pairs or players at each station.

26. Show and Tell

Get a glimpse into your colleagues’ lives by virtually sharing unique items.

• Each teammate presents an object from their home that holds meaning or says something about them.
• As a group, ask the presenter questions about their item and why it was chosen.
• Continue sharing until all colleagues have shown an item.
• Encourage showing items tied to hobbies, family heirlooms, travel mementos, etc.
• Have presenters come up with a creative name for their item to spark additional conversation.

27. Remote Design Challenge

Get those creative juices flowing with a design challenge – build something new with random household items!

• Give teams a general design task, like building the tallest structure or creating an unusual musical instrument.
• Set a timer for teams to find everyday items around their homes to build something that achieves the goal.
• Regroup and have teams present their unique creations.
• Require teams use a certain number of household items in their design.
• Share examples of creative designs to inspire ideas.
• Have teams explain their design strategy and problem solving methods.

28. Virtual Coffee Chat

Build relationships in a casual way over video coffee chat .

• Hop on a video call while making coffee or sitting down with your favorite brew.
• Chat about lighter topics and happenings in each other’s lives.
• Maintain the ambiance of an in-office coffee break to connect.
• Send coffee-themed care packages to enjoy together during chats.
• Occasionally invite guest speakers like baristas to demo brewing techniques.
• Customize your video backgrounds to coffee shops for fun.

29. Remote Carnival

Who doesn’t love a good carnival? Bring the midway magic online with virtual booths and activities.

• Set up interactive “booths” like trivia, virtual photo booth, or arts and crafts all in separate video breakout rooms.
• Have employees wander between booths in groups, earning tickets for participating.
• Cap it off by giving ticket winners fun prizes like gift cards or vacation days.
• Select booths with activities people can do from their homes.
• Appoint leaders to host each booth and explain the activities.
• Develop a fun carnival theme complete with decorations and costumes!

30. Digital Photo Scavenger Hunt

Embark on a team adventure – with photos! See who can capture the most challenging shots.

• Create a bingo-style card with photo-based tasks (yellow flower, shoes on a table, pet wearing a hat).
• Teams have 1 hour to snap as many photo challenges as possible.
• Regroup and share your photo stories, awarding points for each task completed. Most points wins!
• Have teams vote on superlative awards like “most creative.”
• Consider neighborhood-friendly tasks or provide an alternate kid-centric list.
• Switch up themes like nature, food, travel, etc. for each new hunt.

31. Remote Arts and Crafts

Unleash your inner crafters! Make art together through the magic of video call tutorials.

• Select a crafting activity like origami, flower crowns, or mini canvases. Buy activity kits.
• Host a live tutorial over video where the teacher demonstrates and teams follow along.
• Regroup to showcase finished creations and vote on superlatives.
• Plan crafts with easy-to-find materials in case people lack supplies.
• Record tutorials so people can rewatch instructions as needed.
• Take snapshots of everyone proudly displaying their artwork.

32. Who Am I?

Put your guessing skills to the test in this fast-paced team game. Can you figure out which famous name is on your forehead?

• Tape a famous person’s name on each player’s forehead, visible to others but not themselves.
• Take turns asking yes or no questions to guess the name on your head based on other’s clues.
• First player to guess their name correctly wins!
• Use names tailored to your team’s interests and knowledge.
• Don’t make it too obvious! The trickier, the more fun it is.

33. Team Time Capsule

Preserve memories in a time capsule to look back on later.

How to make:

• Decide on a future date to open the capsule, like 1 year from now.
• Have each person add an item to the box that represents their time on the team. This could be photos, mementos, inside jokes, favorite tools, or predictions for the future.
• Seal up the box and store until the reveal date!
• Bury a physical time capsule or create a digital one to look back on fondly.
• Make contributions anonymous if more comfortable.
• When opened, have people guess who contributed each item.

34. Virtual Amazing Race

Fasten your seatbelts for an exhilarating trip around the world! Well, virtually at least.

• Select global cities and create location-themed challenges teams must complete at each stop along the race route.
• Challenges could include trivia, digital scavenger hunt for images, food tasting, or language phrases.
• Teams race to conquer all challenges and reach the final pit stop first!
• Share fun facts about each country/city throughout the race.
• Have pit stops where teams chill or compete in quick mini-games.
• Embrace the destination theme with backgrounds, attire, music, and food.

35. Digital Mini Golf

Fore! Enjoy mini golf from the comfort of your desk in this virtual recreation.

• Use the app VR Golf Online to simulate a mini golf course with augmented reality. Players take turns putting on the digital green.
• Organize a simple tournament bracket, tracking scores on a shared spreadsheet.
• Award fun trophies or prizes to the winning golfer!
• Rent VR goggles for an immersive experience or take turns using one set.
• Set up real putting mats and clubs to enhance the activity away from screens.
• Personalize courses with your company’s logo and colors.

36. Remote Karaoke

Belt out your favorite tunes together in an entertaining online karaoke session.

• Use a karaoke app like Sing2 that allows group singing over video conference.
• Take turns performing songs. Cheer each other on!
• Vote on superlatives like “best stage presence” and “most daring song choice.”
• Make it duet style by pairing up teammates randomly per song.
• Create themed playlists around musical eras, artists or holidays.
• Award fun prizes like wireless mics to the winners!

37. Virtual Team Lunch

Enjoy each other’s company during a team meal over video conference.

• Pick a day and time and hop on a call to simulate your team going out to lunch together.
• Eat meals you’ve cooked at home and catch up on life happenings.
• Change up the menu periodically with different cultural cuisine themes.
• Play icebreaker games during the call like two truths and a lie.
• Share the recipe for your dish or give a quick cooking tutorial.
• Take virtual “selfies” together at the end to look back on.

38. Remote Letter Writing

Spread cheer and strengthen connections through the lost art of letter writing.

• Pair up teammates randomly. Partners write thoughtful letters to each other sharing memories, kind words, and encouragement.
• Mail your letters simultaneously without sharing contents first.
• Enjoy receiving and reading your surprise letters delivered to your mailbox!
• Snail mail letters if possible, or print and mail digitally-composed letters.
• Allow people time after receiving letters to personally reply back.
• Display your treasured letters proudly in your work area as a reminder.

39. Virtual Plant-a-Seed

Grow together (literally!) by planting seeds in small pots and watching the progress over weeks.

• Mail seed packets and small pots to each teammate at home.
• Hop on a video call to plant the seeds together, sharing tips.
• Check in regularly on the video call to provide progress updates and see whose seedlings are thriving!
• Choose quick-growing seeds like herbs or flowers.
• Research the best planting methods in advance and create simple instructions.
• Transplant the seedlings to the office once you’re back!

40. Social Media Photo Challenge

Combine creativity with some friendly competition in a team social media photo challenge.

• Create prompts tied to company values or goals (ex. “Teamwork”, “Creativity”).
• Challenge teams to take an interpretive photo representing that concept and post to internal social media.
• Award prizes to pics with the most likes!
• Designate a shared team hashtag to track entries.
• Change up locations, props and poses to make photos fun and diverse.
• Save and share favorites externally later with consent.

41. Remote Maker Space

Invent cool creations, hacks, and crafts during virtual maker sessions.

• Select projects that use common household items, like building catapults or marble runs from recyclables.
• Livestream step-by-step tutorials and have makers follow along from home.
• Regroup and test out everyone’s unique designs!
• Send sanctioned project supply kits if certain materials are required.
• Make it family-friendly and invite kids to join.
• Form teams and have makers combine creations for bigger builds.

42. Digital Beach Day

Trade your office chair for a beach chair with this sunny digital getaway.

• Set up a video call where everyone joins dressed for the beach with sunglasses or hats. Use summery virtual backgrounds.
• Pack a beach picnic to eat together. Share beach vacation memories and bucket lists.
• Sprinkle in summer fun with games like beach ball trivia questions or ocean sound bingo.
• Mail team members beachy treats like sunscreen samples or flip flops.
• Split into smaller video breakout rooms so you can chat in “pairs.”
• Extend after work hours so people can literally head to the beach after!

>>Need more ideas? Check out our popular article on networking icebreakers .

Reading through these 42 virtual team building concepts likely got the gears turning as far as inspiring better connection amongst your remote employees.  

But pinpointing the perfect events to engage your unique team can still prove daunting. 

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How Your Teams Can Productively Work Together…Virtually

Before COVID-19 became a pandemic, the majority of people around the globe  were already working remotely and interacting electronically part of the time. However, now that entire organizations are required to temporarily work from home, employers have become increasingly concerned about whether their teams will be able to solve problems effectively and achieve goals in a virtual environment. What can leaders and managers do to support team members to work together effectively?

Your Group’s Styles Matter

Constructive group styles  are just as important to the performance and problem-solving effectiveness of virtual teams (in which members rely on electronic means to communicate) as they are to groups working face-to-face. 1 A Constructive group style  is descriptive of groups in which members:

• interact and approach problems and activities in ways that enable them to fulfill both interpersonal and performance-related needs (such as needs for affiliation and achievement, respectively);
• demonstrate a balanced concern for their own interests and those of the group (for example by delineating objectives for the group and pursuing them in ways that allow for individual growth and development); and
• give appropriate attention to both task (including setting goals and focusing on objectives, openly exchanging preliminary thoughts and ideas) and maintenance issues (such as being friendly, mutually supportive, and providing thoughtful feedback). 2

Early research on virtual problem-solving teams showed that they are more prone than face-to-face teams to approach tasks and interact in Defensive ways 3 that make members feel insecure and psychologically unsafe. 4 This is illustrated by the profile below, which shows the composite group styles of thirty-one virtual teams based on members’ responses to the Group Styles Inventory . This tendency, which we refer to as the electronic disintegration of interpersonal processes , is due partly to the lack of nonverbal cues and the negative aspects of deindividualization  (such as feelings of isolation and perceived lacked of accountability) promoted by technology.

The Electronic Disintegration of Interpersonal Processes

If you’re not familiar with our Circumplex, the length of the blue extensions at the top of the profile (the 11 o’clock to 2 o’clock positions) represent the extent to which members reported Constructive styles were being demonstrated by their teams while working together on a particular problem or task. The heavier middle concentric circle in the profile shows the 50 th percentile or median score for face-to-face teams. Compared to face-to-face teams, virtual teams tend to fall short (well below the 50 th percentile) on Constructive interaction styles—including the Affiliative and Achievement styles. This is important because it indicates that virtual teams tend to struggle not only with the people-oriented aspects of Constructive interaction that are critical to psychological safety (like positive social connection, trust, and empathy), but also with the task-related aspects of working together effectively (such as staying focused on objectives, considering alternative perspectives).

As indicated by the length of the other extensions in the above profile, it’s easy for virtual teams to be plagued by some of the most counter-productive styles when it comes to courage, creativity, initiative, and adaptability. Keeping in mind that most virtual teams right now are trying to solve non-routine and important problems—and are doing this in an environment that is quickly changing with lots of uncertainty—teams that are Defensive in passive (green extensions) or aggressive ways (red extensions) are not going to be up to the challenge.

Strategies for Strengthening Constructive Group Styles

Regulate and Constructively redirect your behavior. It’s much easier to change behaviors while groups are still adapting to the new way of working, as opposed to waiting until counterproductive behavioral patterns become the norm and part of the status quo. You can start by paying attention to the impact of your own behaviors and decisions  on those of other people. Passive/Defensive behaviors in groups (such as limiting one’s participation or offering few, if any, alternative ideas or perspectives) sometimes are reactions to Aggressive/Defensive behaviors by certain members—which can include sarcasim, blaming others for problems or mistakes, dominating the conversation, and interrupting or talking over other members when they are speaking. Passive/Defensive behaviors in groups typically are also promoted by the Passive/Defensive behaviors of others—which, in addition to the examples described earlier, can include saying or doing what’s popular and waiting for others to take charge or initiative. These kinds of styles can be more important in determining whether teams fail or soar than background, technical skills, and personality characteristics of the group’s members. 5 Therefore, check in with group members to find out what’s working and what you can do differently to facilitate and support effective collaboration in this new environment.

Be seen. One of inherent downsides of working virtually is the loss of nonverbal cues that can give you and others a more accurate interpretation of what people are saying (or not saying) as well as provide unsolicited, in-the-moment feedback on the impact you and they are having on others. If you’re using a communication medium that offers video and you have a camera on your computer or smartphone, turn it on for meetings as well as one-on-ones—especially when it seems that letting people see you could make a positive difference. Invite people to also turn their cameras and explain why.

Establish a unified sense of purpose. Be clear in communicating what the group and your organization are trying to accomplish during this critical time. Define the priorities and most important problems for the group to address right now. At the same time, it’s important to remember that the current situation is temporary. Therefore your team should also be working toward the longer term, the organization’s overarching purpose, and what you collectively want things to look like when the current situation becomes history.

Keep your focus—and be willing to adjust. It’s easy to get sidetracked, particularly when things are constantly changing and stress is high. Address your peers’ and employees’ individual needs and be empathetic. At the same time, stay focused on the objectives and be willing to adjust them as new information becomes available so that objectives stay realistic and people stay motivated.

Stimulate thinking. Research shows that Passive/Defensive styles have an even more detrimental effect on the performance of virtual teams than they do on the performance of face-to-face teams, particularly when Constructive styles are weak. 6 Although quickly coming to agreement without much discussion may feel more “comfortable,” encourage discussion of alternative perspectives and ways of looking at problems and ask quieter members to share their thoughts. This will ensure that your team comes up with good solutions that members are confident about and accept.

Highlight job significance. One of the challenges with working remotely is that people start communicating less with each other and, as a result, start losing sight of the ways in which their efforts make a difference for their team as well as their organization and its clients. 7 Take the time to regularly stay in touch with your peers and employees and let them know how their efforts are helping you and how their work is making a positive difference in the work and lives of others.

Taking steps now to strengthen Constructive group styles will not only bolster the effectiveness of your teams while working virtually, but also continue to strengthen their effectiveness when members are once again able to work together face-to-face. If you’re ready to dive in and learn more about your teams Constructive styles using the Group Styles Inventory visit humansynergistics.com .

Human Synergistics is carrying out a new research project focusing on virtual teams and the relationship between group styles and outcomes such as solution effectiveness. To collect data for this study, we are making available a limited number of credits for the digital Group Styles Inventory prototype to HS Global Change Circle Accredited Consultants. Please contact us at [email protected] if you are a GCC member and have virtual teams interested in completing the GSI and receiving feedback. This includes face-to-face teams that are transitioning to virtual operations.

1 Janet L. Szumal and Robert A. Cooke, Creating Constructive Cultures , pp. 27-31.

2 Based on Robert A. Cooke and J. Clayton Lafferty, Group Styles Inventory .

3 See Richard E. Potter, Pierre A. Balthazard, and Robert A. Cooke, “ Virtual team interaction: Assessment, consequences, and management ,” and Pierre Balthazard, David Waldman, Jane Howell, and Leanne Atwater “ Shared leaders and group interaction styles in problem-solving virtual teams. ” Additional references are listed on the Human Synergistics website .

4 “Psychological safety” is a term coined by Amy C. Edmondson in “ Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams ” to refer to members’ shared belief that their team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking such as speaking up when you have a fresh idea or admitting when you’ve made a mistake or need help.

5 See, for example, Charles Duhigg, “ What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team ;” Pierre A. Balthazard, Richard E. Potter and John Warren “ Expertise, Extraversion, and Group Interaction Styles As Performance Indicators of Virtual Teams ;” and Sean Graber “ Why Remote Work Thrives in Some Companies and Fails in Others .” 

6 Richard E. Potter, Pierre A. Balthazard, and Robert A. Cooke, “ Virtual team interaction: Assessment, consequences, and management ,” pp. 135-136.

7 Janet L. Szumal and Robert A. Cooke, Creating Constructive Cultures , p. 258.

Unleashing Creativity: 23 Group Activities Ideas For Problem Solving

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The use of group activities to include everyone in problem-solving is growing in popularity. Individuals can get together to work on an issue that impacts their team, company, or even community by participating in a group activity.

Group activities may be a terrific approach to improve communication, leadership, and creative abilities in addition to teaching people how to cooperate towards a shared objective. This blog article aims to offer suggestions for group activities that might improve problem-solving skills and a sense of cohesion among group members.

In this article, we will discuss 23 group activities ideas for problem-solving, including virtual team-building problem-solving activities.

Read More: 15 Group Activities For Social Work Students That Are Fun And Engaging!

Why Problem-solving Activities Are Good For A Group?

Team-building activities that involve problem-solving are quite effective. They not only enhance communication, but they also foster creativity and raise output.

People learn to trust one another and depend on each other’s abilities when they cooperate to solve challenges.

As a result, people are better able to grasp one another’s skills and how to collaborate. Additionally, problem-solving exercises inspire individuals to think creatively and beyond the box.

16 In-Person Group Activities Ideas For Problem-Solving

• Word Association: Word association is a game in which groups must collaborate to come up with a list of words that are connected in a given amount of time.
• Picture Association: Teams must cooperate in order to connect a collection of images to create a narrative.
• Mystery Case: By assembling information and drawing conclusions, teams must work together to solve a mystery case.
• The marshmallow Tower Challenge: Requires groups to construct the tallest tower using just marshmallows and toothpicks.
• Wild Goose Chase: To finish first, teams must race through a variety of chores, locate buildings, and solve riddles in the great outdoors.
• Trivia Challenge: Teams must cooperate to respond to as many trivia questions as they can in the allotted amount of time.
• The Price is Right: Teams must collaborate to estimate the cost of various things.
• The Blindfolded Obstacle Course: Teams must lead a blindfolded participant through an obstacle course.
• The Tower of Hanoi: Teams must cooperate in order to tackle the Tower of Hanoi Puzzle.
• The Sponge Race: Teams must move a sponge from one bucket to another using just their bodies.
• The Balloon Race: The balloon race requires teams to race while using just their bodies to propel a balloon from one end of the room to the other.
• Domino Effect Challenge: Teams are given a set of dominoes and instructed to start a chain reaction that will eventually fall every domino.
• Reverse Pyramid: Teams are required to construct a pyramid construction, but there is a catch: they must do so backward, beginning at the top and moving downward.
• Crime Investigators : Teams are assigned a crime to investigate, and they must cooperate to obtain information and identify the offender.
• Egg Drop: Teams are given materials to create an apparatus that will keep an egg from cracking when dropped from a specific height in the Egg Drop competition. The goal is to determine which team’s invention is the most successful.
• Cardboard Boat Building Challenge: During this exercise, groups are entrusted with constructing a cardboard boat. The goal is to see which team’s boat can hold the most weight without sinking.

7 Virtual Team Building Problem-Solving Activities

If your team is working remotely or is compelled to do so, virtual group activities for problem-solving could prove to be a tremendous boon for the communion and engagement of the team members, all while they work from the comfort of their own homes.

• Virtual Trivia: Teams can participate in a virtual trivia tournament and respond to inquiries about a variety of topics. Preparation : You’ll need a platform like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams to host the game in order to prepare for a virtual trivia contest. You’ll also require a database of trivia questions and answers or a website that offers such information. Virtual trivia is frequently played on websites like Kahoot, Quizlet, and TriviaMaker.
• Virtual Scavenger Hunt: Teams can take part in a virtual scavenger hunt, deciphering clues to locate the next one. Preparation : To hold a virtual scavenger hunt, you’ll need a platform, such as a video conferencing application or a platform for virtual events. You’ll also need to make a list of things or assignments that participants must locate or do. Using a website like GooseChase, Scavify, or Adventure Hunt, you may design a scavenger hunt.
• Virtual Murder Mystery: Teams can participate in a virtual murder mystery game where they must collect evidence and solve the case. Preparation : You’ll need a platform to host the game, such as Zoom or Google Meet, in order to host a virtual murder mystery. Additionally, you’ll want a murder mystery script or kit that contains the tale, the characters, and the clues. Virtual murder mystery kits are sold by a variety of businesses, including Murder Mystery Games , Virtual Murder Mystery, and Mystery Escape Rooms.
• Virtual Escape Room: Teams can cooperate to solve riddles and make their way out of a virtual escape room using this game. Preparation : You’ll need a platform to host the game, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, in order to host a virtual escape room. A platform that offers a virtual escape room experience, such as Puzzlomatic, Escapologic, or Unlock, is also required.
• Virtual Jeopardy: Teams can take part in a virtual Jeopardy tournament by responding to questions about a variety of topics. Preparation: You’ll need a platform to host the game, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, in order to host a virtual Jeopardy game. Using a website like Kahoot, Quizlet, or TriviaMaker, you may make your own Jeopardy game.
• Virtual Minefield: Without verbal contact, teams must follow directions to move through a virtual minefield. Preparation: You’ll need a platform to host the game, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, in order to host a virtual minefield. Using a website like Kahoot, Quizlet, or TriviaMaker, you may design your own digital minefield.
• Virtual Jigsaw Puzzle: To finish a virtual jigsaw puzzle as rapidly as feasible, teams must cooperate. Preparation: A platform to host the game, such as Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams, is required in order to host a virtual jigsaw puzzle. A virtual jigsaw puzzles platform like Jigsaw Planet, Jigsaw Explorer, or JigZone is also required.

Things To Consider When Making Problem-Solving Activities For A Team

When creating problem-solving activities for a team, it’s essential to consider the following:

• Goals : What is the goal of the activity? Is it to improve communication, boost creativity, or increase productivity?
• Team Size : How many people will be participating in the activity? This will impact the type of activity that can be done.
• Time : How much time do you have for the activity? Some activities may require more time than others.
• Equipment : What equipment do you have available for the activity? Some activities may require special equipment.
• Budget : What is your budget for the activity? Some activities may require a larger budget than others.
• Virtual Platform : What virtual platform will you use for the activity? Some activities may require specific virtual platforms.

Frequently Asked Questions [FAQs]

What are some benefits of problem-solving activities for a group.

Answer: Problem-solving activities improve communication, boost creativity, increase productivity, and strengthen bonds between team members.

Can Problem-solving Activities Be Done Virtually?

Answer: Yes, problem-solving activities can be done virtually. Many virtual team-building problem-solving activities exist, such as virtual trivia, virtual scavenger hunts, and virtual escape rooms.

How Do Problem-Solving Activities Help Improve Team Communication?

Answer: Problem-solving activities encourage team members to work together, listen to each other’s ideas, and express their thoughts and opinions. This leads to improved communication and better collaboration among team members.

What Are Some Advantages Of Virtual Team-building Problem-Solving Activities?

Answer: Virtual team-building problem-solving activities offer the convenience of being able to participate from anywhere with an internet connection, and they allow teams to participate in activities that may not be possible in person, such as virtual escape rooms or virtual murder mysteries.

How Do I Choose The Right Problem-Solving Activity For My Team?

Answer: Consider the goals of the activity, team size, available time, necessary equipment, budget, and virtual platform when choosing a problem-solving activity for your team. It’s also a good idea to take into account the interests and preferences of your team members.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, problem-solving activities are an excellent way to build strong, effective teams. They promote creativity, communication, and collaboration, and can be done both in-person and virtually.

When creating problem-solving activities for a team, it’s essential to consider the goals, team size, time, equipment, budget, and virtual platform.

With these 20 group activities ideas for problem-solving, virtual team building problem-solving activities , and things to consider, you’re well on your way to creating engaging and productive problem-solving activities for your team.

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Virtual Trivia: Individual vs. Individual

This is a quiz-style game where individuals show off their knowledge. Slides with Friends offers a pre-styled template to show you how to create your own trivia game based on general knowledge or specific themes. The layout is similar to preparing PowerPoint slides, so participants should be able to get a hang of it pretty quickly. 

“ Virtual Trivia ” is great for anyone who loves testing their knowledge and enjoys friendly competition. It's especially fun for large groups looking to have a good time together while showing off their smarts. The game sparks excitement and engagement by challenging players' knowledge on various topics, making it a thrilling and entertaining experience for everyone involved.

Featured on the Ellen DeGeneres Show, “ Heads Up! ” is a virtual guessing game with different categories spanning from guessing celebrities and singing to doing funny accents. To play, gather your team, open the app, pick a category, hold your phone to your forehead, and listen to your teammates as they give hints for you to guess the word before the time is up!

This hilarious game is perfect for teams looking for light-hearted games. Plus, “Heads Up!” uses your device's front camera cleverly—it records the game and displays the words you're guessing so you can later share your fun with everyone!

Coworker Feud

Experience the virtual twist on the classic game show “Family Feud”, adapted as an exciting team-building activity. In “Coworker Feud”, players guess popular survey answers, like reasons for being late to work or what to gift a coworker.

The game is perfect for teams that are into friendly competitions without needing tons of trivia knowledge. It’s about having fun together, bonding, and improving teamwork. Plus, it helps everyone understand how coworkers think. 

The viral game “ Among Us ” is a blast to play with coworkers. In this game, players are on a spaceship completing tasks while trying to spot imposters among the team. The catch? Imposters look like everyone else, so crewmates have to watch for odd behavior or clues to figure them out. The game can be played on mobile, PC, or Nintendo Switch.

Ideal for teams keen on strategy and figuring things out together, “Among Us” is fun because it’s a mix of teamwork, cunning strategies, and clever deception.

Read My Lips

“Read My Lips” is a game where players use Zoom video without audio to figure out what someone's saying. The host picks a topic and gives it to a player who mutes their mic and mouths the word. Everyone has one minute to guess the word, and the player with the most correct guesses is the winner.

Great for teams up for quirky communication challenges, “Read My Lips” is fun because it adds humor and boosts observation skills.

Funny Pet Contests

Pets are awesome for photos—they’re adorable, hilarious, and full of surprises. So, if you want a fun photo contest theme, four-legged friends are the perfect choice. The “Funny Pet Contest” is all about using amusing pet pics or videos. How to join? Share your funny pet photos or videos and vote for the best!

This is an ideal game for pet owners and animal fans on your team. It’s enjoyable because it’s light-hearted and brings the team closer together. A simple yet fun way for team members to bond and learn more about each other.

Online Karaoke Contest

Are you ready to show off your singing skills? The “Online Karaoke Contest” is a virtual singing competition for teams conducted on platforms with high-quality audio and video like Zoom. Be sure to choose the songs and lyrics beforehand and check everyone’s mic before the karaoke session begins. Don’t feel like singing solo? No problem! Shy participants can simply watch others sing or join in duets with others.

Perfect for teams loving music and performances, online karaoke contests are an engaging way to break barriers, showcase talents, and relieve stress through entertainment.

Virtual Charades 

“Virtual Charades” is a twist on the classic word-guessing game where players act out prompts without speaking and let others guess. To play, use a video platform that can accommodate a large number of people like Zoom or Google Meet, and make sure to choose themes that your team is interested in. Common choices include movies, celebs, wildlife, or inside jokes everyone knows.

Perfect for groups into lively and expressive games, “Virtual Charades” is fun because it sparks creativity, teamwork, and communication. Plus, it’s a relaxed way to ease stress and boost morale within the team.

Can You Hear Me Now?

"Can You Hear Me Now?" is a drawing game that combines drawing skills with listening. To play, pick one player to be the speaker and let others get creative. An online image generator creates a picture, and the speaker explains it using only geometric shapes in their speech. For instance, "draw a big circle and a triangle above."

This game is great for teams looking for a creative teamwork challenge. It not only promotes teamwork and good communication but also focuses on strategy as players have to find innovative ways to convey and interpret instructions accurately.

This is an online drawing and guessing game similar to Pictionary. Each player takes turns as the "artist," drawing a word or phrase while others guess. You can use a mouse or graphics tablet and tools like pens, brushes, and colors. When someone guesses right, both the guesser and the artist score points. “ iSketch ” offers word lists in 20+ languages, various difficulty levels, themes, and game types.

It is perfect for teams that love visual games and creativity because it is a perfect blend of artistic expression and guessing fun.

Superhero Academy

Why be just regular coworkers when you could be the Avengers at least for one day? “ Superhero Academy ” offers a comic-book-themed team-building adventure where your team will dive into alter-egos, brain teasers, and challenges, testing skill and teamwork.

Perfect for teams seeking an immersive, themed experience, this lively activity creates an engaging environment where your team can shine. It’s not just about individual skills; it’s about working together, strengthening bonds, communicating better, and discovering hidden talents within the team.

Virtual Two Truths, One Lie

"Two Truths and a Lie" is a classic icebreaker game adapted for virtual get-togethers. Each player writes three statements about themselves: two truths and one lie. The rest of the group guesses which statement is the lie. Once everyone has voted, reveal the correct answer and allow team members to ask follow-up questions!

This is an especially fun way for people who are new to the team to break the ice and introduce themselves. It is also perfect for virtual teams aiming to build connections, understand each other better, and show a more playful side beyond work! 

Virtual Candyman

“Virtual Candyman” is an online card game with hidden roles. To play, use a virtual card deck to assign roles and achieve game goals. There are three main characters: Candyman with an Ace card, Police with a King Card, and buyers with different number cards. At the start, no one knows who the Candyman is, and the cop aims to reveal them quickly. Players who successfully buy candy can leave the game. The Candyman wins by selling all candies without getting caught by the police.

This is a great game for groups into virtual role-playing and strategy games. It’s also perfect for large online groups because it involves intrigue and strategy, making it engaging for many players at once.

“Wordle” is a web-based word puzzle where players guess a five-letter word in six tries, with hints in different colors. While usually a solo game, you can also play it with a large virtual team to help team members exercise the brain muscles of memory and attention.

Great for teams loving word games and puzzles, “Wordle” boosts communication, teamwork, and reasoning, skills useful in daily work. It’s not just about guessing words; it’s about problem-solving with your team and having fun while cracking the code.

Virtual Team Pictionary

If you are looking for a game that will let you and your teammates get creative while having lots of laughs, look no further. “Pictionary” is a drawing and guessing game where someone draws while teammates guess what it is. You can go for a hosted virtual Pictionary for added structure, or use paper and pencil or Zoom's whiteboard feature.

Easy to set up and offering an opportunity for everyone to participate, “Pictionary” is ideal for teams that enjoy creative and interactive challenges​. 

Perspective Drawing

“Perspective Drawing” is a virtual drawing game that highlights team members' unique perspectives. Here’s how it works: Everyone draws their idea based on a given prompt, then shares and talks about their creations.

The game is perfect for teams into creative expression and team bonding. It’s a fantastic way to explore how each team member sees things differently and how those perspectives come together. It’s especially great for large groups online because it encourages everyone to share their unique views, fostering a stronger sense of connection and understanding within the team.

​Cards Against Humanity (Online Version)

Looking for a fun way to hang out virtually? Consider playing the well-known card game "Cards Against Humanity" with friends or coworkers. It’s an adult game where one player picks a question card, and others pick the funniest answers from their cards. This website lets you create an easy-to-play virtual game on your phone or laptop. Players join a digital game room through a link, seeing the game live while keeping their own cards private.

The game's humor and light-hearted competition make it engaging and enjoyable for a large number of players, fostering interaction and laughter among the group.

Online Scattergories

This online version of the classic word game is perfect for big groups on Zoom or Microsoft Teams. All you need is paper and a willingness to brainstorm words. Simply pick a topic and a starting letter (for instance, the first letter of the last name of the first person in the meeting), and let the creativity flow. 

“ Online Scattegories ” is great for teams loving wordplay and creative thinking. It’s a fun icebreaker that brings in fun and a bit of friendly competition, boosting team spirit and strengthening team bonds. 

Psych (Online)

“ Psych ” is a fun game where players come up with fake answers for real trivia questions. The player who picks the correct answer earns points. To play, download the app and invite your team. The game offers diverse and entertaining categories, perfect for trying out with your remote team.

This game is great for larger groups because it sparks laughter and encourages creative thinking. It’s an excellent way for many players to bond, share laughs, and showcase their imaginative side, adding a lively buzz to team interactions.

Online Cooking Challenge

This is a virtual cooking competition where participants make dishes inspired by a specific theme or ingredients in a limited time. They showcase their creations over a video call, sharing their cooking journey and inspiration. Winners can be chosen through votes from peers, a panel, or the audience.

Perfect for teams loving cooking and creativity, an online cooking challenge is a great way to bring the team together, encouraging a sense of togetherness and friendly competition.

Slides with Friends 

“ Slides with Friends ” is a platform where you can personalize virtual games for interactive fun. It offers ready-to-use templates for team building, meetings, brainstorming, and more. Each template clearly states the number of slides, approximate time for playing, and recommended group size, making it easy to choose. There's always something new to enjoy without too much time for setup. All you need to do is make a slide show, start a Zoom call, and share your screen. Everyone can join the event using their phones to answer questions, type responses, vote, share pictures, make fun noises, and more!

The platform is perfect for teams looking for diverse and engaging virtual games. It's especially fun because it's flexible and inclusive for remote teams, fostering collaboration in a lively and interactive manner.

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22 Unbeatable Team Building Problem Solving Activities

Problem-solving is a critical skill for professionals and with team building problem-solving activities, you can sharpen your skills while having fun at the same time.  

Updated: March 1, 2024

In the professional world, one thing is for sure: problem-solving is a vital skill if you want to survive and thrive. It’s a universal job skill that organizations seek in new potential employees and that managers look for when considering candidates for promotions.  

But there’s a problem. 

According to Payscale, 60% of managers feel that new grads entering the workforce lack problem-solving abilities – making it the most commonly lacking soft skill.  

Problem-solving skill needs to be practiced and perfected on an ongoing basis in order to be applied effectively when the time comes. And while there are tons of traditional approaches to becoming a better problem-solver, there’s another (much more interesting) option: team building problem-solving activities. 

The good news? This means learning and having fun don’t have to be mutually exclusive. And you can create a stronger team at the same time. 

16 In-Person Team Building Problem Solving Activities for Your Work Group  

1. cardboard boat building challenge, 2. egg drop , 3. clue murder mystery, 4. marshmallow spaghetti tower  , 5. corporate escape room, 6. wild goose chase, 7. lost at sea  , 8. domino effect challenge, 9. reverse pyramid  , 10. ci: the crime investigators, 11. team pursuit, 12. bridge builders, 13. domino effect challenge, 14. hollywood murder mystery, 15. code break, 16. cardboard boat building challenge, 6 virtual team building problem solving activities for your work group  , 1. virtual escape room: mummy’s curse, 2. virtual clue murder mystery, 3. virtual escape room: jewel heist, 4. virtual code break  , 5. virtual trivia time machine.

• 6. Virtual Jeoparty Social

There are a ton of incredible team building problem solving activities available. We’ve hand-picked 16 of our favorites that we think your corporate group will love too. 

Split into teams and create a cardboard boat made out of just the materials provided: cardboard and tape. Team members will have to work together to engineer a functional boat that will float and sail across water without sinking. Once teams have finished making their boats, they will create a presentation to explain why their boat is the best, before putting their boats to the test. The final challenge will have teams racing their boats to test their durability! Nothing says problem-solving like having to make sure you don’t sink into the water!

Every day at work, you’re forced to make countless decisions – whether they’re massively important or so small you barely think about them.  

But your ability to effectively make decisions is critical in solving problems quickly and effectively.  

With a classic team building problem solving activity like the Egg Drop, that’s exactly what your team will learn to do. 

For this activity, you’ll need some eggs, construction materials, and a place you wouldn’t mind smashing getting dirty with eggshells and yolks.  

The goal of this activity is to create a contraption that will encase an egg and protect it from a fall – whether it’s from standing height or the top of a building. But the challenge is that you and your team will only have a short amount of time to build it before it’s time to test it out, so you’ll have to think quickly! 

To make it even more challenging, you’ll have to build the casing using only simple materials like: 

• Newspapers 
• Plastic wrap
• Rubber bands
• Popsicle sticks
• Cotton balls

Feel free to have some fun in picking the materials. Use whatever you think would be helpful without making things too easy! 

Give your group 15 minutes to construct their egg casing before each team drops their eggs. If multiple eggs survive, increase the height gradually to see whose created the sturdiest contraption.  

If you’re not comfortable with the idea of using eggs for this activity, consider using another breakable alternative, such as lightbulbs for a vegan Egg Drop experience. 

With Clue Murder Mystery, your team will need to solve the murder of a man named Neil Davidson by figuring out who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit the crime.

But it won’t be easy! You’ll need to exercise your best problem-solving skills and channel your inner detectives if you want to keep this case from going cold and to get justice for the victim.

Collaboration is critical to problem solving. 

Why? Because, as the old saying goes, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. This expression reflects the fact that people are capable of achieving greater things when they work together to do so. 

If you’re looking for a team building problem solving activity that helps boost collaboration, you’ll love Marshmallow Spaghetti Tower.  

This game involves working in teams to build the tallest possible freestanding tower using only marshmallows, uncooked spaghetti, tape, and string.  

The kicker? This all has to be done within an allotted timeframe. We recommend about thirty minutes.  

For an added dimension of challenge, try adding a marshmallow to the top of the tower to make it a little more top heavy.  

Whichever team has the highest tower when time runs out is the winner! 

If you’ve never participated in an escape room, your team is missing out! It’s one of the most effective team building problem solving activities out there because it puts you and your colleagues in a scenario where the only way out is collaboratively solving puzzles and deciphering clues.  

The principle is simple: lock your group in a room, hide the key somewhere in that room, and have them work through challenges within a set time frame. Each challenge will lead them one step closer to finding the key and, ultimately, their escape.    

At Outback, we offer “done-for-you” escape rooms where we’ll transform your office or meeting room so you don’t have to worry about:

• Seeking transportation for your team 
• Capacity of the escape rooms  
• High costs 
• Excessive planning  

That way, you and your team can simply step inside and get to work collaborating, using creative problem solving, and thinking outside the box.   

In this smartphone-based scavenger hunt team building activity , your group will split into teams and complete fun challenges by taking photos and videos around the city. Some examples of challenges you can do in this activity are:

• Parkour:  Take a picture of three team members jumping over an object that’s at least waist-high.
• Beautiful Mind:  Snap a photo of a team member proving a well-known mathematical theorem on a chalkboard.
• Puppy Love:  Take a photo of all of your team members petting a stranger’s dog at the same time.

It takes a ton of critical thinking and problem-solving to be crowned the Wild Goose Chase Champions!

Can you imagine a higher-pressure situation than being stranded at sea in a lifeboat with your colleagues? 

With this team building problem solving activity, that’s exactly the situation you and your group will put yourselves. But by the time the activity is over, you’ll have gained more experience with the idea of having to solve problems under pressure – a common but difficult thing to do. 

Here’s how it works. 

Each team member will get a six-columned chart where: 

• The first column lists the survival items each team has on hand (see the list below) 
• The second column is empty so that each team member can rank the items in order of importance for survival  
• The third column is for group rankings  
• The fourth column is for the “correct” rankings, which are revealed at the end of the activity 
• The fifth and sixth columns are for the team to enter thee difference between their individual and correct scores and the team and correct rankings 

Within this activity, each team will be equipped with the following “survival items,” listed below in order of importance, as well as a pack of matches:  

• A shaving mirror (this can be used to signal passing ships using the sun) 
• A can of gas (could be used for signaling as it could be put in the water and lit with the pack of matches) 
• A water container (for collecting water to re-hydrate ) 
• Emergency food rations (critical survival food) 
• One plastic sheet (can be helpful for shelter or to collect rainwater) 
• Chocolate bars (another food supply) 
• Fishing rods (helpful, but no guarantee of catching food) 
• Rope (can be handy, but not necessarily essential for survival) 
• A floating seat cushion (usable as a life preserver)  
• Shark repellant (could be important when in the water) 
• A bottle of rum (could be useful for cleaning wounds) 
• A radio (could be very helpful but there’s a good chance you’re out of range) 
• A sea chart (this is worthless without navigation equipment) 
• A mosquito net (unless you’ve been shipwrecked somewhere with a ton of mosquitos, this isn’t very useful) 

To get the activity underway, divide your group into teams of five and ask each team member to take ten minutes on their own to rank the items in order of importance in the respective column. Then, give the full team ten minutes as a group to discuss their individual rankings together and take group rankings, listed in that respective column. Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with those of the group as a whole. 

Finally, read out the correct order according to the US Coast Guard, listed above.  

The goal of this activity is for everyone to be heard and to come to a decision together about what they need most to survive.  

If your team works remotely, you can also do this activity online. Using a video conferencing tool like  Zoom , you can bring your group together and separate teams into “break-out rooms” where they’ll take their time individually and then regroup together. At the end, you can bring them back to the full video conference to go through the answers together. 

Many problems are intricately complex and involve a ton of moving parts. And in order to solve this type of problem, you need to be able to examine it systematically, one piece at a time.  

Especially in the business world, many problems or challenges involve multiple different teams or departments working through their respective portions of a problem before coming together in the end to create a holistic solution. 

As you can imagine, this is often easier said than done. And that’s why it’s so important to practice this ability.  

With a collaborative team building problem solving activity like Domino Effect Challenge, that’s exactly what you’ll need to do as you and your group work to create a massive, fully functional chain reaction machine. 

Here’s how it goes. 

Your group will break up into teams, with each team working to complete their own section of a massive “Rube Goldberg” machine. Then, all teams will regroup and assemble the entire machine together. You’ll need to exercise communication, collaboration, and on-the-fly problem solving in order to make your chain reaction machine go off without a hitch from start to finish. 

Being a great problem-solver means being adaptable and creative. And if you’re looking for a quick and easy team building problem solving activity, you’ll love the reverse pyramid. 

The idea here is simple: break your group out into small teams and then stand in the form of a pyramid.  

Your challenge is to flip the base and the peak of the pyramid – but you can only move three people in order to do so.  

Alternatively, rather than doing this activity with people as the pyramid, you can do another version –  the Pyramid Build  – using plastic cups instead.   

This version is a little bit different. Rather than flipping the base of a pyramid to the top, you’ll need to build the pyramid instead–but in reverse, starting from the top cup and working down. 

With this version, you’ll need 36 cups and one table per group. We recommend groups of five to seven people. Give your group 20 to 30 minutes to complete the activity. 

To get started, place one cup face down. Then, lift that cup and place the subsequent two cups underneath it. 

The real challenge here? You can only lift your pyramid by the bottom row in order to put a new row underneath – and only one person at a time can do the lifting. The remaining group members will need to act quickly and work together in order to add the next row so that it will balance the rest of the pyramid. 

If any part of your pyramid falls, you’ll need to start over. Whichever team has the most complete pyramid when time runs out will be the winner!  

The value of being able to approach problems analytically can’t be overstated. Because when problems arise, the best way to solve them is by examining the facts and making a decision based on what you know. 

With CI: The Crime Investigators, this is exactly what your team will be called upon to do as you put your detective’s hats on and work to solve a deadly crime. 

You’ll be presented with evidence and need to uncover and decipher clues. And using only the information at your disposal, you’ll need to examine the facts in order to crack the case. 

Like many of our team building problem solving activities, CI: The Crime Investigators is available in a hosted format, which can take place at your office or an outside venue, as well as a virtually-hosted format that uses video conferencing tools, or a self-hosted version that you can run entirely on your own.  

Each member of your team has their own unique strengths and skills. And by learning to combine those skills, you can overcome any challenge and solve any problem. With Team Pursuit, you and your team together to tackle challenges as you learn new things about one another, discover your hidden talents, and learn to rely on each other.

This team building problem solving activity is perfect for high-energy groups that love to put their heads together and work strategically to solve problems as a group.

Collaborate with your colleague to design and build different segments of a bridge. At the end, see if the sections come together to create a free-standing structure!   

Together as a group, see if you and your colleagues can build a gigantic “chain-reaction” machine that really works!

In smaller groups, participants work together to solve the challenge of creating sections of the machine using miscellaneous parts, and at the end, you’ll have to collaborate to connect it all together and put it in motion.

The case is fresh, but here’s what we know so far: we’ve got an up-and-coming actress who’s been found dead in her hotel room following last night’s awards show.

We have several suspects, but we haven’t been able to put the crime on any of them for sure yet. Now, it’s up to you and your team of detectives to crack the case. Together, you’ll review case files and evidence including police reports, coroners’ reports, photo evidence, tabloids, interrogations, and phone calls as you determine the motive, method, and murderer and bring justice for the victim.

You’ll need to put your problem-solving skills to the test as you share theories, collaborate, and think outside the box with your fellow investigators.

Using Outback’s app, split up into small groups and put your heads together to solve a variety of puzzles, riddles, and trivia. The team who has completed the most challenges when time is up, wins!

Can you stay afloat in a body of water in a boat made entirely of cardboard? Now that is a problem that urgently needs solving.

With this team building problem solving activity, you and your colleagues will split into groups and create a cardboard boat made out of just the materials provided – cardboard and tape.

Team members will have to work together to engineer a functional boat that will float and sail across water without sinking. Once teams have finished making their boats, they will create a presentation to explain why their boat is the best, before putting their boats to the test. The final challenge will have teams racing their boats across the water!

If you and your team are working remotely, don’t worry. You still have a ton of great virtual team building problem solving options at your disposal.

In this virtual escape room experience, your team will be transported into a pyramid cursed by a restless mummy. You’ll have to work together to uncover clues and solve complex challenges to lift the ancient curse.

You’ve probably never heard of a man named Neil Davidson. But your group will need to come together to solve the mystery of his murder by analyzing clues, resolving challenges, and figuring out who had the means, motive, and opportunity to commit a deadly crime. 

This activity will challenge you and your group to approach problems analytically, read between the lines, and use critical thinking in order to identify a suspect and deliver justice.  

If you and your team like brainteasers, then Virtual Escape Room: Jewel Heist will be a big hit.  

Here’s the backstory.

There’s been a robbery. Someone has masterminded a heist to steal a priceless collection of precious jewels, and it’s up to you and your team to recover them before time runs out.

Together, you’ll need to uncover hidden clues and solve a series of brain-boggling challenges that require collaboration, creative problem-solving, and outside-the-box thinking. But be quick! The clock is ticking before the stolen score is gone forever.

With Virtual Code Break, you and your team can learn to be adaptive and dynamic in your thinking in order to tackle any new challenges that come your way. In this activity, your group will connect on a video conferencing platform where your event host will split you out into teams. Together, you’ll have to adapt your problem-solving skills as you race against the clock to tackle a variety of mixed brainteaser challenges ranging from Sudoku to puzzles, a game of Cranium, riddles, and even trivia. 

Curious to see how a virtual team building activity works? Check out this video on a Virtual Clue Murder Mystery in action. 

Step into the Outback Time Machine and take a trip through time, from pre-pandemic 21st century through the decades all the way to the 60’s. 

This exciting, fast-paced virtual trivia game, packed with nostalgia and good vibes, is guaranteed to produce big laughs, friendly competition, and maybe even some chair-dancing. 

Your virtual game show host will warm up guests with a couple of “table hopper rounds” (breakout room mixers) and split you out into teams. Within minutes, your home office will be transformed into a game show stage with your very own game show buzzers! 

And if your team loves trivia, check out our list of the most incredible virtual trivia games for work teams for even more ideas.

6.  Virtual Jeoparty Social

If your remote team is eager to socialize, have some fun as a group, and channel their competitive spirit, we’ve got just the thing for you! With Virtual Jeoparty Social, you and your colleagues will step into your very own virtual Jeopardy-style game show—equipped with a buzzer button, a professional actor as your host, and an immersive game show platform! Best of all, this game has been infused with an ultra-social twist: players will take part in a unique social mixer challenge between each round. 

With the right team building problem solving activities, you can help your team sharpen their core skills to ensure they’re prepared when they inevitably face a challenge at work. And best of all, you can have fun in the process. 

Do you have any favorite team building activities for building problem-solving skills? If so, tell us about them in the comments section below! 

Learn More About Team Building Problem Solving Activities  

For more information about how your group can take part in a virtual team building, training, or coaching solution, reach out to our Employee Engagement Consultants.     

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I love how this blog provides a variety of problem-solving activities for team building. It’s a great resource for anyone looking to foster teamwork and collaboration!

Challenges to Managing Virtual Teams and How to Overcome Them

Remote work allows companies to compete in an increasingly globalized society, so the real challenge becomes adapting to the new workplace.

Rebecca Bakken

In theory, virtual teams give employers the chance to build a dream team without boundaries. For employees, it offers the freedom and flexibility to attain a healthy work-life balance. In practice, things aren’t always so rosy.

Communication can get muddled if teams never meet face to face, trust and collaboration suffer when workers are siloed, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if employees are tasked with too little — or too much.

Despite these challenges, virtual teams are here to stay. Remote work allows companies to compete in an increasingly globalized society, so the real challenge becomes adapting to the new workplace. 

The Rise of Virtual Teams

Statistics show a steep increase in the number of remote workers in the United States, a trend that is only likely to continue. In 2017, for instance, more than 60 percent of companies offered ad-hoc telecommuting benefits, according to the Society for Human Resource Management’s 2017 Employee Benefits Report . 

In 2019, that number increased to 69 percent, according to SHRM’s  2019 Employee Benefits Report . Plus, the on-demand economy has resulted in more freelancers and contractors in the workplace. According to the latest data from Upwork , 35 percent of the US workforce engaged in at least some freelance or contract work in 2019.

And remote work has been shown to both increase productivity and lower attrition, according to research from a Stanford professor . His study showed that employees working remotely found it easier to concentrate and were less likely to take sick days or prolonged breaks. In addition, employers saved an average of $2,000 per employee each year on real estate costs.  

Still, large companies like Yahoo and IBM have recently walked back their work-from-home policies. This belies the trends but underscores the problems some businesses have with remote teams.   

Research published in the Harvard Business Review states that remote employees are more likely to feel alienated or disconnected when compared to onsite employees. These communication issues become a problem for leaders. If you’re managing a group of employees, you also need to think about whether everyone is working toward the same goal and putting in their appropriate hours.

Rather than reverting back to the old ways of doing business, you can directly address the challenges of managing virtual teams. When you successfully identify and remedy remote workplace issues, you can build a strong, agile team that’s collaborative from all corners of the globe.

“Managing a virtual team requires managers to double down on the fundamentals of good management, including establishing clear goals, running great meetings, communicating clearly, and leveraging team members’ individual and collective strengths,” says Julie Wilson , founder of the Institute for Future Learning and instructor at Harvard University.

Wilson co-teaches Essential Management Skills for Emerging Leaders , along with a roster of other experts.

Let’s examine the top three problems leaders encounter with remote employees, and the solutions to solve them. We’ll discuss issues pertaining to communication, trust, and productivity.

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Challenge 1: Communication

Communication is key in any workplace — especially one where most interactions occur via email, chat, or calls. Ensuring a free flow of accurate information throughout your company’s structure means hiring the right people, fostering a communicative culture, and using the right tools for the job.

“Close attention to relationship-building and a process to ensure good communication is really important. When the group or the organization has a strong culture that supports collaboration, this can stand in for many of the detailed steps — it really helps,” said Jennifer Stine, former head of executive and professional education at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Solution: Hire the Right People

The interview process is a great way to find out how well someone communicates. Your employees’ communication skills are a big factor in the success of virtual teams.

Accurately gauging communication skills in one interview is hard. So consider having several rounds of interviews via multiple mediums.

If the person will work remotely full time, it’s important to see how they communicate through writing and on calls. That said, face-to-face communication can be telling. Try to arrange an in-person interview, if possible.

Also, have several hands on deck when interviewing new candidates to get a range of opinions. This also gives candidates a glimpse into your company culture, helping them determine if it’s a good fit.

Solution: Foster a Culture of Communication

As a leader, it’s your responsibility to foster a culture of communication throughout the organization. Lead by example by giving regular updates and holding check-ins with your team. If your staff sees that you’re an effective communicator, they’ll follow suit by picking up your good habits.

Be explicit about how your staff should communicate. Remove the ambiguity that so often surrounds workplace communication by providing written guidelines that outline what kind of messages should be sent through which mediums, and how team members are expected to interact with each other.

This is especially important when you have a culturally diverse staff or members who are located in different time zones. Address any language or time barriers directly. And provide tips on how to effectively communicate in spite of them. (For instance, if not everyone is a native English speaker, you might suggest that employees avoid using slang or colloquialisms.)

If possible, make a point to get the whole team together in person once or twice a year. Meeting face-to-face as a group is an ideal way to team-build. It allows remote employees the chance to get to know each other beyond their job roles.

Solution: Choose the Best Tools

Technology is what makes virtual teams possible. Don’t shy away from the tools and software that can make your job easier. Below is a list of the types of tools that can facilitate communication in virtual teams, and some popular options* for you to consider:

• Chat: Slack , Twist , Google Hangouts
• Project management: Trello , Jira , Asana
• Web and video conferencing: Google Meet , Zoom , Cisco Webex
• Collaboration and prototyping: Invision , Marvel , Adobe XD
• Scheduling: Calendly , Doodle
• Workflow automation: Zapier , Microsoft Flow , Monday

Not every tool is going to be a good fit for your team. Consider trial periods or task someone with researching all the options to determine which suit your needs best. Provide training for your staff on the tools you select to ensure everyone is using them consistently and to the fullest benefit.

Developing communication strategies that resonate across your entire organization, including in-person and virtual teams, can be challenging. Some of our Professional & Executive Development programs are designed specifically to help leaders deliver clear, concise messaging to their teams.

Challenge 2: Trust

Trust is key in any relationship. When employees trust their managers and believe they’re working toward a shared vision, collaboration and engagement happen naturally. But it’s hard won in an environment where face-to-face interaction is a rarity. A shared mission, collaborative spirit, and strategic team building can help instill trust in remote and onsite workers alike.

Solution: Establish a Mission Statement

In a few sentences, document why your business is doing what it’s doing. Ideally, this should speak to the greater good of humanity, but obviously related to your industry somehow.

Nontraditional workers (especially millennials) value mission-driven organizations because they want to feel their time is being used for something worthwhile. State your mission clearly and embed it in everything you do. Demonstrate your dedication to the cause by donating to charity, holding volunteer days or incentives, or partnering with nonprofits that share your mission.

Solution: Encourage Collaboration and Team Building

Effective collaboration helps teams bond and builds trust as people get to know one another’s thought processes and working styles. When staff are able to build on each other’s ideas and play to their strengths, relationships flourish.

First, it helps to have clearly defined teams. This sets the expectation that people should be working collaboratively, even from a distance. It may seem like a no-brainer, but startups and small businesses sometimes undermine collaboration by failing to form teams within the company. This can lead to confusion and low cooperation among employees. Particularly with remote workers, it’s important for people to know where they belong and to whom they report.

Encourage teams to meet regularly via video conference, as these virtual face-to-face meetings can help build a sense of community and familiarity. As a manager, be sure to communicate your expectations for each team so they know they’re working toward a shared goal.

Solution: Establish a Shared Goal

What is your team’s overarching goal and how will it know when it has achieved it? You might have one goal, or you might have several. Regardless, it is vitally important that your team has a shared goal (or goals) and a common understanding of how progress will be measured.

These goals will likely be dictated by broader business goals, or it may be up to you and your team to establish your goals. This is a great opportunity to meet in person if at all possible, get to know each other better as colleagues, and work through a strategic planning process. If it’s not possible to meet in person, this work can be facilitated via video conference.

Challenge 3: Productivity

Low productivity is an obvious risk when employees work outside of a traditional office. In an environment without day-to-day oversight, some team members may not use their time wisely. On the other hand, certain employees risk burnout when working remotely due to a lack of boundaries.

Solution: Ensure Accountability

Without invading privacy, the best way to ensure everyone’s doing their job is to set clear expectations for each role and have regular check-ins to gauge progress. It’s unrealistic to expect everyone to work at the same pace, but you should have a general idea of how long tasks take and how much each person is accomplishing week by week, if not day by day.

You might also find it’s necessary to have team members track their hours using a tool like Harvest or Toggl *, particularly for those who do client work, because it gives you a clear sense of billable hours spent.

Even for those who don’t perform work for clients, tracking hours provides an unparalleled level of transparency. By seeing how long it takes to complete certain jobs, you are able to set baseline expectations that are useful for both current and future roles.

Solution: Form Supportive Structures

Be sure to pay attention to your best performers as much as you do the rest of your team. These may be the people at risk of overworking themselves. Without the clear boundaries that office life provides, the go-getters on your team may have workdays that never end, setting themselves up for exhaustion and resentment toward the company.

Encourage your staff to keep regular business hours and take advantage of their paid time off. Check in if you suspect someone is burning the midnight oil. Erratic or moody behavior, emails sent at odd times, and a drop in work quality are all signs that a remote worker needs to take a breather.

Conduct regular one-one-ones with each team member to not only hold them accountable for performance, but also to check in on workload and support needed.

Solution: Develop Processes

Many teams may find daily stand-ups — a.k.a. daily scrums or huddles — are essential to fostering productivity, transparency, and collaboration. Having an informal group check-in each day keeps the team on the same page and holds everyone accountable for their daily tasks and ongoing projects.

In addition to group check-ins, make it a rule for managers to set up one-to-one time with their direct reports every month or quarter. This takes the stress out of a sudden request for a meeting, and gives employees a designated time to talk about their progress or any issues they might be having at work.

Devising a Game Plan

“Managing a virtual team can be challenging, but addressing those challenges head-on is worth the effort,” said Julie Wilson.

When you overcome the challenges, you’ll enjoy the rewards of leading a cohesive virtual team — i.e. setting goals and reaching them; watching your team members develop and lean into their strengths; and benefiting from a healthy team dynamic that ensures the right decisions are made and implemented.

The challenges and solutions discussed in this post are complex, so approach any changes methodically and seek outside counsel if needed. 

*Disclaimer: Mentions of any proprietary tools or software are merely examples and do not constitute endorsements by Harvard University or any of its subsidiaries.

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Article • 16 min read

Virtual Team-Building Exercises

Building connections when you're working remotely.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Remote teams have fewer opportunities to socialize, making it difficult to get to know one another or new members. This can lead to feelings of isolation and disconnection from our colleagues, and it may even lead to team conflict and reduced productivity.

Virtual team-building exercises can help remote teams to overcome these difficulties, and to drive a sense of community and shared understanding.

In this article, we'll explore why virtual team-building exercises matter, and how they can benefit your team. We'll also look at five team-building exercises that you can try with your team.

Virtual Team-Building FAQs

What are virtual activities.

Virtual activities require team members to take part remotely, using technology such as virtual meeting software, online chat, or instant messaging.

What do I need to get started with virtual team-building exercises?

Reliable video conferencing technology, and the skills to use it. Ideas for activities that will help to build teamworking skills. And, most importantly, good facilitation skills. Aim to keep the exercises moving so that people stay engaged.

What are some virtual team-building challenges?

You may sometimes encounter problems with the technology or with your internet connection. Virtual team building can also take longer to produce the desired results.

Why Virtual Team-Building Is Important

Teams can find it difficult to build rapport when they never meet "in real life." But developing and nurturing good working relationships is important for individuals to feel able to communicate openly, solve problems, and collaborate well. Virtual team building can also reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness in remote teams.

While some people question the value of team-building exercises, studies have shown that they improve teams' effectiveness and help to build trust. [1] These exercises can be equally effective for virtual teams.

Our article, Working in a Virtual Team , and Skillbook, How to Set Up a Virtual Team , provide advice on using technology to collaborate with people remotely, and on how to build effective virtual teams.

Setting up a Virtual Team-Building Exercise

Start by defining your purpose and objectives. For example, do you want to improve project management or negotiation skills? The outcome of your team-building exercise needs to meet your objective, and promote individual and team growth.

When setting up your exercises, consider how much time you have for each activity. Collaborative problem-solving exercises will take longer than quick "ice breakers."

Think, too, about the participants' cultural expectations and individual personalities. Introverts may find it harder to open up during team discussions. They may also be suffering from overstimulation if they're working from home. On the other hand, extroverts may tend to take over.

Some people on your team may not have met, so allow enough time for introductions. Where people don't know each other, use short, fun Virtual Ice Breakers to get started. And consider different ways people can contribute, so everyone has a voice.

To be truly effective, any team-building exercise must be part of a continual process, embedded into your team and organization's culture. They are not a "quick fix."

Five Virtual Team-Building Exercises

Let's look at some team-building exercises that you can use remotely with your team. They are designed to improve communication, build trust, develop listening skills, and enable your people to understand one another better.

Exercise 1: Four Facts and a Fib

This exercise is ideal for a team whose members don't know one another very well. It provides an informal platform for individuals to share personal information and build trust.

People and Materials

Suitable for groups of any size. Each participant needs a pen and paper.

Allow around 20 minutes for completion, depending on the size of the group.

Instructions

Ask the participants to write down five "facts" about themselves, one of which must be a lie – but a plausible one. For example, "I once swam with dolphins," not "I wrestled a shark!"

Allow participants enough time to write down their facts. Once they are finished, go around the group and ask each participant to read out their five facts.

As a group, guess which facts about each person are true and which is the lie. When each person has revealed their truths and lie, discuss the outcomes. Were any surprising? If so, were the truths more surprising than the lie?

Advice for Facilitator

If the group is not forthcoming at first, ask people directly which of the speaker's facts they think is a fib and why.

Exercise 2: Escape Room

An Escape Room is a themed challenge event where players collaborate to find clues, complete tasks, and solve a variety of puzzles. It can improve communication, collaboration and decision-making skills.

Escape Room games are typically suitable for teams of between three and six players, and require a significant amount of creative setup. In fact, it's often easier to use an external supplier.

Mind Tools Club members and corporate licensees can access our exclusive and original Escape Room game, "The Lost Labyrinth," comprising a downloadable game pack and Game Master Guide. See our Escape Room article for details.

The classic scenario is to escape within a time limit – usually an hour.

These vary from game to game, and can involve codebreaking, word games and math puzzles.

Advice for the Facilitator

Invest the time you need to understand and prepare the game properly. If teams get stuck, have some hints prepared to keep the action moving.

Exercise 3: Blind Origami

The purpose of this activity is to highlight the importance of listening and asking for feedback.

Any number of people, in virtual pairs.

Phone (without video) or messaging app.

A sheet of Letter or A4 size paper for each person.

Around 25 to 30 minutes.

Email one person from each pair a set of origami instructions. You can get these from many hobby websites. Try origame.me , for example.

The person with the instructions should guide their partner (the receiver) through the steps to create an origami structure, via messaging or videoconferencing software (but with the camera turned off).

The receiver can ask questions, request clarification, and offer feedback during the call.

When each group has finished, participants can turn their cameras back on to see whether the receiver got the origami structure right.

Rotate around the groups to see how they're getting on. When each group has finished, ask the partners to switch roles and repeat the exercise with a different design.

Once the second exercise has been done, ask participants how accurate each structure was. How difficult was it to listen and follow verbal instructions? How good was the feedback provided? Use the answers to identify areas where each pair could improve their listening and feedback skills.

Bring everyone back into the meeting to share some thoughts on listening effectively, and get them to think about some takeaways.

Exercise 4: Scrabble Scramble

This fun activity is designed to trigger creative thinking, encourage collaboration, and develop communication. It works best when you use a virtual meeting package like Zoom, which enables teams to split off into virtual breakout rooms.

This exercise is suitable for groups of approximately 12 or more. You'll need a bag of Scrabble tiles, and participants will need pens and paper.

Allow 20 minutes for completion.

Assign two or three letters chosen at random to each person.

Then split the group randomly into teams. The exercise will work best with six to nine people per team.

Ask each group to create as many words as they can in 10 minutes using their letters. Before starting, outline the rules below to the group:

• Each letter tile can be used only once in each word.
• Words must be three or more letters.
• Plurals of an already used word are not allowed. For example, you can have "tree" or "trees" but you can't have both.
• Proper names are not allowed, e.g. place names or forenames.

Each team can swap up to two of their letters before they start if they wish.

Teams get two points for three-letter words, three points for four-letter words, and so on. The longest word earns a bonus of five points.

Make clear whether or not teams are allowed to use a dictionary. If appropriate, offer a prize for the highest team score and longest word. Ask the teams to reflect on what they've learned. How did they work together to build words? Who took the lead? Who had the best ideas, and how did they arrive at them?

Exercise 5: Lost at Sea

This activity emphasizes decision making, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Teams of about five or six people. You can download our worksheet for the exercise here . Each participant needs their own copy.

Flexible, but aim for 25 to 40 minutes.

Give your team members a scenario where they're stranded at sea with just a handful of objects. They have to rank the objects in order of how useful they'd be in helping the group to survive. They should work individually first, and then as a team.

Divide participants into their teams, and provide everyone with a ranking sheet .

Step 1: Ask team members to take 10 minutes on their own to rank the items in order of importance. They should do this in the second column of their sheet.

Step 2: Give the teams a further 10 minutes to confer and decide on their group rankings. Once agreed, they should list them in the third column of their sheets.

Step 3: Ask each group to compare their individual rankings with their collective ones, and consider why any scores differ.

Step 4: Now read out the "correct" order, collated by the experts at the U.S. Coast Guard. You can find that here . Participants should add these to the sheet.

Step 5: Have the teams consider why they made the choices they did, and evaluate their performance against the experts' choices.

Ideally, teams will arrive at a consensus decision where everyone's opinion is heard. If discussions are dominated by a few people, draw the quieter people in so that everyone is involved. But explain why you're doing this, so that people learn from it.

Virtual team-building exercises are a great way to improve communication, build trust, increase creativity, reduce conflict, and help your team members to understand one another better.

They're also a useful way for people to get used to remote meetings and videoconferencing software.

Holding these exercises regularly gives your team members fun ways to interact and get to know one another. It encourages them to connect and to collaborate, and this can benefit your team and the organization as a whole.

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Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review

• Research Article
• Published: 20 May 2020
• Volume 2 , article number  1096 , ( 2020 )

Cite this article

• Sarah Morrison-Smith   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4959-807X 1 &
• Jaime Ruiz 2  

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Virtual teams (i.e., geographically distributed collaborations that rely on technology to communicate and cooperate) are central to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic infrastructure. “Global Virtual Teams” that include members from around the world are the most extreme example and are growing in prevalence (Scott and Wildman in Culture, communication, and conflict: a review of the global virtual team literature, Springer, New York, 2015). There has been a multitude of studies examining the difficulties faced by collaborations and use of technology in various narrow contexts. However, there has been little work in examining the challenges faced by virtual teams and their use of technology to mitigate issues. To address this issue, a literature review was performed to highlight the collaboration challenges experienced by virtual teams and existing mitigation strategies. In this review, a well-planned search strategy was utilized to identify a total of 255 relevant studies, primarily focusing on technology use. The physical factors relating to distance are tightly coupled with the cognitive, social, and emotional challenges faced by virtual teams. However, based on research topics in the selected studies, we separate challenges as belonging to five categories: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. In addition, findings from this literature review expose opportunities for research, such as resolving discrepancies regarding the effect of tightly coupled work on collaboration and the effect of temporal dispersion on coordination costs. Finally, we use these results to discuss opportunities and implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams.

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1 Introduction

Virtual teams (i.e., geographically distributed collaborations that rely on technology to communicate and cooperate) have several potentially beneficial aspects that aid productivity. Much like collaboration in co-located teams, collaboration in virtual teams refers to synchronous and asynchronous interactions and tasks to achieve common goals. The use of virtual teams allows organizations to enroll key specialists, regardless of their physical location [ 106 , 151 ]. This allows organizations to optimize teams by using only the best talent available [ 63 , 136 ]. In theory, virtual teams also reduce the need for travelling between sites, which should reduce costs in terms of time, money, and stress [ 196 ]. It was estimated that by 2016, more than 85 % of working professionals were in some form of virtual team [ 235 ]. This implies that, as a result, virtual teams have become vital to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic infrastructure.

Similar to co-located teams, virtual teams participate in a variety of collaborative activities such as formal and informal meetings using technology like video conferencing (e.g., Zoom [ 121 ] and Skype [ 175 ]) and text (e.g., Slack [ 232 ] and Microsoft Teams [ 176 ]), file transfer, and application sharing [ 191 ]. As a result, virtual teams are experiencing difficulties collaborating that are making it difficult for them to be as successful as co-located teams [ 64 , 151 , 191 ]. As a result, virtual teams spend substantial time and money to relocate team members for specific projects to avoid the hindrances to teamwork associated with distance [ 231 , 257 ]. It is therefore important to develop technology that can better support virtual teams, reducing the need for costly re-locations and mitigating the problems that arise when relocation is not a viable solution.

Despite previous research examining the difficulties faced by collaborations and use of technology in specific contexts, such as distributed software development, there has been little work in examining the challenges faced by all virtual teams and their use of technology to mitigate issues. This understanding is vital to the development and utilization of technology to support virtual teams. Thus, this paper has two goals: (1) to elucidate the factors and challenges that hinder collaboration in virtual teams and (2) provide recommendations for designing groupware to better support collaboration in virtual teams, while also identifying opportunities for the Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) community to design this technology.

To achieve our goals, a Literature Review (LR) was performed with a well-planned search strategy that identified a total of 255 relevant studies, primarily focusing on technology use. Based on the selected studies, we categorized challenges as being related to: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. In addition, results from this LR identify opportunities for research, such as resolving discrepancies regarding the effect of tightly coupled work on collaboration, the effect of temporal dispersion on coordination costs, and whether virtual teams encounter more work-culture related problems than co-located teams. From the synthesis of these papers, we present four design implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams.

This literature review explores the factors and challenges associated with collaboration in virtual teams. This paper begins with a review of related LRs in the domain of collaboration in Sect.  2 and progresses to a description of the method used to conduct the LR in Sect.  3 . Sections  5 and 6 explore issues related to distance and other contributing factors, respectively. Next, in Sect.  7 , findings from Sects. 5 and 6 are summarized, leading to Sect.  8 which completes the LR by presenting a set of four design implications for the development of groupware that supports collaboration in virtual teams.

2 Related work

Prior work includes eight systematic literature reviews surveying various topics related to distance collaboration. These topics fall into two categories: investigations of virtual teams in the domain of distributed software development (DSD) and explorations of the factors that influence collaboration in broader contexts.

Research into the challenges faced in DSD have resulted in determination of the factors associated with the relationship between distribution, coordination, and team performance that are the most commonly studied in software development, namely dimensions of dispersion (e.g., geographical, temporal, organizational, work process, and cultural dispersion) and coordination mechanisms (e.g., organic or social coordination and mechanistic or virtual coordination) [ 183 ]. Several challenges (e.g., including geographical, temporal, cultural, and linguistic dispersion [ 146 , 185 ]) and best practices or practical solutions (e.g., agile methods, test-driven development [ 146 ], frequent site visits and face-to-face meetings [ 185 , 233 ]) have been identified for traditional DSD teams [ 185 ] and teams that use a ‘follow-the-sun’ approach (i.e., where teams hand off work at the end of the day in one time-zone to workers beginning their day in another) [ 146 ]. Additional work identified opportunities for future research, such as addressing challenges present in multi-organizational software projects and supporting the development of coordination needs and methods over the course of a project [ 184 ]. This category of research also includes a study that classified empirical studies in DSD [ 64 ], revealing that communication warrants further exploration to better support awareness in this context [ 239 ].

These studies are informative and discuss several of the challenges that appear later in this LR (e.g., geographical, temporal, cultural, and linguistic dispersion). However, it is not guaranteed that the findings from the DSD studies with regards to these dimensions directly translate to collaboration in another context. In contrast, this paper examines distance collaboration in all virtual teams.

Other studies have studied the factors affecting collaboration in general. Mattessich and Monsey identified 19 factors necessary for successful collaboration, including the ability to compromise, mutual respect and trust, and flexibility [ 167 ]. Similarly, Patel et al. [ 201 ] developed a framework based on the categorization of seven factors related to collaboration (e.g., context, support, tasks, interaction processes, teams, individuals, and overarching factors) for use in collaborative engineering projects in the automotive, aerospace, and construction sectors.

In contrast to the results of the DSD studies, these findings apply to a broad range of contexts. However, since these literature reviews primarily focus on co-located collaboration, it is difficult to discern how the factors identified by these studies influence virtual teams. This paper differs by focusing only on virtual teams.

Relevant papers were extracted for LR using the guidelines proposed by Kitchenham and Charters [ 138 ] for performing Systematic Literature Reviews in software engineering, with the adjustments recommended by Kitchenham and Brereton [ 137 ]. These guidelines divide the review process into three steps:

Planning the review In this step, the research questions and review protocol are defined. This will be discussed in the remainder of Sect.  3 .

Conducting the review This step focuses on executing the review protocol created in the previous step. This will also be discussed in Sect.  3 .

Reporting the review This final step documents, validates, and reports the results of the review. This will be the subject of Sects. 5 and 6 .

3.1 Planning the review

This subsection will focus on developing the list of research questions used to generate the list of keywords for extracting papers and specify the search methodology.

3.1.1 Specifying research questions

The first stage of this literature review began by defining research questions using the Goal-Question-Metric approach described by Van Solingen et al. [ 258 ], which systematically organizes measurement programs. This model specifies the purpose, object, issue, and viewpoint that comprise a goal, which is then distilled into research questions and used to create metrics for answering those questions. The goal of this LR is:

Purpose Understand and characterize

Issue The challenges

Object Related to collaboration

Viewpoint Faced by workers in virtual teams

Using this goal, these research questions were derived:

What are the factors and challenges that impact distance collaboration?

What factors specific to distance cause issues?

What other factors contribute to these issues?

How can we design technology for supporting virtual teams?

The purpose of asking question 1 is to outline previous research investigating collaboration challenges. The expected outcome will be a comprehensive view of challenges affecting collaborations and identification of gaps or areas warranting future exploration. Research Question 1a will be the topic of Sect.  5 while Research Question 1b will be explored in Sect.  6 . Research Question 2, however, focuses on the development of technology for supporting collaboration. The answers to this question will yield an overview of design implications for the creation of groupware, which will be discussed in Sect.  8 .

3.1.2 Developing and executing the search strategy

The research questions listed above were used to identify keywords to use as search terms. For example, for the sub-question ‘ What factors can be attributed to distance ?’ the following keywords were selected: collaboration , distance , challenge ; in addition, synonyms and related words were also searched (e.g., geography, teamwork). This search can be described by the following boolean search query:

(collaboration OR teamwork OR CSCW) AND (challenge OR problem) AND (distance OR geography)

Our search methodology used multiple searches as terms were either exhausted or identified by collected papers. The generated search terms were used to conduct searches using Google Scholar since this search engine conducts a meta-search that returns results from several paper repositories (such as Science Direct, ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and the ACM digital library). During the review, it became apparent that after the first 8–9 pages of results, we reached concept saturation. As a result, we limited our search to the first 10 pages for a total of 1200 potential sources.

In addition, collected papers were used to generate additional searches via a ‘snowballing’ effect [ 26 , 249 ]. Specifically, collected papers were used to generate additional keywords, identify additional papers through the bibliography, identify newer papers that cited them, and identify authors who had written important papers published in relevant conferences. These included papers published in the ACM conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW) and the ACM International Conference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP). These authors were searched for using the identified search engines, and all their papers were evaluated for inclusion. In addition, other researchers proposed sources that were used to boost paper extraction. These additional methods were used because prior work by Greehalgh and Peacock [ 91 ] found that less efficient methods like snowballing are likely to identify important sources that would otherwise be missed, since predefined protocol driven search strategies cannot solely be relied on.

3.1.3 Inclusion and exclusion criteria

The first ten pages of results from Google Scholar were reviewed since occasionally keywords resulted in a high amount of potential papers. All papers were reviewed from searches resulting in fewer than ten pages of results. As part of our search methodology, we utilized several inclusion and exclusion criteria to filter the collected papers from the potential papers found using the systematic search and snowballing. These inclusion and exclusion factors are listed in Table 1 . Figure 1 shows the number of identified papers that met the inclusion criteria across 5-year periods.

Distribution of cited papers across time

3.1.4 Paper categorization

To facilitate analysis, the papers identified as part of the LR, shown in Fig.  1 , were further categorized by study type and contribution. Tables  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ,  6 ,  7 and  8 in the “ Appendix ” contain each paper organized by these categories.

4 Factors affecting virtual teams

Virtual teams are affected by physical factors such as geographic distance, in addition to temporal and perceive distance, which are time-based and cognitive respectively. These factors are tightly coupled with social and emotional factors, including trust, motivation, and conflicts. Based on the papers in this literature review, we separate these factors into the categories of distance factors, (which include geographical (physical), temporal, and perceived distance) and contributing factors that are driven by distance (including the nature of the work, the presence or need for explicit management, and group composition). Each category correlates with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. Distance categories and their associated challenges are discussed in Sect.  5 to answer Research Question 1a: what factors specific to distance cause challenges that impact distance collaboration? Contributing factors are discussed later in Sect.  6 .

5 Distance factors

Distance can be categorized as being primarily geographical, temporal, or perceived. Each category correlates with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. Distance categories and their associated challenges are discussed in the following sections to answer Research Question 1a: what factors specific to distance cause challenges that impact distance collaboration?

5.1 Geographical distance

Geographical distance has been defined as a measurement of the amount of work needed for a worker to visit a collaborator at that collaborator’s place of work, rather than the physical distance between the two collaborators [ 2 ]. Thus, two physically distant locations could be considered geographically close if they have regular direct flights. Even a distance as small as 30 meters has been shown to have a profound influence on communication between collaborators [ 4 ].

Furthermore, geographical distance is well known to pose challenges for virtual teams [ 191 ]. Olson and Olson explored these challenges at length in 2000 [ 191 ] and 2006 [ 193 ]. Their first work compared remote and co-located work through an analysis of more than ten years of laboratory and field research examining synchronous collaborations [ 191 ]. The 2006 paper presented a follow-up study that synthesized other prior work [ 78 , 190 ] to expand their 2000 contribution [ 193 ]. Findings from both studies identified the following ten challenges that hinder distance work:

Awareness of colleagues and their context

Motivational sense of presence of others

Trust is more difficult to establish

The level of technical competence of the team members

The level of technical infrastructure

Nature of work

Explicit management

Common ground

The competitive/cooperative culture

Alignment of incentives and goals

Challenges 1–5 will be discussed in this section while Challenges 6–10 will be topics of interest later in Sect.  6 .

5.1.1 Motivation and awareness in distributed collaborations

The motivational sense of the presence of others has well established ‘social facilitation’ effects, particularly the observation that people tend to work harder when they are not alone [ 193 ]. However, these effects are harder to find and cultivate in remote work, which poses an additional challenge to collaboration. In a similar vein, the difficulties associated with maintaining awareness of collaborators’ work progress at remote locations without the ability to casually ‘look over their shoulder’ is a significant challenge to collaboration [ 193 ]. The cause of these problems is likely because co-located workers have more opportunities for casual encounters and unplanned conversations [ 144 ], which boosts awareness. Similarly, distance prevents the informal visual observations necessary for maintaining awareness [ 8 ]. This is important since workers use the presence of specific teammates in a shared space to guide their work and prefer to be aware of who is sharing their work space [ 71 ]. Furthermore, the inability of virtual team members to observe each other’s actual effort tends to lead to a greater reliance on perceptions and assumptions that could be both biased and erroneously negative [ 206 ]. In addition to this, in situations where disengagement is not apparent, virtual team’s reliance on technology to communicate allows team members to disengage from the team due to decreased social impact [ 16 ]. Isolation can have an effect as well—when members of a virtual team become more isolated, their contributions and participation with the team decrease [ 32 ].

The importance of awareness in collaboration is discussed at length by Dourish and Bellotti [ 62 ], who investigate awareness through a case study examining ShrEdit [ 171 ], a text editor that supports multiple users synchronously. In this paper, awareness is defined as ‘an understanding of the activities of others, which provides a context for your own activity’ [ 62 ]. Dourish and Bellotti further stipulate that this context is necessary for guaranteeing that each person’s contributions are compatible with the group’s collective activity and plays a critical role in assessing individual actions in accordance with the group’s goals and progress. This context further allows individuals to avoid duplication of work. Collaborative work is significantly delayed without such awareness [ 193 ]. Moreover, awareness is a mandatory requirement for coordinating group activities, independent of the domain [ 62 ].

Many computer-based technologies have been developed to assist distance workers in maintaining awareness of their collaborators. Research suggests that the adoption of tools that allow members of virtual teams about the timing of each other’s contributions and activities may improve team coordination and learning [ 18 ]. Systems that provide real-time visual feedback about the behaviors of team members can be used as tools to mitigate various sources of “process-loss” in teams (e.g., team effort) [ 89 ]. Some early systems (e.g., [ 17 , 81 , 160 ]) were designed to feature computer-integrated audiovisual links between locations that were perpetually open, the idea being that providing unrestricted face-to-face communication and a ‘media space’ would facilitate collaboration as though the workers were in the same physical space. Since then, a number of modern systems (e.g., [ 153 , 197 ]) have been developed. For example, Glikson et al. [ 89 ] developed an effort visualization tool that calculated effort based on the number of keystrokes that team members made in a task collaboration space. They found that the visualization tool increased team effort and improved performance in teams that had a low proportion of highly conscientious members [ 89 ]. This effect did not hold true for teams with a high proportion of highly conscientious members. See the work of [ 154 ] for a more comprehensive review of awareness-supporting technology.

The concept of awareness as a direction for research has been criticized. In 2002, Schmidt argued that the term awareness was ‘ambiguous and unsatisfactory (p. 2)’ due to its exceptionally wide range of diverse applications and tendency to be paired with an adjective (e.g., ‘passive awareness’ [ 62 ]) in an attempt to lend some specificity. Instead, Schmidt recommended that researchers pursue more explicit, ‘researchable questions (p. 10)’ rather than focus on the enigmatic concept of awareness. This is more than a call to change terminology, but rather a fundamental shift in the way that research in this area is approached. Despite this recommendation, the awareness approach is still a commonly explored area [ 7 , 134 ], indicating disagreement within the community that has yet to be resolved, presenting a research opportunity.

5.1.2 Establishing trust

Throughout the relevant studies canvassed in this paper, trust has been defined in a multitude of ways. Cummings and Bromily [ 53 ] define trust within a collaboration as the worker’s belief that their team (a) ‘makes a good-faith effort to behave in accordance with any commitments both explicit or implicit, (b) is honest in whatever negotiations preceded such commitments, and (c) does not take excessive advantage of another even when the opportunity is available’. Pinjani and Palvia [ 208 ], in contrast, have a simpler definition of trust as the ‘level of confidence exercised among team members,’ and Choi and Cho [ 42 ] describe interpersonal trustworthiness as characterized by ability, benevolence, integrity, and goal congruence. Trust in the business literature is described as a person’s psychological state which indicates the person’s expectation that their team member will not act in a self-interested manner at the expense of the person’s welfare, which increases readiness to accept vulnerability [ 44 ]. Cho redefines this as a person’s believe in the beneficial actions of another even with the other is given the opportunity to act in self-interest [ 41 ]. Along with this, De Jong et al defines trust as ‘a shared and aggregate perception of trust that team members have for each other’ [ 59 ]. Lastly, Meyerson et al. [ 174 ] describe a specific type of trust, known as ‘swift trust’, which occurs in temporary organizations. The commonalities among these definitions include a perception that trust involves the belief that a collaborator will act in a beneficent manner as opposed to self-interest, acts in good-faith to honor commitments.

According to prior work [ 23 , 42 ], trust is the key variable that is crucial for all aspects of collaboration This includes team effectiveness, since trust determines whether team members ask each other for help, share feedback, and discuss issues and conflicts [ 23 ]. Team trust has a significant effect on team performance [ 59 ] and can be considered the ‘glue’ that holds collaborations together [ 48 ]. In fact, building mutual trust and personal knowledge about collaborators is more important to a good collaboration than resolving technical issues [ 250 ]. Furthermore, trust is particularly important in virtual teams since interactions on computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies tend to be superficial (i.e., lacking contextual cues such as facial expressions and tone of voice) [ 38 , 155 , 267 ], impersonal, and less certain [ 155 ].

Trust is linked to positive aspects of collaboration. For example, commitment to the team and project is greatly influenced by trust [ 28 ]. Trust can also improve collaboration infrastructure [ 10 ] and is also crucial for the occurrence of normative actions [ 48 ]. Maurping and Agarwal [ 165 ] found that building trust early on in a virtual collaboration plays a critical role in developing adequate group functioning and the ability to manage social activities. In addition, virtual teams that develop trust early may notice information confirming the competence of their team members and may not notice contradicting evidence [ 273 ]. As a result of their early development of trust, members of these teams also gain the confidence to engage in normative actions that sustain both trust and later performance [ 48 ]. While some research has found that the relationship between early trust and performance is stronger in highly virtual teams than in less virtual teams [ 163 ], whether the performance actually improves is up for debate. Some prior work [ 128 ] reports positive effects of trust on performance while others report negligible or no effects [ 124 ]. That being said, trust has an affect on the perception of performance such that when trust is high in a collaboration, the team’s perception of its performance is higher [ 182 ].

Trust is more difficult to establish and maintain in geographically dispersed collaborations [ 170 , 193 , 220 ] for a variety of reasons including the lack of strong relationships common to co-located teams [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 123 ] difficulties having in-depth personal interactions due to the absence of nonverbal cues and difficulties inferring the intentions of others [ 67 ]. Trust is also dependent on frequency of interactions, which may be less in virtual teams [ 273 ]. Swift trust in virtual teams is particularly fragile due to the unexpected disruptions and differences across time, distance, organization, and culture in virtual teams [ 266 ]. Teams that interact virtually are considerably less likely to develop trust [ 216 ]. Furthermore, trust develops in a sequential approach in co-located tams but follows an ad-hoc, unpredictable approach in virtual teams [ 147 ].

This difficulty in establishing trust has profound effects on collaboration, (e.g., (1) corrosion of task coordination and cooperation [ 193 ], (2) decreased eagerness to communicate [ 101 ], (3) inability to systematically cope with unstructured tasks and uncertainty [ 123 ], (4) fewer members willing to take initiative [ 123 ], (5) lack of empathy for teammates [ 132 ], (6) lower amounts of feedback from collaborators [ 123 ]), and increased risk [ 218 ]. Additionally, several studies (e.g., [ 116 , 142 , 188 ]) showed that low trust caused by distance affected workers’ identification of themselves as belonging to a team spanning locations. These issues have detrimental effects on collaborations that can delay or even halt the progress of a project.

Lack of trust is most pronounced during the initial stage of the collaboration and tapers off throughout the course of the project [ 21 ], implying that there are mitigating factors for the effect of distance on trust. Taking social approaches, such as promoting social exchanges early on in the life of a project [ 123 ], or creating opportunities for casual, non-work-related interactions between collaborators [ 193 ], can improve trust. However, these types of informal interactions more commonly occur face-to-face [ 193 ]. Furthermore, [ 186 ] identified face-to-face communication as having an ‘irreplaceable’ role in building and repairing trust.

Face-to-face communication is not always possible in distance collaborations, which is why [ 20 ] investigated challenges associated with trust—particularly delayed trust (slowed rate of progress towards full cooperation) and fragile trust [susceptibility towards negative ‘opportunistic behavior (p. 1)’]—via an evaluation of four communication methods commonly used in distance collaborations: face-to-face, audiovisual (e.g., Skype [ 175 ], Google Hangouts [ 90 ], FaceTime [ 6 ]), audio (telephone), and text-based (email, [ 232 ]) tools. They found that the absence of body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc. cause delays in workers’ decisions whether to trust a new collaborator and impede expression of their own trustworthiness. This finding agrees with Olson and Olson’s assertion that the presence of video when communicating helps in situations where workers are not familiar with each other [ 193 ]. The effect of stripping body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc. from communication was clearly shown by the performance of people participating in a social dilemma game who relied on distance technology for communication—these collaborations markedly showed more fragile trust than those that communicated face-to-face. Textual communication was especially worse with regards to establishing and maintaining trust, although audiovisual and audio technologies did have some effect on delayed and fragile trust. It is unsurprising then that trust development is enhanced by facilitating an initial face-to-face meeting at the beginning of a team’s relationship [ 163 ]. Furthermore, the effectiveness, reliability, and usefulness of the CMC technology used by the virtual team affects trust [ 42 ]. The personal characteristics of team members (e.g., ability, integrity, competence, fairness, honesty, openness) and the level of autonomy in a team play an important part in establishing trust [ 42 ].

From these works, we see that not only does distance influence trust, but this effect can partially be attributed to the use of communication technology adopted by distance collaborations. This influence may be further affected by the manner in which communication technology is used, since irregular, unpredictable, and inequitable communication between collaborators hampers trust [ 123 ]. Thus, it is important for future research seeking to address trust in collaboration to consider communication methods, particularly since trust in collaboration is still a relevant issue [ 29 , 30 , 217 ].

5.1.3 Informal and face-to-face communication

Prior work has identified team communication as one of the fundamental challenges associated with virtuality [ 5 ]. Communication in virtual teams is a key predictor of various outcomes such as improved performance and increased commitment [ 76 ]. Often in co-located collaborations, informal communication (i.e., ‘coffee talk’ [ 57 ]) accounts for up to 75 minutes of a workday [ 102 ]. These crucial exchanges often occur after meetings or during unplanned encounters in the hallway [ 8 ] and have profound effects on collaboration. In contrast, communications in virtual teams are often more formal than in co-located settings and focus more on work-related issues [ 13 ]. This is as a result of limited opportunities for the informal and unintentional information exchanges that often happen in shared spaces such as the hallway, water cooler, or parking lot [ 13 ]. This in turn diminishes a virtual team’s ability to share knowledge [ 92 ]. Informal contact plays an important role in facilitating trust and critical task awareness [ 2 ]. Spontaneous, informal communication has been shown to foster the feeling of being a part of a cohesive team [ 11 , 102 , 132 ] and assist the provision of corrective feedback [ 8 ]. These types of informal encounters are particularly important for unstable, dynamic groups [ 2 ].

Informal communication is associated with face-to-face encounters [ 73 , 191 ], thus, face-to-face communication plays an important role in collaboration [ 64 ] and has been described as being ‘crucial’ [ 196 ] or ‘indispensable’ [ 11 ], particularly at the beginning of a project. Frequent face-to-face interactions enable collaboration in virtual teams [ 54 ] and is credited with the ability to dramatically boost the strength of work and social ties within the team [ 133 ], which promotes a worker’s sense of belonging to the team and awareness of group activities [ 2 ], as well as boosting mutual trust and understanding, which is critical for preventing conflicts [ 8 ]. In addition, face-to-face communication is associated with higher levels of consensus within groups, higher perceived quality, more communication, and greater efficiency in completing tasks [ 86 ]. For this reason, it is recommended by many authors that members of virtual teams meet face-to-face when possible, particularly during the initial launch [ 136 , 151 , 265 ], when a face-to-face meeting can create a lasting bridge across geographical, temporal, and socio-cultural distance [ 265 ]. (Socio-cultural distance will be discussed in further depth later in Sect.  6.4.2 ) It is unsurprising, then, that traveling for obtaining face-to-face contact is imperative for project success [ 116 ].

Opportunities for informal interactions are greatly reduced by geographic distance between collaborators [ 93 , 132 ]. As a result, remote collaborators are often excluded from spontaneous decisions that are made outside formal meetings [ 8 ]. This exclusion is partly as a result of the increased effort needed to reach out and contact a teammate [ 101 ], and likely partly due to the correlation between distance and diminished face-to-face communication [ 52 , 133 , 141 , 144 ]. Geographic barriers to face-to-face communication include an increase in cost and logistics [ 2 ] and the burdens of travel in terms of money and time [ 11 ].

It is no surprise, then, that virtual teams show a marked increase in online activity [ 191 , 213 ] and have a higher reliance on CMC technology [ 215 ]. computer-mediated communication technology refers to the use of computers for communication between individuals []. This technology includes audiovisual, audio, and text-based tools. Use of this technology comes with significant challenges. Synchronous technology (i.e., audio and audiovisual tools) requires that all parties be available at a particular time. Some research has shown that it may be difficult to ascertain a remote collaborator’s availability for a synchronous meeting [ 101 ] and electronic-communication dependence constrains informal, spontaneous interaction [ 61 ], while others argue that CMC is dynamic and can be used on an ad-hoc and as-needed basis with no need for scheduling, presenting fewer logistical challenges [ 234 ]. However, it is important to note that, like in the case of the telephone, initiating spontaneous communication could be perceived as intrusive [ 144 ]. In addition, audio technology ‘distorts’ verbal cues and removes visual cues [ 20 ]. Audiovisual technology is also known to mask both verbal and visual cues in addition to constraining the visual field [ 20 ]. CMC often lacks support for non-direct and nonverbal interactions (e.g., body language, facial expressions) which greatly hinders communication in geographically dispersed virtual teams [ 67 ] by making interactions more difficult [ 92 ]. Thus, the choice of CMC technology has a heavy influence on communication because each method offers a different capacity to convey verbal and nonverbal cues [ 178 ]. It is therefore recommended to use several types of CMC technologies either concurrently (e.g., face-to-face communication accompanied by documents; telephone conferencing with synchronous electronic conferencing) or consecutively (e.g., conveying information via e-mail first, followed by con verging over the phone) [ 60 ].

Virtual teams that rely on CMC in lieu of face-to-face communication are more likely to experience less positive affect and have a diminished affective commitment to their teams [ 126 ]. Furthermore, compared to face-to-face feedback, computer-mediated feedback reduces perceptions of fairness [ 3 ]. This lack of face-to-face contact results in virtual teams having a lower sense of cohesion and personal rapport between team members [ 263 ]. Members of virtual teams may also divide their attention between various tasks while simultaneously participating in teamwork interactions due to the asynchronous nature of communication media, resulting in a lack of investment in the tasks [ 163 ]. As a result, communication timeliness has a higher influence on performance in virtual teams [ 163 ]. Furthermore, virtual teams that rely on CMC technology (e.g., instant messaging) to supplement communication in the absence of face-to-face interactions may have difficulties in their decision-making processes [ 173 ].

However, overall, communication technologies (including text-based tools) take more time and effort to effectively communicate information and are missing important social information and nonverbal cues that help establish ties between collaborators [ 64 ]. This has important implications for situations where a high volume of communication is necessary. Due to the extra effort required to communicate through computer-mediated modalities (e.g., email), virtual teams must put in extra effort to manage high volumes of messages, which can hinder performance [ 163 ]. Furthermore, when teams use email for communication, it becomes difficult to determine whether the information contained within the email was understood in the absence of vocal and nonverbal cues [ 163 ]. To combat this, Marlow et al. [ 163 ] suggest using closed-loop communication to prevent misunderstandings by providing opportunities for clarification that would otherwise not accompany virtual communication. They argue that the use of closed-loop communication will enhance performance in virtual teams [ 163 ].

Since remote collaborations must rely on technology in lieu of face-to-face communication, the level of technical competence of the team members can pose an additional challenge [ 193 ]. Teams that are unable to adopt and integrate basic technology into their everyday workflow are unlikely to use more complicated and sophisticated collaboration technology (e.g., multi-pane videoconferencing) [ 191 ] that may better support visual and verbal cues, enriching distance communication. Furthermore, the level of technical infrastructure can also create collaboration challenges [ 193 ]. Technology for remote work fails without adequate technical support or resources. Reliability is also an issue with communication technology—new technology must be stable enough to ‘compete with the well-established reliability of the telephone’ [ 15 ].

There are some advantages to using commuter-mediated communication technology in virtual teams. For example, asynchronous technology (e.g., text-based tools) provide provide the ability to take one’s time when asking a question or crafting a response [ 144 , 261 ], which leads to efficient, focused conversations [ 77 , 144 ] that can be quicker than other forms of communication. CMC is also shown to increase participation among team members [ 212 ], facilitate unique ideas [ 86 , 212 ], and reduce the number of dominant members [ 212 ]. In a similar vein, Fjermestad [ 79 ] found that groups that relied on CMC experienced higher decision quality, depth of analysis, equality of participation, and satisfaction than groups that primarily met face to face. Finally, virtual teams that do not meet face to face may be better at adapting their conceptualization of a task in response to a team member completing a task in a novel manner [ 163 ]

Additional factors, such as experience with a task, interdependence, and the temporal stage of team development can impact team performance when relying on CMC technology. For example, when teams have experience with the task at hand, with each other, and with their communication method, there is less of a need for synchronous CMC technology (e.g., video conferencing) [ 60 ]. In contrast, when teams do not have this extensive experience, there is a greater need for synchronous CMC technology [ 60 ]. Organizational structure, levels of interdependence, and media richness (which ranges from face-to-face communication to simple documents) also influence the effectiveness of communication [ 140 ]. These factors vary depending on the communication method’s capacity for immediate feedback, ability to facilitate nonverbal cues, and level of personalization [ 140 ]. In addition to this, Maruping and Agarwal [ 165 ] found that matching the functionalities of the CMC technology to specific tasks will result in higher levels of effectiveness in virtual teams. Furthermore, stage at which a virtual team is at in their development will also affect communication [ 165 ]. Teams in their early stages of development should use CMC technologies that facilitate expression in order to mitigate relationship conflict [ 165 ]. Video-conferencing technologies are particularly suited for this situation being both synchronous and media rich [ 165 ].

From the identification of these challenges, we can clearly see that existing tools and infrastructures have limitations that are preventing communication technology from fully supporting informal interactions. Thus, we are left with a need for other methods that support informal communication in geographically dispersed collaborations.

5.1.4 Intra-team conflict

In Jehn et al.’s exploration of everyday conflict through qualitative investigation of six organizational work teams, intra-team conflict is categorized as being either affective (i.e., interpersonal), task-based, or process-based (i.e., relating to responsibilities and delegation of workers for tasks) [ 125 ]. All three types of conflict have been investigated within the context of geographically distributed versus co-located teams, with mixed results. Several researchers have concluded that geographically distributed teams experience higher levels of conflict [ 8 , 46 , 103 , 108 , 188 , 261 ]. In particular, geographically distributed teams are more susceptible to interpersonal [ 108 ] and task-based conflict [ 108 , 179 ]. There is some evidence that conflict has a more ‘extreme’ [ 107 , 159 ] or ‘detrimental’ [ 179 ] effect on distributed teams as opposed to co-located ones. This effect can likely be attributed to the evidence that conflict in distributed teams is known to escalate and often remains unidentified and unaddressed for long periods of time [ 8 ]. As a result of reliance on computer-mediated communication, virtual teams featuring high geographical dispersion have higher perceptions of unfairness, which also leads to internal conflict [ 244 ].

One pervasive issue is the development of geographically based subgroups within a collaboration that provoke us-versus-them attitudes [ 8 , 46 ]. Armstrong and Cole observed that the word ‘we’ was often used to refer to co-located workers, regardless of which group the workers were assigned [ 8 ]. In another case, a team of international collaborators spread across four sites ‘fought among themselves as if they were enemies’. Interviews exposed that the team was actually comprised of four groups under one manager and did not act or feel like one cohesive team [ 8 ]. These conflicts are similar to those associated with communicating at a distance. Conflicts frequently occur as a consequence of assumptions and incorrectly interpreted communications [ 103 ]. Furthermore, missing information and miscommunications between geographically distant sites result in teammates making harsh attributions about their collaborators at other locations [ 46 ]. These types of intra-group conflicts can have important ramifications for distant collaborations. Us-versus-them attitudes often lead to limited information flow, which in turn leads to reduced cohesion and faulty attributions [ 46 ]. Moreover, intra-team conflict causes problems that result in delays in work progress [ 8 ] and resolution of work issues [ 103 ].

Researchers have identified several things that can mitigate conflict in virtual teams. Both shared context [ 108 ] and a shared sense of team identity have a moderating effect on conflict [ 108 , 179 ], particularly task and affective conflict [ 108 , 179 ]. Familiarity, in addition, has been shown to reduce conflict [ 107 ]. Spontaneous communication—which, as previously discussed, is primarily achieved face-to-face—has been demonstrated to mitigate conflict in virtual teams, particularly due to its role in facilitating the identification and handling of conflict [ 108 ]. There are also more instances of task conflict in teams that rely heavily on communication technology [ 179 ]. Specific types of conflict can be managed through different forms of computer-mediated communication technology. Task related conflict, for example, is best managed through synchronous communication technologies such as video-conferencing [ 165 ]. Conflict related to processes can be effectively handled using asynchronous communication technologies that also document the team’s agreements regarding tasks and responsibilities [ 165 ]. In this case, immediate feedback is not as necessary [ 165 ].

Although the above work has come to an agreement as to whether geographic distance has a negative effect on conflict, contradictions do exist in the literature. In particular, Mortensen and Hinds’ [ 179 ] examination of 24 product development teams found no significant difference in affective and task-based conflict between co-located and distributed teams, which is in direct conflict with their later work [ 108 ]. This discrepancy is particularly interesting given that the participants in both studies did research and product development, and are therefore comparable. Thus, it is uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate, presenting an open question.

5.2 Temporal distance

Temporal distance is distinctly different than geographical distance and should be treated as a separate dimension [ 49 ]. While geographical distance measures the amount of work needed for one collaborator to visit another at that collaborator’s place of work, temporal distance is considered to be a directional measurement of the temporal displacement experienced by two collaborators who want to interact with each other [ 2 ]. Temporal distance can be caused by both time shifts in work patterns and differences in time zones [ 219 ]. In fact, time zone differences and time shifts in work patterns can be manipulated to either decrease or increase temporal distance [ 2 ]. It can be argued that temporal distance is more influential than geographic distance [ 75 , 213 , 243 , 250 ] due to the challenges it poses on coordination [ 49 , 74 , 75 , 141 , 183 , 213 , 243 ].

One key disadvantage to high temporal distance is the reduced number of overlapping work hours between collaboration sites [ 11 , 33 , 132 ]. Although in an ideal situation, having team members dispersed across time zones can allow continual progress on a project as each team member works within their respective workdays [ 256 ], this isn’t always the case. In fact, temporal distance can lead to incompatible schedules that result in project delays and can only be overcome with careful planning [ 230 ]. Fewer overlapping work hours results in communication breakdowns, such as an increased need for rework and clarifications, and difficulties adjusting to new problems [ 73 , 74 ]. Additionally, reduced overlap in work hours results in coordination delays [ 49 ]. For example, a distant teammate may not be available when their expertise is needed [ 2 ]. In some cases, this unavailability causes the collaborator in need of help to make assumptions based on local culture and preferences in order to reach an immediate resolution of issues—which can cause rework when these assumptions are incorrect [ 250 ]. The issue of the lack of overlapping work hours also causes problems with synchronization; synchronous communication is often significantly limited in temporally dispersed collaborations, which can delay vital feedback [ 2 ] and increase response time [ 219 ]. In fact, scheduling global meetings can be virtually impossible for this reason [ 250 ]. Furthermore, as with geographic distance, temporal distance decreases the number of opportunities for informal communication [ 93 , 132 ] since the window in which all collaborators are available is small.

Communication can be disrupted by temporal distance in other ways. Bjørn and Ngwenyama found that in some virtual teams, communication would become limited to temporally co-located teammates because it was easier, bypassing teammates at other sites who should have been included [ 14 ]. This invisible communication would result in collaborators feeling left out of key decisions, which had toxic effects on the project. This effect is especially unfortunate given that temporal distance makes repairing the consequences of misunderstandings and reworking portions of the project more costly [ 73 ].

In addition to these issues, temporally dispersed collaborations are often plagued by delays, while co-located collaborations are considered more efficient [ 19 ]. Coordination delay increases with temporal distance—delay between collaborators located in the same city was smaller than that for collaborators in different cities, which was smaller than the delay found in collaborators located in different countries [ 49 ]. Delays in responses from collaborators can be especially frustrating and problematic [ 116 ] and can lengthen the amount of time required to resolve issues [ 19 ], sometimes dragging problems out across multiple days [ 120 , 132 ]. When work is organized such that a team member’s contribution is dependent upon a task completed by a team member in an earlier time zone, a failure to complete the earlier task can result in the loss of an entire workday [ 250 ]. Thus, timely completion of tasks in temporally dispersed collaborations is crucial [ 250 ]. Coordination delays are also shown to cause additional problems, particularly decreased performance in terms of meeting key requirements, staying within the budget, and completing work on time [ 49 ].

There are several social approaches to mitigating these issues. For example, collaborators can cultivate flexible work schedules [ 116 ], often by modifying a ‘typical’ workday by working either extremely early in the morning or very late at night so that there are overlapping work hours [ 250 ]. In contrast, Holmstrom et al. found that both Hewlett Packard (HP) and Fidelity employed a ‘follow-the-sun’ concept where work is handed off at the end of the day in one time-zone to workers beginning their day in another [ 116 ]. Follow-the-sun methodologies, if used effectively, can result in efficient, 24/7 productivity since work can be completed by one team member during another’s off hours [ 2 , 93 , 103 ]. However, this technique requires additional oversight time to facilitate the transfer of work from one team to the other, including time to discuss arising issues [ 250 ]. A competing technique is to limit the number of time zones in which sites are located [ 116 ]. Additionally, some coordination issues can be mitigated by careful division of work which takes into account being separated by several time zones [ 49 ].

Technology also plays a key role in mitigating the effects of temporal distance. Asynchronous communication tools (e.g., email, fax [ 19 , 57 ]) allow collaborators to coordinate shared efforts across time and distance with the additional benefits of leaving a written communication history [ 31 ] that supports accountability and traceability [ 2 ]. However, using asynchronous tools is known to increase the amount of time that a collaborator has to wait for a response [ 2 ] and make temporal boundaries more difficult to overcome than spatial boundaries in instances where sites do not have overlap in their workdays [ 49 ]. Furthermore, the process of writing ideas in emails increases the risk of misunderstandings between collaborators [ 57 ] over talking in person or via the telephone. Finally, developers starting their workday may become overwhelmed by the number of asynchronous messages left during the previous night [ 19 ]. Given these drawbacks to current technology and the unlikelihood that global collaboration is going to stop, it is worthwhile to ask how can we better support communication in temporally distant work.

There is also some question as to whether coordination costs are higher in teams that are temporally distributed. Both Ågerfalk et al. [ 2 ] and Battin et al. [ 11 ] assert that temporal distance greatly increases the cost and effort of coordination due to the added difficulties of dividing work across multiple time zones. Espinosa and Carmel [ 73 ], however, state that temporal distance reduces coordination costs when team members are not working concurrently because no direct coordination takes place when the two teammates are not working at the same time [ 2 ]. Clearly, this discrepancy needs to be resolved.

5.3 Perceived distance

As previously discussed in Sects. 5.1 and 5.2 , distance is commonly conceptualized in terms of geography or time zones [ 4 ] (i.e., spatio-temporal distance). In contrast, perceived (a.k.a. subjective) distance is characterized by a person’s impression of how near or how far another person is [ 270 ]. These perceptions of proximity have both an affective and a cognitive component [ 189 ]. In this case, the cognitive component refers to a mental judgement of how near or distance a virtual teammate seems while the affective component is concerned with the idea that a person’s sense of perceived proximity is neither purely conscious or rational but is instead dependent on emotions [ 189 ]. Perceived distance is a distinctly different idea than spatio-temporal distance and one is not necessarily related to the other [ 215 ]. Rather, perceived distance is the “symbolic meaning” of proximity rather than physical proximity and is suggested to have a greater effect on relationship outcomes [ 189 ]. This symbolic meaning is defined by the teams sense of shared identity and their use of communication media, which is primarily synchronous [ 189 ]. In fact, as people interact strongly and frequently with other team members, they can create a sense of closeness independent of physical proximity [ 214 ]. For example, free and open source software developers often perceive high levels of proximity due to their strong and intense communication and “hacker” identities [ 214 ]. The concept of perceived distance is why collaborators may be geographically distant and yet feel as though they are proximally near [ 162 ]. Perceived proximity can have a profound influence on team interaction [ 34 , 82 , 189 ] For example, perceptions of proximity are known to influence decision making in virtual teams [ 198 ].

In 2014, Siebdrat et al. surveyed 678 product developers and team leaders in the software industry to investigate perceived distance and challenge the notion that geographic and temporal distance directly translates to perceived distance. They found that perceived distance was more strongly affected by a team’s national heterogeneity than by their spatio-temporal distance. Furthermore, Siebdrat et al. found that perceived distance had a significant effect on collaboration while spatio-temporal distance had no impact. As a result, they concluded that perceived distance is more indicative of collaboration challenges than spatio-temporal distance.

Findings from other work implies that distance can affect collaborators that are all in the same country at a single site [ 4 ], with low national heterogeneity and low spatio-temporal distance. It is uncertain whether this situation would still have high perceived distance given the limited work available. Therefore, there is a clear need for a better understanding of the relationship between perceived distance, spatio-temporal distance, and collaboration.

6 Contributing factors

In addition to the challenges associated with the three main types of distance discussed previously in this paper (i.e., geographic, temporal, and perceived distance), several contributing factors intersect with distance to cause additional challenges for virtual teams. To answer Question 1b (What other factors contribute to the factors and challenges that impact distance collaboration?), this paper will discuss these key factors, namely the nature of work, the need for explicit management, configuration, and diversity of workers in a collaboration.

6.1 Nature of work

Work can be categorized as either loosely or tightly coupled [ 191 ]. Tightly coupled work relies heavily on the skills of groups of workers with exceedingly interdependent components; this type of work necessitates frequent, rich communication and is usually non-routine. Loosely coupled work, in contrast, is typically either routine or has fewer dependencies than tightly coupled work. Interdependence between components, and thus tightly coupled work, is at the heart of collaboration [ 225 ]. In addition, complex tasks lead to higher trust and collaboration than simple tasks and task complexity is a critical factor that molds the interactions and relationships between team members [ 42 ]. Furthermore, interdependence is not merely an issue of sharing resources, but instead ‘being mutually dependent in work means that A relies positively on the quality and timeliness of B s’ work and vice versa and should primarily be conceived of as a positive, though by no means necessarily harmonious interdependence’ [ 225 ]. Marlow et al. [ 163 ] found that as interdependence increases, communication becomes increasingly critical. They therefore suggest that communication becomes increasingly important to promoting high levels of performance. In 1988, Strauss described the additional work necessary for collaborators to negotiate, organize, and align their cooperative (yet individual) activities that occur as a result of interdependence. In doing so, Strauss discusses the concept of articulation work—by his definition, work concerned with assembling tasks and adjusting larger groups of tasks (e.g., sub-projects and lines of work) as a part of managing workflow. Articulation work is further described as the additional work needed to handle the interdependencies in work between multiple collaborators [ 72 ].

Virtual teams face greater challenges when managing these dependencies as a result of distance, both spatial and temporal, and culture [ 72 ]. Because interdependent (i.e., tightly coupled) work requires a high amount of interaction and negotiation, it is very difficult to do at a distance [ 191 ]. In contrast, loosely coupled work does not require as much communication as tightly coupled work, and so is easier to complete in geographically distant collaborations. Thus, tightly coupled work in virtual teams leads to less successful projects [ 193 ]. This observation is important since most projects have both varieties of work [ 191 ].

To combat the challenges associated with relying on tightly coupled work, many organizations take a social approach that arranges for co-located team members to work on tightly coupled aspects of the project while distance workers tackle loosely coupled parts [ 64 , 193 ], facilitated by deconstructing tasks into smaller pieces [ 93 ]. For tightly coupled work, some organizations choose to use extreme [ 161 ] or radical [ 246 ] collaboration setups where teams work in an enclosed environment in order to maximize communication and facilitate the flow of information. In contrast, for loosely coupled work, some organizations choose to minimize interaction [ 104 ]. Creating rules and norms for communication between team members early in the team’s life cycle can also increase effective communication and therefore improve performance during complex tasks [ 262 ]. This is essential for managing highly complex tasks and avoiding misunderstandings that can arise as a result of high task complexity combined with high virtuality [ 163 ].

However, the idea that tightly coupled work challenges collaboration is contested by Bjørn et al. [ 15 ]. This case study is centered on a large research project investigating global software development with several geographically dispersed partners. This study also provides evidence that tightly coupled work resulted in stronger collaborations. They observed that tightly coupled work required collaborators to frequently interact to do their work and, as a result, forced these collaborators to know more about each other, help each other, and cultivate strong engagement despite being at geographically distant sites. In contrast, loosely coupled work did not require the same level of engagement, resulting in collaborators feeling more detached from the project. Thus, Bjørn et al. proposed that tightly coupled work in geographically distributed teams involves processes that help collaboration [ 15 ].

Complex, tightly coupled tasks may be more difficult to the reliance of virtual teams on virtual tools and tendency to disband after a task has been completed [ 12 ]. Furthermore, the combination of high task complexity and high levels of virtuality lends itself to misunderstandings and mistakes [ 163 ]. As a result, effective communication is more critical for high performance in virtual teams for these tasks [ 163 ]. Despite this, Marlow et al. suggest that virtual teams can successfully complete these tasks if team members cultivate shared cognition. Given the characteristics of CMC technologies like video conferencing, which preserve much of the nuances present in face-to-face communication, we posit that shared cognition can be developed through the frequent, consistent use of this medium for communication.

Given the contrast between the work suggesting that tightly coupled work hinders distance collaboration [ 72 , 191 , 193 ] and work by Bjørn et al. [ 15 ] that suggests the opposite, there is clearly room for further research on the subject. This is especially true since Bjørn et al. focused only on global software development, and thus their findings might not generalize to other types of collaboration.

6.2 Explicit management and leadership

One of the largest challenges faced by virtual teams is the management of team effort [ 207 ]. Explicit management is needed for distributed, collaborative work, particularly by leaders trained in project management, in order to ensure the success of a project [ 150 , 193 ]. Collaborative projects are considered difficult to manage, especially as the number of workers associated with the project increases. Leadership is challenging in geographically dispersed teams because effective leadership is highly dependent on quality interactions that are more difficult across distance [ 157 ]. For example, Hoch and Kozlowski [ 111 ] found that hierarchical leadership is less effective in geographically dispersed teams than in co-located teams. It is also more challenging to ensure that the team’s work is given priority by the team members in geographically dispersed teams [ 131 ]. Furthermore, distributed projects face even more obstacles, such as increased coordination problems [ 188 ] including identifying and overcoming cultural differences, ensuring that all team members are heard [ 193 ], and regulating the inter-dependencies between resources, task components, and personnel [ 158 ].

Virtual teams face challenges related to leadership, such as nourishing an environment that fosters creativity [ 96 ] and emergent leadership [ 35 ]. Effective leadership benefits geographically dispersed virtual teams in a multitude of ways, including helping virtual teams overcome many of the challenges caused by distance, including facilitating satisfaction and motivation [ 88 , 169 ]. Virtual leadership can help collaboration within the team through providing training, guidance, resources, coaching, and facilitating relationship building [ 150 ]. Furthermore, leadership in virtual teams can facilitate knowledge sharing and the building of shared mental models [ 150 ]. Mental models are defined by Johnson-Laird [ 126 ] as internal representations of knowledge that match the situation they represent and consist of both abstract concepts and perceptible objects and images. These mental models may reflect detailed information about how the task is to be performed (i.e., task-related team mental models) or information about team member’s roles, tendencies, expertise, and patterns of interaction (i.e., teamwork-related mental models) [ 226 ]. These benefits, in turn enhance virtual team effectiveness [ 150 ]. Task complexity can be a mitigating factor in the effectiveness of leadership. Leadership benefits the team more in an environment where tasks are highly interdependent and/or highly complex [ 150 ]. In addition to this, team members’ perceptions of their leaders’ use of communication tools and techniques can impact their perceptions of overall team performance [ 182 ]). In particular, positive perceptions of leadership communication results in positive perceptions of performance [ 182 ].

Leadership can have a strong influence on interpersonal team dynamics and trust as well. Prior work indicates that leaders play an important role in enhancing team performance by demonstrating empathy and understanding [ 131 ], monitoring and reducing tensions [ 260 ], and clearly articulating role and relationship expectations for team members [ 131 ]. Leaders in virtual teams have the capacity to prevent and resolve team relationship and task conflicts [ 150 ]. Furthermore, effective leadership can have a positive influence on affection, cognition, and motivation [ 150 ]. It is particularly important for leaders to bridge co-located and remote team members in order to promote team effectiveness [ 150 ]. Leaders can build trust within virtual teams by engaging in behaviors such as early face-to-face meetings, using rich communication channels, and facilitating synchronous information exchange [ 150 ]. High levels of consistent communication between leaders and team members is positively related to trust and engagement within virtual teams [ 80 ].

Individual leadership styles have their own impact on virtual team productivity. Prior work has focused on four key types of leadership: transformational, empowering, emergent, and shared. Transformational leadership is characterized by idealized influence, inspirational motivation, individual consideration, and intellectual stimulation [ 65 ]. This type of leadership enables followers to reach their potential and maximize performance [ 65 ]. However, transformational leadership, while effective in co-located or slightly dispersed teams, is less effective in improving the performance of highly geographically dispersed teams [ 69 ]. This may be due to the difficulties associated with facilitating communication across distance, which can cause the leader’s influence to have counterproductive effects [ 69 ]. In this case, the leader is likely to be “too far removed” to authentically want to make a difference [ 69 ]. In fact, a transformational leader’s influence on team communication decreases as the team becomes more and more dispersed [ 69 ].

Empowering leadership combines sharing power with individual team members while also providing a facilitative and supportive environment [ 236 ]. High empowering leadership has the effect of positively influencing team members’ situational judgement on their virtual collaboration behaviors and, ultimately, individual performance [ 105 ]. Moreover, empowering leadership has a positive effect on team performance at high levels of team geographic dispersion [ 105 ]. However, it is important to note that teams may miss out on the benefits provided by empowering leadership if they lack situational judgement [ 105 ]

Emergent leaders are people who exert significant influence over other members of a team, even though they may not be vested with formal authority [ 227 ]. Emergent leadership has a positive relationship with virtual team performance [ 110 ]. In particular, emergent leadership has positive relationships with team agreeableness, openness to experience at the individual team member level, and emotional stability [ 110 ]. In addition, emergent leadership has a positive relationship to individual conscientiousness, which is associated with being careful, responsible, and organized [ 110 ]. These all have positive influences on virtual team performance [ 110 ].

Shared leadership is a collective leadership processing featuring multiple team members participating in team leadership functions [ 110 ]. This form of leadership can be described as a “mutual influence process” where members of a team lead each other towards the accomplishment of goals [ 109 ]. Shared leadership has a positive influence on the performance of virtual teams [ 110 , 150 ]. The structural support provided by shared leadership can supplement traditional leadership; in this situation, shared leaders assume the responsibility of building trust and relationships among team members [ 150 ]. Shared leadership provides many benefits to virtual teams such as emotional stability, agreeableness, mediating effects on the relationship between personality composition and team performance [ 110 ]. Shared and emergent leadership styles share some effects on virtual teams. Specifically, these types of leadership will affect the relationships between team conscientiousness, emotional stability, and team openness such that they will be stronger in teams with higher levels of virtuality than in teams with lower levels of virtuality [ 110 ]. However, shared leadership is facilitated by the socially-related exchange of information that creates commitment, trust, and cohesion among team members [ 110 ]. In co-located teams, this exchange of knowledge is enabled through social interactions like informal conversations, socializing outside of work, and through meetings [ 110 ]. However, this type of informal and face-to-face communication is less common and feasible in virtual teams for reasons that will be discussed later. As a result, it is necessary for organizations to make efforts to facilitate shared leadership through training [ 110 ].

In addition to leadership style, the level of authority differentiation and skill level of the team members have an affect on team-level outcomes. Among teams with less skilled members, centralized authority (i.e., high authority differentiation) will have a positive influence on efficiency and performance in virtual teams [ 223 ]. In contrast, centralized authority has a negative influence on team innovation, learning, adaption, and performance as well as member satisfaction and identification among teams with highly skilled members [ 223 ]. Decentralized authority (i.e., low authority differentiation) when combined with careful intervention of a formal or informal leader can benefit coordination, learning, and adaptation in virtual teams with high skill differentiation and high temporal stability [ 150 ].

Other studies showed that virtual teams face challenges that could be mitigated with explicit management [ 83 , 188 , 243 , 261 ]. O’Leary and Mortensen investigated the effects of configuration (i.e., the distribution of team members across multiple sites) on team dynamics at the individual, subgroup, and team level [ 188 ]. They found that geographically defined subgroups led to significantly negative outcomes with regards to coordination problems (e.g., difficulties with coordination-related decisions about schedules, deadlines, and task assignments). The effects of configuration on distance work will be discussed further in this section. Similarly, problems of coordination (e.g., ‘reaching decisions’ and ‘division of labor”) were significantly increased by distance [ 261 ]. These results are complemented by findings that distance hampers the coordination of virtual teams via synchronous meetings [ 243 ]. Similarly, coordination in distance collaborations is hindered by difficulties in scheduling synchronous meetings due to limited windows of time where all parties are able to be present [ 83 ]. These findings complement those of Sect.  5.2 discussing the effect of temporal distance on collaboration.

Prior work has suggested various strategies for effective leadership and explicit management. For example, Hill and Bartol [ 105 ] suggest team training that focuses on strategies for overcoming challenges encountered in dispersed teamwork. Another, related, strategy is to focus more attention on setting norms for behavior that may aid appropriate situational judgment among team members when launching geographically dispersed teams [ 105 ]. A different approach is to consider personality dimensions such as agreeableness, conscientiousness, openness, emotion stability, and moderate extroversion, which all have positive influences on team performance, when selecting virtual team members [ 110 ].

However, some types of collaborations, particularly research collaborations consisting mainly of scientists, avoid the application of explicit management in their projects [ 193 ]. There is an opportunity for research to investigate how to support explicit management in distance collaborations that typically reject this type of administration.

6.3 Configuration

Like O’Leary et al. [ 188 ], in this paper, configuration is subdivided into three dimensions: site, imbalance, and isolation. Site dispersion is best characterized as the degree to which collaborators are at distinct geographic locations [ 187 ]. There is an inverse relationship between the number of sites and project success [ 50 , 51 , 133 ]. High site dispersion is associated with higher amounts of faultlines (i.e., theoretical divisions within a group that create subgroups) which damage team collaboration [ 47 , 210 ]. Specifically, faultlines escalate polarization, subgrouping, and the effect of causing collaborators in other locations to feel more distant [ 47 ]. Having a large number of sites, in particular, increases the odds that differences in demographics will create these divisions [ 47 ]. Additionally, greater numbers of sites predict fewer coordination activities and decreased outcomes [ 133 ]. Knowledge sharing decreases [ 40 , 83 ] and the cost of managing team goals increases [ 97 ] as the number of sites increases.

Imbalance refers to the proportion of collaborators dispersed across a set of sites and can have negative effects on collaboration, such as conflicts between large and small sites [ 8 ]. For example, imbalanced teams often have unequal amounts of contribution towards shared team tasks [ 188 ]. Furthermore, levels of conflict and trust differ between imbalanced and balanced teams [ 188 , 210 ]. In particular, larger subgroups in imbalanced teams feel stronger effects from faultlines on conflict and trust [ 210 ]. However, it is unclear what the ramifications are of these differences in trust and conflict [ 188 , 210 ], presenting an opportunity for research.

Imbalanced teams consisting of one isolated collaborator working with a co-located team function differently than highly dispersed, balanced teams [ 188 ]. For instance, communication in these imbalanced teams is different because the co-located team members communicate both face-to-face and electronically with each other, but, in the absence of travel, only communicate electronically with the isolated team member [ 231 ]. This disparity in communication methods impedes informal interaction and spontaneous communication [ 45 ]. This also has a unique effect on communication where the co-located team feels compelled to communicate with those isolated collaborators more frequently to make up for this difference [ 188 ]. Also, isolated members tend to contribute more frequently than their co-located counterparts because they feel as though they need to ‘speak up’ and be ‘heard’ over the co-located team [ 141 , 188 ].

Furthermore, isolation negatively affects a worker’s awareness of collaborator’s activities [ 187 ]. Isolated workers are also more likely to feel the effects of a lack of motivational sense of the presence of others [ 193 ]. These isolated workers identify less with the team and feel less like they are part of the group, leading to a feeling of distance from the rest of the team [ 45 ], which translates to feeling differently about group processes and outcomes [ 27 ]. Furthermore, isolation and feelings of alienation can have a negative effect on relationships among workers in geographically dispersed virtual teams, increasing the likelihood of feeling discomfort and reducing the likelihood of trusting team members that they do not know well [ 67 ].

Configurationally imbalanced teams (i.e., teams that have an uneven distribution of members across sites) tend to have lower identification with teammates and higher levels of conflict [ 188 ]. Conflict can be reduced by a shared sense of team identity [ 108 , 179 ], meaning that fostering this sense of identification with the team can mitigate both problems. Since team identification can be built via face-to-face communication [ 54 ]; we posit that in the absence of face-to-face communication, imbalanced teams should make use of CMC technologies that facilitate nuanced expression, such as video conferencing tools.

6.4 Group composition

The diversity of a team encompasses several factors that correlate with a set of challenges that greatly affect virtual teams. This section will focus on the issues of common ground, socio-cultural distance, and work culture. In the process, this section will discuss the remaining challenges identified by Olson and Olson [ 191 , 193 ], (continued from Sect.  5 ): common ground, the competitive/cooperative culture, and alignment of incentives and goals.

6.4.1 Common ground

Distance collaboration becomes easier if team members have common ground (i.e., have worked together before [ 54 ], have shared past experiences [ 54 ], vocabulary [ 191 ], or mental models [ 168 ] etc.) since it allows them to communicate via technology without requiring frequent clarification [ 193 ]. This challenge is also referred to as the ‘mutual knowledge problem’ [ 46 ]. The concept of mutual knowledge between teammates is based on the idea of ‘grounding’ in communication [ 43 ], which is done by both communicating and confirming understanding using words or body language [ 43 ]. Schmidtke and Cummings [ 226 ] found that as virtualness increases in a team, mental models become more complex, which negatively affects teamwork. They also found that as virtualness increases, similarity and accuracy of mental models decreases [ 226 ]. Accuracy and similarity play vital roles in reducing the negative effect of complexity on teamwork behaviors [ 226 ]. Fortunately, specialized training can increase mental model accuracy [ 226 ].

As virtual teams rely more on computer mediated communication, temporal stability (i.e. “the degree to which team members have a history of working together in the past and an expectation of working together in the future” [ 115 ]) more strongly influences teamwork [ 223 ]. High temporal stability is associated with positive team outcomes related to related to adaptation, learning, innovation, and performance, as well as satisfaction and identification with the team [ 223 ]. In addition to this, the extent to which virtual team members share common goals is critical in determining the success of the team [ 42 , 230 ]. For this reason, team leaders should ensure that team members commit to the task and common goals [ 10 ].

Research [ 168 ] has shown that it is more difficult for virtual teams that are geographically dispersed to develop a shared mental model. In particular, the process of grounding is made more difficult when there is a higher risk of misinterpretation, such as in the presence of multiple cultural practices and languages [ 191 ].The significant amount of time required to establish common conceptual frameworks and personal relationships can pose a significant constraint on collaboration in virtual teams [ 54 ].

The consequences of lack of common ground are primarily difficulty building trust [ 123 , 202 , 273 ] and difficulties associated with communication. Lack of common ground can limit the ability to communicate about and retain contextual information about teammates located at other sites, including their teammates situation and constraints, especially as the number of sites increases, in turn hindering their collaborative interactions and performance [ 46 , 230 ]. This contextual information includes, but is not limited to, local holidays and customs, site-specific processes and standards, competing responsibilities, and pressure from supervisors and teammates [ 46 ]. Common ground is also necessary to understand which messages or parts of messages are the most salient, which is particularly problematic because there may be restricted feedback [ 46 ]. The lack of common ground can also create problems interpreting the meaning of silence, which makes it difficult to know when a decision has been made [ 46 ]. Furthermore, lack of common ground can result in an uneven distribution of information and differences in speed of access to that information, which causes teammates at different sites to have different information and creates misunderstandings that are nontrivial to rectify [ 46 ].

Thus, the establishment of common ground is of utmost importance to virtual teams.

6.4.2 Socio-cultural distance

Socio-cultural distance has been defined as a measurement of a team member’s perception of their teammate’s values and usual practices [ 2 ]. This concept encompasses national culture and language, politics, and the motivations and work values of an individual [ 2 ]. It is known that geographically distributed collaborations are more socio-culturally diverse than co-located ones [ 179 ] because distance typically increases demographic heterogeneity (especially racial or ethnic heterogeneity) [ 107 ]. Members of a virtual team with different cultural backgrounds are likely to have different behaviors within the teams, including how they interact with their teammates [ 123 ]. For this and other reasons, virtual team’s cultural composition is the key predictor of the team’s performance [ 242 ].

Cultural differences go beyond national differences. There is a tendency for researchers studying cross-cultural organizational behavior to focus on national issues or use nation as a substitute for cultural values [ 245 ]. However, nation is not the only meaningful source of culture [ 84 , 149 ]. In addition to this, there may be multiple subcultures within a nation and the national culture may not be completely shared [ 135 ]. In fact, variation of cultural values within a country may be higher than variation between countries [ 114 ]. Therefore, a virtual team with high national diversity may not necessarily be culturally diverse [ 86 ].

Prior research has identified three levels of diversity: surface-level, deep-level, and functional-level [ 99 , 177 ]. Surface-level diversity is primarily observable differences such as race, age, and sex, while deep-level diversity is comprised of more subtle differences in personal characteristics such as attitudes, beliefs, and values, which are communicated through interaction between team members and information gathering [ 177 ]. Functional-level diversity, in contrast, refers to the degree to which team members have vary in knowledge, information, expertise, and skills [ 10 ].

The individualism-collectivism dichotomy is a ‘major dimension of cultural variability’ [ 112 ] that contributes to high socio-cultural distance. Socio-cultural distance is associated with higher levels of conflict as well as lower levels of satisfaction and cohesion [ 238 ] and has a profound impact on team performance [ 70 ]. Hardin et al. [ 98 ] found that the individualistic-collectivist dichotomy results in some cultures being more open to working in geographically dispersed environments due to their levels of self-efficacy beliefs about virtual teamwork.

Collectivist cultures place the needs, beliefs, and goals of the team over the those of an individual [ 94 , 112 ]. Virtual teams characterized by collectivist culture are less likely to use CMC technologies [ 143 ]. When they do choose to adopt CMC technologies, collectivist teams tend to choose synchronous methods that provide high relationship-related informational value [ 143 ]. Informational value in this context refers to the extent to which CMC technologies convey information benefits team effectiveness [ 143 ]. Virtual teams that favor in-group members and accept perceptions of inequality are said to be characterized by “vertical collectivism” [ 254 ]. These teams are less likely to rely on CMC technologies, and are more likely to accept varying forms of informational value [ 143 ]. They are also more likely to employ asynchronous methods [ 143 ]. In contrast, teams that perceive equality amongst team members regardless of their role within the organization experience “horizontal collectivism” [ 253 ]. In this case, members of the team view themselves as being part of a collective and treat all team members as equal. [ 253 ]. While these teams are also likely to limit reliance on CMC technologies, they tend to require higher informational values and prefer synchronous methods [ 143 ].

In contrast to collectivist cultures, individualist cultures place the needs, beliefs, and goals of the individual over the those of an team [ 112 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of individualism are more likely to use CMC technologies, especially those that are high in task-related informational value, and tend to work asynchronously [ 143 ] Furthermore, team members from individualist cultures tend to communicate more openly and precisely [ 112 , 113 ] and are more willing to respond to ‘ambiguous messages’ [ 94 ], which is considered to be an indicator of trust [ 203 ]. This observation indicates that team members from individualistic cultures may be more ready to trust other teammates when communicating via technology than team members from collectivist cultures [ 123 ]. Thus, the issues and recommendations regarding technology and trust are applicable.

Teams with members that prioritize their own intrinsic and extrinsic goals while also favoring status differences are said to be “vertically individualistic” [ 156 ]. These teams are characterized by competitive members that are motivated to “win” [ 156 ]. In addition, while these individuals tend to belong to more in-groups than collectivists, they are not very emotionally connected to these groups [ 181 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of vertical individualism are more likely to adopt CMC technologies, tolerate varying forms of informational value, and will use asynchronous methods when required by superiors than teams characterized by horizontal individualism or any type of collectivism [ 143 ]. Team members with horizontal individualistic orientation prioritize their own self-interest while also viewing their teammates as equals [ 143 ]. Virtual teams with high levels of horizontal individualism are more likely to adopt CMC technologies, tend to require higher informational value, and will use synchronous methods when required by superiors as opposed to teams characterized by vertical individualism or any type of collectivism [ 143 ].

Socio-cultural diversity can also be characterized by the temporal orientation of their goals. Teams that focus upon the future and are willing to delay success or gratification for the purposes of future gain have a “long-term orientation” culture [ 143 ]. Cultures with long-term orientation tend to value perseverance, persistence, and focus on future-oriented goals [ 143 ]. In contrast, cultures characterized by “short-term orientation” are focused on the immediate needs of their teams with little consideration of the impact of their decisions on the future [ 143 ]. Virtual teams defined by long-term orientation are more likely to adopt asynchronous tools with high informational value and tend to be slower to rely on CMC technologies than short-term orientated teams, which prefer synchronous tools with low informational value [ 143 ].

Cultures can also be characterized by the amount of contextualizing is performed by an individual during communication [ 95 ]. For example, Japan, a high-context culture, relies more on the use of indirect communication via contextual cues (e.g., body language) to convey information [ 139 ]. Contextualization also affects choice of CMC technologies. High-context teams tend not to rely on CMC technologies and will prefer tools that high high informational value [ 143 ]. Low-context teams, in contrast, will rely on CMC technologies and will prefer those with low informational value [ 143 ].

Virtual teams are also affected by the levels of affectiveness/neutrality present in their culture. Affectiveness in this context refers to the amount of emotion that individuals usually express when they communicate [ 143 ]. For example, individuals from affective cultures such as Italy commonly exhibit their emotions publicly. [ 143 ]. In addition, individuals from affective cultures often feel that more neutral cultures (e.g., Japan) are more intentionally deceitful because they tend to hold back on their emotions [ 240 ]. Affective teams will be less likely to rely on CMC technologies and will prefer ones with high informational value [ 143 ]. In contrast, teams with neutral cultures will highly rely on CMC technologies and will prefer tools with low informational value [ 143 ].

Other types of socio-cultural diversity influence the performance of virtual team. For example, heterogeneity in the extent to which gender roles are traditional is positively related to team performance [ 70 ]. In a similar vein, heterogeneity in the extent to which there is discomfort with the unknown has a positive effect on issue-based conflict [ 70 ]. Uncertainty avoidance also affects tool use in virtual teams. Teams that have high amounts of uncertainty avoidance are more likely to use a synchronous CMC technology with high informational value. In contrast, teams with low uncertainty avoidance are unlikely to have a preference [ 143 ]. In addition to this, the degree of inequality that exists among members of virtual teams has an affect on the tools chosen for communication [ 143 ]. Teams with a high degree of inequality (i.e., high power distance) are more likely to use synchronous tools while teams with a low degree of inequality (i.g., low power distance) will prefer asynchronous tools [ 143 ]. Specificity also plays a role in virtual team performance. Someone from a specific culture (e.g., the United Kingdom) is more likely to view their coworkers as people with whom they only have a business relationship with, [ 87 ]. In contrast, more diffuse cultures (e.g., China) are more likely to view their teammates as friends and include them in their social lives [ 143 ]. This affects the choice communication methods employed by the team as teams characterized by high specificity are more likely to rely on CMC technologies than diffuse teams [ 143 ].

High socio-cultural distance is the cause of several types of collaboration problems. For example, high socio-cultural distance reduces communication and increases risk [ 2 ] caused by relationship breakdowns between distributed teams [ 250 ] and results in more processes challenges and lower team performance [ 86 ]. Socio-cultural distance also tends to worsen the way leaders sense, interpret, and respond to problems [ 271 ]. Cultural heterogeneity also tends to result in divergent subgroup identification [ 68 ] that may subsequently have a negative effect on team interactions and performance [ 67 ]. Furthermore, in accordance with similarity/attraction theory, team members attribute positive traits to team members that they believe are similar to themselves and prefer to interact with them [ 216 , 255 ]. Negative traits are thus associated with teammates that they believe are dissimilar from them and sometimes actively avoid interactions with those teammates [ 24 ]. As a result, the belief that others are different in terms of education, race, and attitudes (i.e., perceived diversity) is frequently associated with the negative consequences of team heterogeneity [ 100 ], such as unwillingness to cooperate and coordinate activities [ 56 , 117 , 148 ].

Furthermore, teams with high socio-cultural distance are more likely to have issues with integration and communication and have more conflict [ 269 ]. Both task and affective conflict are increased as a result of the differences in perspectives and approaches related to work, which further exacerbates differences in expectations, attitudes, and beliefs [ 195 , 204 ]. These differences in belief structures are particularly common in heterogeneous groups (i.e., groups with high socio-cultural distance) [ 268 ] which, in turn, increases conflict due to differences in interpretations and opinions of work processes [ 205 ]. Thus, there is a vicious cycle between differences in belief and intra-group conflict that is detrimental to collaboration.

The most commonly experienced problems correlating with socio-cultural distance are difficulties associated with diversity in language preferences, proficiency, and interpretation, which can create barriers for many projects [ 116 ], such as requiring increased effort [ 74 , 170 , 183 ]. This challenge is not just a matter of different languages, even native speakers of one language may have problems because of differences in dialects and local accents [ 33 ]. In many global collaborations, some (if not all) of the collaborators only speak English as a second language [ 132 , 219 ]. This situation causes problems when collaborators need to synchronously communicate via teleconferencing—these team members can become overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the conversation [ 132 , 219 ]. Furthermore, this language-based disadvantage can cause non-native speakers of the dominant language to feel alienated and as though they have a disadvantage when speaking [ 219 ]. Prior work has also shown that virtual teams whose members have different first languages have more conflict and lower levels of satisfaction and cohesion [ 238 ].

Misunderstandings can occur even in cases where all collaborators are fluent in a language if there are other differences in culture—a seemingly harmless joke could have a massively detrimental impact on the success of a project if it is misunderstood as an insult [ 250 ]. Olson and Olson observed one such misunderstanding where team members in the United States ended a video conference without expressing a ‘proper farewell’ to a European teammate [ 191 ]. In this case, the curtness was due to pressure on the American team, who were unaware of the cultural expectations regarding farewells, to cut costs by conducting short video conferences [ 191 ]. The European team, however, was unaware of this pressure and perceived the lack of a proper farewell as an insult [ 191 ]. Also, conflicts can arise when teammates from a culture where saying ‘no’ is considered impolite (even when saying ‘yes’ is a problematic answer) interact with teammates who do not share this compunction [ 116 ]. Treinen and Miller-Frost encountered an instance where collaborators from one culture did not ask many questions of their teammates and instead affirmed that they had a clear understanding of requirements, but were in reality too polite to express concerns [ 250 ]. In this situation, the other collaborators were unaware of this cultural difference and did not realize that their questions should not have formulated as ‘yes or no,’ but rather should have elicited responses that indicated understanding.

Other types of socio-cultural differences such as those caused by religion, generation, and doing orientation, can also affect virtual team success. Religious differences, for example, can make it difficult for team members to understand each others norms and traditions, which has a negative influence on collaboration [ 221 ]. Generational differences can affect how a team member responds to collaborating via CMC technology because not every has the high levels of technical expertise that makes them a “digital native” [ 129 ]. Finally, differences in the extent to which work is valued as a central life interest (i.e., “doing orientation”) is negatively linked to productivity [ 135 ]. However, differences in the extent to which team members have a sense of personal control over their work and life events are positively linked to team productivity, cooperation, and empowerment [ 135 ].

A review of literature reviews and meta-analyses suggests that the “main-effects” approach, where researchers focus on relationships between outcomes and diversity dimensions, ignoring moderating variables, cannot truly account for the effects of diversity [ 86 ]. The effect of socio-cultural diversity depends on other features of the team [ 272 ], such as how long members have interacted, the types of diversity investigated, and the types of outcomes under scrutiny [ 86 ]. High task complexity, high tenure, large team size, and low levels of geographic dispersion are found to moderate the effects of socio-cultural diversity on virtual teams [ 237 ]. Experience with CMC technology can also moderate socio-cultural diversity; high heterogeneity in technical experience heightens the negative effect that differences in nationality has on creativity [ 164 ]. Socio-economic variables (e.g., human development index (HDI)) has a significant impact on a country’s scientific production and collaboration patterns [ 118 , 152 , 199 ]. Kramer et al. found that socioeconomic similarities and economic agreements between countries have contributed to increased collaboration in the scientific field [ 143 ], which is likely to be virtual. The phase in which a virtual team is at in the project life-cycle affects assessment of team performance in culturally diverse teams. Culturally heterogeneous virtual teams will outperform culturally homogeneous teams during the later part of the project life-cycle [ 264 ]. This is likely a result of teams becoming more homogeneous over time as shared team values, associated norms, and identity enables the team to overcome process challenges that occur when team members encounter cultural differences [ 86 , 264 ].

Computer-mediated communication technology (e.g., email, video-conferencing) can reduce the negative effects of socio-cultural diversity early on in the life of a diverse virtual team due to their reductive capabilities [ 32 ]. In fact, use of these tools may even be beneficial for diverse teams for this reason [ 32 ]. Many issues regarding language barriers are surmounted by the use of asynchronous technology that allows workers to reflect and carefully consider their position before answering a question posed by a collaborator that primarily speaks another language [ 2 , 116 ]. These benefits result in the heavier use of asynchronous tools, which introduces the disadvantages of asynchronous tools (e.g., increased time and effort to effectively communicate, absence of important social information and nonverbal cues) [ 2 ]. Furthermore, asynchronous communication is not feasible in every situation. And, as discussed above, language barriers can cause problems during synchronous communication. Thus, developing technology that better supports synchronous communication across a language barrier is a promising opportunity for research in supporting collaboration.

Contradictions exist in the literature with regard to the effect of socio-cultural diversity on team performance. Edwards and Shridhar [ 66 ], for example, found no relationship between a team’s socio-cultural diversity and the learning, satisfaction, or performance of its members. Other research has suggested that socio-cultural diversity is unrelated to conflict [ 108 ]. Finally, Weijen found that whether or not members of a virtual team spoke English (specifically) did not have an influence on international collaboration, likely due to the pervasiveness of English as the default language for many international journals and indexed databases [ 259 ].

It is also recommended that the addition of basic cultural awareness [ 250 ] and language training [ 120 ] be incorporated into the beginning of every project to mitigate these issues before they become major problems. One specific suggestion is to employ some of the guidelines from agile development methodology (i.e., Scrum), such as daily status meetings, to mitigate the effect of assumptions by providing an opportunity to address issues or questions during the hand-off and allocation of tasks [ 250 ]. Given the plethora of tools developed for supporting Scrum (e.g., [ 209 , 229 , 251 ]), it would be interesting to see how these tools could be adapted to smooth over collaboration issues arising from cultural differences.

6.4.3 Work culture

Socio-cultural distance can be highly influenced by the work culture dimension. For example, there may be conflicts from high socio-cultural distance between two teammates from the same country that come from very different company backgrounds [ 8 ], while the opposite may be true of teammates with different cultural and national backgrounds who share a common work culture [ 2 ]. The success of a virtual team can hinge on factors such as differences in understanding with regards to processes and knowledge, institutional bureaucracy, status differences between team members, unworkable expectations reagarding shared goals and products, and conflicting or competing institutional priorities [ 54 ]. Power asymmetries in particular can create systemic bariers that need to be explicitly navigated (as opposed to expecting perfect process design will resolve them) [ 54 ]. While differences in work culture have the potential for stimulating innovation, proving access to richer skill sets, and sharing best practices, it also has the potential to cause misunderstandings [ 2 ] and communication breakdowns [ 14 ] between teammates. This influence is partly due to the difficulties associated with communicating subtl aspects of the team culture over distance (e.g., ‘how we do things around here’ [ 8 ]). For example, differences in the competitive or cooperative culture of a workplace can pose challenges [ 191 ]. Workers are less likely to be motivated to share their skills or ‘cover for each other (p. 1)’ in organizations or cultures that promote individual competition rather than cooperation. In contrast, cooperative cultures facilitate sharing skills and effort. This issue is particularly difficult to overcome in virtual teams.

Other differences in organizational structure and leadership can have a profound impact on successful collaboration in distributed groups. The characteristics of authority and authoritative roles vary across cultures [ 8 , 145 ] which can cause conflicts and undermine morale [ 2 ]. For example, [ 33 ] observed that in a collaboration between teams located in Ireland and the United States, the Irish workers required that authority figures earn their respect while the American workers were more likely to unquestioningly give respect to superiors. Another study that focused on a collaboration between teams in the United States and Europe had contrasting results [ 8 ]. Instead of the unquestioned respect found by Casey and Richardson, [ 8 ] saw that American workers were more confrontational with their superiors and verbally expressed objections and questions while the European teams had a more formal, hierarchical management structure. These differences indicate that support for differing work cultures needs to focus on the needs and conventions of the individual organizations and refrain from imposing standards based solely on the country in which the organization resides. The degree to which an organization allows autonomous decision-making afects relationships and behaviors between teammates and can inpact things like readiness to use technology in the collaboration or willingness to exchange knowledge [ 166 , 180 ].

Teams can also vary in their goals, norms, and incentives. A lack of alignment of incentives and goals as well as differences in expectations can pose very serious problems for a collaboration [ 191 ]. These misalignment’s are difficult to detect at a distance and require substantial negotiation to overcome [ 191 ], which is nontrivial using today’s technology. For example, collaborators may have different perceptions of time as a result of temporal discontinuities caused by differences in time zones, which may further reflect differences in the value systems of collaborators at each site [ 222 ]. Tensions may arise between workers at an American site that views time as a scarce commodity and perceives time as being something that can be spent, wasted, or lost, and collaborators at a Japanese site that view time as a cyclical, recurrent entity that is in unlimited supply [ 222 ]. Along with this finding comes different expectations with regards to how many hours a day team members are expected to work, or differing definitions of what it means to work hard [ 14 ], which often varies between countries [ 22 ]. These differences in expectations are particularly problematic when one team expects that another work more hours than they previously had been working [ 14 ]. Building a sense of shared goals and expectations happens more slowly in distributed groups [ 8 ], a process that could likely be assisted by the development of new communication technology. In addition, competing incentives can undermine a team’s performance [ 54 ].

Competitive funding models may affect willingness to collaborate and disincentivize team members to share skills, knowledge, and unpublished data [ 247 ]. For example, for the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia project, the core partners each created an individual grant agreement with the International Development Research Centre [ 54 ]. However, while the expectation was that partners would collaborate with each other, the partners were disincentivized to collaborate due to the individual grant agreements since the partners reported individually to the funding agency, rather than collectively [ 54 ]. Unfortunately, it is frequently unrealistic to expect these dynamics to resolve themselves in a short period of time and shift into an open and trusting relationship [ 54 ].

Expectations can be strongly influenced by the language used by different groups (e.g., ‘test procedure,’ ‘phase completion’) within a virtual team, sometimes creating animosity [ 8 ]. Language is further associated with methodology—for example, disparities in definitions of quality can be reflected in different assessment procedures [ 8 ]. Misunderstandings caused by differences in work practices and methodologies can affect coordination and cooperation [ 2 ], causing delays and conflicts [ 8 ]. In these situations, a common technical language must be developed to ensure understanding, which can be an extremely difficult task [ 15 , 122 , 172 , 252 ]. This need provides an opportunity for the development of technology to assist the creation and use of project-specific technical language.

In addition to differences in technical language, various groups within a virtual team may have different backgrounds that need to be reconciled, as different organizations within a group may have different expertise and experience that create incompatible views [ 55 ]. This issue is often unavoidable since one group may have specific knowledge necessary for the project to succeed [ 120 ]. Furthermore, differences in discipline and background have a stronger effect for distributed collaborations [ 211 ]. However, there are inconsistencies in the literature with regards to the effects of discipline on collaboration. Cummings and Kiesler, for example, found that field heterogeneity has a positive effect on distributed project success [ 50 ]. Specifically, they showed that projects including many disciplines had disclosed as many positive outcomes as did projects that involved fewer. However, in an earlier study, they found that projects incorporating many disciplines were less successful than projects that relied on fewer disciplines [ 133 ]. Thus, it is uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate, presenting open questions.

The way that administrative communication is managed [ 250 ] and tasks are allocated can play a big role [ 8 ] in the success of a virtual team. For example, a project manager could assign tasks differently and adjust the way that he or she communicates with management in accordance with the team’s culture and nationality [ 8 ]. Collaborations can further benefit from creating structured understandings about how to best work together by establishing expectations and definitions to undercut assumptions [ 8 ]. The challenge then becomes finding ways to develop technology that supports these structures while still facilitating innovation, ingenuity, and ‘rapid response to organizational threats or opportunities’ [ 64 ]. However, there are also inconsistencies between studies exploring the effects of work culture on collaboration. While Walsh and Maloney [ 261 ] stated that remote collaborations did not experience more work culture problems than co-located teams, McDonough et al. [ 170 ] found that differences in work culture and practices resulted in management problems in virtual teams. This disparity presents another open question.

7 Summary of findings and open questions

In this literature review, the major factors and challenges that impact collaboration in virtual teams were identified. Section  5 discussed distance factors (geographical, temporal, and perceived distance) and their associated challenges, including reduced motivation and awareness and difficulty establishing trust. In addition, barriers to informal and face-to-face communication, particularly the team’s technical competence and access to the appropriate technical infrastructure as well as prevalence of intra-team conflict were reviewed. Additional factors that particularly affect distance collaborations were outlined in Sect.  6 , namely the nature or coupling of the work, the need for explicit management, the configuration of dispersed sites and intra-team diversity along the dimensions of common ground, socio-cultural distance, and work culture. Several open questions and directions for future research were identified in the process of conducting the review; these are divided into questions of theory, questions of technology, and recommendations for future research. These findings are used to create design implications for the development of groupware targeted towards virtual teams later in Sect.  8 .

7.1 Questions of theory

7.1.1 should future research pursue ‘awareness’.

There is currently disagreement within the community as to whether or not ‘awareness’ should be taken as a conceptual approach to investigating collaboration challenges. Critics of ‘awareness’ describe the term as ‘ambiguous and unsatisfactory’ [ 224 ] and point towards it’s tendency to be paired with an adjective (e.g., ‘passive awareness’ [ 62 ]) in an attempt to lend some specificity [ 224 ]. Despite this, the awareness approach is still a commonly explored method [ 7 , 134 ], which suggests that there is a research opportunity to address this controversy.

7.1.2 Are coordination costs higher in teams that are temporally distributed?

There is also a lack of consensus within the community as to whether coordination costs are higher in teams that are temporally distributed. For example, while Espinosa and Carmel [ 73 ] state that coordination costs are reduced when team members are not working concurrently because no direct coordination takes place when the two teammates are not working at the same time, Ågerfalk et al. [ 2 ] and Battin et al. [ 11 ] assert that temporal distance significantly increases the cost and effort of coordination due to the added difficulties of dividing work across multiple time zones.

7.1.3 How do the disparities in levels of conflict and trust between balanced and imbalanced teams affect collaboration?

As previously discussed, levels of conflict and trust differ between balanced and imbalanced teams [ 188 , 210 ]. Specifically, subgroups in balanced teams experience weaker effects from faultlines on conflict and trust than large subgroups in imbalanced teams [ 210 ]. However, the ramifications are of these differences in trust and conflict are unknown, suggesting an opportunity for research.

7.1.4 Does tightly coupled work have a negative or a positive effect on collaboration?

Several studies [ 72 , 191 , 193 ] suggest that that tightly coupled work hinders distance collaboration. However, [ 15 ] found that tightly coupled work required collaborators to frequently interact to do their work and, as a result, forced these collaborators to know more about each other, help each other, and cultivate strong engagement despite being at geographically distant sites—which actually helps distance collaboration. Given the contrast between these conclusions, there is an opportunity for further research to investigate the effects of tightly coupled work, particularly in domains other than global software development.

7.1.5 What effect does geographic dispersion have on task and affective conflict?

Contradictions exist in the current literature as to the effect of geographic distance on affective and task-based conflict. Specifically, [ 179 ] found no significant difference in affective and task-based conflict between co-located and distributed teams. This, however, is in direct conflict with their later work [ 108 ]. These contradictions are particularly interesting given that the participants in both studies did research and product development, and are therefore directly comparable. It is therefore uncertain as to which conclusion is accurate.

7.1.6 Does background heterogeneity have a positive or a negative effect on collaboration?

This question is also currently unresolved, given the contradictions in literature. In 2002, Kiesler and Cummings found that projects incorporating many disciplines were less successful than projects that relied on fewer disciplines [ 133 ]. However, later they found that field heterogeneity has a positive effect on distributed project success [ 50 ].

7.1.7 Do virtual teams encounter more work-culture related problems than co-located teams?

This is yet another example of the community’s lack of consensus on issues surrounding collaboration. For example, while McDonough et al. [ 170 ] found that differences in work culture and practices resulted in management problems in virtual teams, Walsh and Maloney [ 261 ] stated that remote collaborations did not experience more work culture problems than co-located teams.

7.2 Questions of technology

7.2.1 how can we better support communication in temporally distant work.

Due to the differences in work schedule caused by differences in time zones, particularly when sites do not have overlapping workdays, distance workers rely on asynchronous technology (e.g., email, fax) to communicate with their collaborators. However, this method has several drawbacks. Asynchronous tools tend to increase the amount of time that a collaborator has to wait for a response [ 2 ] and can leave the recipient feeling overwhelmed by the number of asynchronous messages left during the previous night [ 19 ]. Moreover, the process of writing ideas in emails increases the risk of misunderstandings between collaborators [ 57 ] over talking in person or via the telephone.

7.2.2 How can we better support informal communication?

There is an additional challenge associated with communication technology in that there is insufficient support for determining a collaborator’s availability for spur-of-the-moment, informal communication [ 101 ]. This drawback, in particular, hampers informal communication that would otherwise happen during chance encounters in a co-located environment.

7.2.3 How can we design technology to assist in the development of trust?

Research shows that body language, subtle voice inflections, facial expressions, etc., which are notably more difficult to convey via communication technology, are essential to the development of trust [ 20 , 193 ]. Furthermore, communication technology is frequently used in an irregular, unpredictable, and inequitable manner, which hampers trust [ 123 ]. As a result, it is clear that current technology needs to be updated to better assist the development of trust in distance collaborations.

7.2.4 How do we support explicit management in teams that reject formal administration?

Explicit management is necessary for successful distributed, collaborative work [ 193 ]. However, some particular types of collaboration, such as research collaborations consisting mainly of scientists, avoid the application of explicit management in their projects [ 193 ].

7.2.5 How can we support synchronous communication across language barriers?

Language barriers are of significant concern in collaborations where collaborators have different socio-cultural backgrounds (i.e., speak different languages) [ 116 ] or different work backgrounds (i.e., use different jargon) [ 8 ]. In these cases, asynchronous communication allows collaborators to reflect before responding to each other, giving them a chance to look up unfamiliar terminology or become familiar with new ideas. However, asynchronous communication has several drawbacks, as mentioned earlier, and is not feasible in every situation.

7.2.6 How do we develop technology that supports structures for negotiating terminologies and methodologies while still facilitating flexibility?

Along with the issue of surmounting technical language barriers in synchronous communication comes the need to create and use a common technical language to ensure understanding in meaning and methodology. The development of a project-specific technical language is not an easy task [ 17 , 55 , 172 , 252 ], but is important enough to collaboration to warrant assistance from technology. It is also important to ensure that this technology is flexible enough to withstand changes that may be made to the project.

7.2.7 How can we leverage existing tools developed for supporting Scrum to mitigate problems caused by cultural differences?

It has been suggested that distance collaborations employ guidelines from agile development methodology, such as daily status meetings, to mitigate the effect of incorrect assumptions caused by socio-cultural or work culture differences. The existence of a vast number of tools developed specifically to assist Scrum (e.g., [ 209 , 229 , 251 ]) presents an opportunity to investigate how these technologies can be adapted to mitigate collaboration issues arising from cultural differences.

7.2.8 How can we design communication technology to support building a sense of shared goals and expectations?

Variances between times with regards to goals, norms, incentives, and expectations can pose very serious problems for a collaboration [ 191 ]. Overcoming these differences by building a sense of universal goals and standards is a slow, but vital, process for distributed groups [ 53 ]. Furthermore, these types of misalignments are hard to recognize in distance collaborations and require substantial negotiation to overcome [ 191 ], which is nontrivial given the limitations of today’s technology

7.3 Recommendations for future research

Siebdrat et al found that perceived distance was more strongly affected by a team’s national heterogeneity than by their spatio-temporal distance, and subsequently asserted that perceived distance is more indicative of collaboration challenges than spatio-temporal distance [ 231 ]. However, other work has demonstrated that distance can affect collaborators that are all in the same country at a single site [ 4 ], with low national heterogeneity and low spatio-temporal distance. Despite this, it is unclear whether perceived distance was high or low in this case due to the context of the study. Given the apparent influence of distance on collaboration, whether it is perceived, temporal, or spatial, it is therefore important to gain a better understanding of the relationship between these types of distance and their effects on collaboration.

8 Implications for design

This section uses the findings of this LR to address the final question, Research Question 2: How can we design technology for supporting virtual teams? To do so, the following four design implications for the development of groupware that supports collaboration in virtual teams are outlined.

8.1 Assist creation of common ground and work standards

Virtual teams consisting of workers with different expertise and organizational backgrounds require conversations about project-specific technical language, methodologies, and best practices. Technology should expedite and document these conversations and decisions to both create and facilitate the everyday use of technical language. Furthermore, since systems often incorrectly assume a shared knowledge of information [ 1 ] as recommended by [ 192 ], systems should document in a manner that allows users to search for abstract representations of information. Moreover, since methodologies, best practices, and technical language tend to evolve over time, this technology needs to also support the resulting negotiation and discussion processes, as opposed to only facilitating the initial decision-making process.

8.2 Facilitate communication

Both rich discourse (i.e., containing social information and nonverbal cues as well as words, typically provided by face-to-face communication), and spontaneous, informal communication have been identified as key to preventing conflict and improving trust in virtual teams. Thus, it is imperative that technology is designed to provide the benefits of face-to-face conversations (e.g., video conferencing), such as ease in immediately detecting confusion. This is important not only for synchronous communication but also asynchronous conversations since those are the most likely to have misunderstandings that could be mitigated with additional non-verbal information. Mechanisms for supporting informal communication (e.g., chance encounters) is similarly necessary. In addition, given the difficulties experienced by virtual teams where workers are required to speak in a language that is not native to them, it is important to consider means for supporting synchronous communication across language barriers.

8.3 Provide mechanisms for work transparency

One of the key challenges faced by virtual teams is feeling a sense of connectedness to the rest of the team. This is both due to the motivational effects of not feeling isolated and the increased effort required to feel heard and acknowledged by the rest of the team located at another site. Thus, technology should be designed to provide transparency that allows workers to feel aware of their teammates, Furthermore, this technology should highlight and encourage the contributions of an individual and boost visibility within the team.

However, technology that promotes transparency, particularly technology that creates the sense of a shared workspace through open video connections, should be wary of infringing on the privacy of the team since the more information a person sends, the greater the impact on one’s privacy [ 119 ]. Furthermore, the more information a person receives, the greater the chance of disturbing work [ 119 ]. Thus, it is important to reach a good balance between providing awareness and preserving privacy and limiting distractions.

8.4 Design lightweight, familiar technology

Technical infrastructure varies across organizations—teams may not have the resources to support data-heavy communication tools, limiting their access to sophisticated collaboration technology (e.g., multiplane video conferencing). Furthermore, infrastructure may even vary within a virtual team, limiting tool use for the entire group since it is important that communication capabilities be evenly distributed [ 193 ]. Thus, care should be taken to engineer technology that is as lightweight as possible, maximizing the number of potential users. Virtual teams also face challenges related to the technical competence of their team members. It is therefore recommended that designers create technology with enough similarities to the technology currently employed by the team to facilitate adoption. New technology also needs to be compatible with existing tools, to promote adoption [ 194 ].

9 Conclusion

This literature review provided an overview of the collaboration challenges experienced by virtual teams as well as current mitigation strategies. This review utilized a well-planned search strategy to identify a total of 255 relevant studies, which chiefly concentrated on computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Using the selected studies, we described challenges as belonging to five categories: geographical distance, temporal distance, perceived distance, the configuration of dispersed teams, and diversity of workers. Findings also revealed opportunities for research and open questions. Finally, opportunities and implications for designing groupware that better support collaborative tasks in virtual teams was discussed through the description of four design implications: assist the creation of common ground and work standards; facilitate communication; provide mechanisms for work transparency; and design lightweight, familiar technology.

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Morrison-Smith, S., Ruiz, J. Challenges and barriers in virtual teams: a literature review. SN Appl. Sci. 2 , 1096 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-020-2801-5

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s42452-020-2801-5

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Checklist to open a shopify store [2024].

Table Of Contents

Are you prepared to launch a Shopify store in 2024? This checklist has you covered!  With an average of 2.1 million users active daily, it's clear that many entrepreneurs are finding success on this Shopify platform. 

Launching a new store is exciting—it's the first step in your business journey. But before you hit that go-live button, take a moment to ensure everything is working perfectly. Our Shopify launch checklist outlines critical steps , from adding a custom domain to configuring payment options, to help you launch smoothly and successfully. These steps will help increase your chances of a stress-free and successful store launch.

Before You Start

Before beginning to build your Shopify store, you must clarify your goals . Question yourself: Do you want to sell products online and in person? Are you interested in selling through social media channels like Facebook? Answering these questions will keep you focused and shorten the setup process. 

• Seek advice from experts related to your business, especially about taxes and law.
• If you already have an ecommerce website, consider transferring it to Shopify.
• Decide which sales channels you want to use.
• Learn about Shopify's point-of-sale hardware if you're going to sell in person.
• Consider which Shopify pricing plan will best meet your needs.

If you haven’t had a Shopify account yet, seize the opportunity to benefit from a special offer: only $1 for the first month for all plans to experience Shopify from A-Z.

1. Prepare a Coming Soon Page.

(Image Source: EComposer’s Template )

As you prepare to launch your new website, making a solid first impression is critical. Consider setting up a maintenance mode or a coming soon page to prevent visitors from encountering an unfinished site and getting the wrong idea. 

This signals that your site is in progress and will be ready soon. You can even gather email addresses from interested visitors to keep them updated on your launch and start building a customer base. Shopify users can also employ password protection to add security during this phase.

Explore more about How to Create a Shopify Coming Soon Page here.

2. Register a Website Name and Domain

Your website name and domain aren’t just the virtual addresses guiding customers and search engines to your online store; they’re vital to building brand recognition and awareness . A memorable website name helps keep your store at the forefront of customers' minds. But don't be too concerned about it. You may change your Shopify store name whenever you wish. Here's what to consider:

• Navigate Shopify dashboard > Settings
• Choose Store details then Edit name

• Brainstorm a memorable name: Keep it short, sweet, and easy to spell and pronounce.
• Target your audience: Incorporate relevant keywords that reflect your products or niche. This can boost your search engine ranking.
• Check availability: Utilize a domain name search tool (available from various domain registrars and Shopify) to determine whether your preferred name is available with familiar extensions such as ".com", ".net", or ".org".
• Consider brand extensions: Think beyond the standard options. Creative extensions like ".store" or ".co" can also work well.

Now that you’ve sorted the name, let's discuss the domain. You can buy a domain name right in Shopify, with prices starting at $14 per year, and cancel anytime if needed. Use Shopify’s domain generator tool to check availability. Additionally, Shopify allows users to change their domain name whenever necessary.

3. Customize the Design of Your Store

To run a successful Shopify store, it's essential to choose an attractive and functional theme . The theme is the foundation of your entire storefront, so take some time to explore the options and pick one that suits your needs.

With numerous free and paid themes in the Shopify theme store, finding the right one might seem overwhelming. Therefore, if you need a reliable and experienced Shopify theme provider, we suggest The4 Theme on Themeforest throughout this journey.

In addition, your Shopify store represents your eCommerce business, so take your time with a generic design. Instead, remember to also customize your store to reflect your unique brand and style. Take these into considerations: 

• Alter colors, fonts, and layouts with theme editor.
• Use professional product and lifestyle imagery to help clients visualize themselves using your items.
• Make sure your store is easy to navigate.
• Ensure that your business looks fantastic and runs properly on all screen sizes.

For a truly unique shopping experience, add a custom code to your store's theme. This can enhance your store's design and functionality, and an experienced Shopify developer or designer from The4 team can help you achieve this.

4. Add Products to Your Online Store

Adding products to your Shopify store is straightforward, and you have a few options. The easiest way is to add products manually , one by one. This method is excellent if you have a small number of products or want detailed control over the product information displayed in your store.

To add a product manually, go to your Shopify admin, click on Products, and then Add Product. You can enter your product's details , such as name, price, and description. You may also promote your items using photographs, videos, and other media. 

Using a CSV file is a good alternative if you have many products to add. This method is efficient for bulk uploads and saves time.

5. Organize Your Site Menus and Navigation

Your store’s navigation should make it easy for customers to find what they need quickly. When setting up your site menus, remember that simplicity is vital . Avoid overwhelming visitors with too many options.

Here are some tips for organizing your site menus and navigation :

• Group your products into collections.
• Use drop-down menus to keep everything tidy and organized.
• Add a search function to help visitors find exactly what they want.
• Use clear and concise labels for your menus and navigation items.

6. Create Stunning Standard Pages

Building trust in your store hinges on having essential pages that reassure customers of your business’s legitimacy. These pages provide crucial information about you, your policies, and how to get in touch. Customers expect these details, and they help build confidence in your brand.

Based on research, the most recommended pages to include in your online store’s sitemap are:

• Contact page
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
• Shipping and returns policy page
• Terms and conditions and privacy policy pages

Don’t forget other essential pages like collection and category pages, product pages , promotion landing pages , the checkout page, and the shopping cart . Every customer touchpoint deserves careful attention!

*Tips: If you are not an expert in technical stuff, EComposer—Top Drag & Drop Shopify Page Builder is tailored specially for you. No code knowledge is needed to build any pages on your store. 

Especially for new merchants just beginning to enter the online market, the app's vast library of templates helps you get started quickly or create custom pages, from captivating landing pages to appealing homepages to informative blogs .

The homepage is often the most crucial page on an eCommerce site. It’s usually where potential customers first land or navigate to next. Think of the homepage as the site of a "first date" with your customer—it’s your chance to make a great first impression and set the tone for your brand.

Your homepage should also serve as a gateway to the rest of your site. Ensure straightforward navigation to help users browse your store and include strong calls to action (CTAs). Prominently link to category pages, product pages, and promotions.

Examples from Houseplant and Bear Walker below show effective use of catchy visuals that reflect the brand’s vibe, clear CTAs, and easy navigation to other parts of the site.

Your About page is where potential customers go to learn more about your brand, mission, and the people behind your products. As a store owner, you can approach this page in several ways to appeal to visitors:

- Tell a story: Customers want to know that a business is stable and trustworthy. Use your About page to show that real people run your store. Share your story and introduce your team, processes, and local community.

- Connect on shared values: Many shoppers care about a business's mission and values. By sharing your brand’s purpose, principles, and reasons for being, you can attract customers who support similar causes.

Examples from Mailchimp and Ollie photos of the businesses assure that real people are behind these brands. They also effectively use storytelling to engage visitors.

• Contact Page

A contact page reassures customers that your store is genuine, offering them a way to reach out for help and confirming there are real people behind the brand . Include your phone number, email, and physical address (if applicable), along with details on how to contact you and expected response times.

(Image source: EComposer’s Template )

*Tips: Consider adding live chat or a chatbot, usually accessible via a small icon in the bottom right corner of every page. This provides a quick way for customers to reach you without navigating to the contact page.

• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page

Before launching your store, you might only predict some of the customers' questions. Your FAQ page will evolve based on customer interactions. To create an effective FAQ page, check competitors' websites to see the questions they answer or use an AI tool to generate FAQs. Common topics include shipping, return policies, sizing, warranties, and product care.

• Shipping and Returns Policy Page

(Image source: magnoliabakery.com)

This page is crucial for helping customers understand what to expect with shipping and returns. Clearly outline costs, fulfillment and delivery times, who handles duties and taxes, and the steps for processing a refund.

• Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy Pages

(Image source: Maguireshoes.com)

The terms and conditions and privacy policy pages provide essential legal information to protect your business and your customers' rights . They also set clear expectations for both parties.

Others also read

How to Create a High-Converting Shopify Product Page

How to Create One Page Checkout on Shopify

How to create a stunning Blog page in Shopify

7. Creating Essential Contents

Appealing content is the basis of any successful online shop. High-quality content would help customers feel your store more trustful, and ultimately drive sales. Here's what essential content you should create for your Shopify store:

• Marketing Page Content includes your homepage, About page, and landing pages, which introduce your brand to customers. They often use visuals like photos and videos to engage visitors.
• Product or Service Pages highlight what makes your offerings special, address customer questions, and encourage purchases with reviews and a clear call to action.
• Blog Posts offer informative articles that educate and entertain your audience, helping with SEO using relevant keywords.
• User-generated content , like reviews, builds trust by showing real people enjoying your products or services.
• Case Studies demonstrate real-world success stories, showing how your offerings solve specific client problems.
• Downloadable Content , such as ebooks or guides, offers valuable resources in exchange for contact information.
• Help Center Content answers common customer questions, reducing the need for support and improving customer satisfaction with clear instructions.

To excel in crafting your website content, always consider your target audience, develop a brand style guide, understand the editorial process, include engaging introductions and conclusions, and prioritize SEO.

8. Optimize Images Quality

Slow-loading images can significantly impact user experience and search engine performance, potentially leading to lower conversion rates. Ensure all images, including product and lifestyle photos, are optimized for the web to enhance load times and provide a smoother shopping experience.

Shopify handles the technical intricacies of image optimization, recognizing the importance of speed for online stores. Additionally, consider the following suggestions to enhance load speed and  optimize your photos for the web:

• Use descriptive file names containing relevant keywords to enhance SEO ranking.
• Optimize alt text for accessibility and SEO, incorporating descriptive keywords where appropriate.
• Reduce image size while maintaining quality, especially for homepage impact. Aim to minimize file size (in pixels) without compromising image quality.
• Save images as JPEG for photography and PNG for graphics and icons, ensuring optimal image format selection.
• Conduct A/B testing on images to determine effectiveness and suitability for different contexts, such as lifestyle images versus product-focused images.

*Tips: To improve your store's loading speed, utilize EComposer , the page builder app that automatically provides lazy load and compress image tools.

9. Add Analytic Tools and Tracking

Setting up analytics right from the start is essential. This data gives you valuable insights into your website visitors and customers. Analytics tools help you see how users move around your site, where they come from, and where they might face issues. With these insights, you can continuously improve your site as your business grows.

Shopify provides built-in analytics on its ecommerce platform, giving you access to data directly from your dashboard. You may also utilize Google Analytics and Google Search Console , as well as other choices suited to your specific needs. It's a good idea to start by tracking basic ecommerce metrics.

*Tips: Check out the EComposer 5 built-in analytic tools that work seamlessly with your store. Look into the analytics of each page to find customer behaviors.

10. Set Up Payment Methods

As an online store owner, it's vital to establish payment methods that prioritize convenience for your customers while ensuring security for your business. Shopify offers a variety of payment alternatives. 

You can choose between Shopify Payments or integrating a third-party payment gateway like PayPal. For newcomers, we suggest utilizing Shopify Payments because it is simple to set up and initiate payments seamlessly within Shopify.

To configure Shopify Payments, navigate to your Shopify admin and access Settings > Payments . Here, input your business details and select the credit cards you wish to accept.

Consider offering alternative online payment methods such as Meta Pay, Amazon Pay, or Apple Pay to streamline the checkout process and spare customers the hassle of entering card details.

Regardless of your preference, invest time setting up your payment methods correctly. A few extra minutes of effort now can prevent significant complications in the future.

11. Provide Your Billing Information

Remember to enter your billing information as your three-day free trial winds down.  This will allow you to handle orders in the future.

To add your billing details:

• Head to the Settings section on your Shopify Dashboard .
• From there, click on Billing and fill out your information in the Billing Address section.
• Once you've done this, hit Confirm to finish.

12. Set Up Your Shipping Rates and Taxes

Please double-check that your shipping rates align with the products and places you're selling them. Otherwise, you could eat into your profits by footing the bill for the difference between your listed shipping rates and the actual shipping expenses.

• Step 1: Navigate Shopify dashboard > Settings
• Step 2: Choose Shipping and delivery
• Step 3: Click General shipping rates to set up

Additionally, it's crucial to get your tax settings right. Depending on where your business and consumers are situated, you may need to charge sales tax and send it to the government when tax season rolls around. If you're selling in multiple regions, consider contacting an accountant for assistance in setting everything up correctly.

13. Secure Your Shopify Store

Before you launch your store, take a moment to activate two-factor authentication (2FA) on Shopify.

Two-factor authentication (known for multi-factor authentication or two-step verification) provides an additional layer of protection to your login process. In addition to your password, you'll need to provide another form of verification, like a one-time code from an authentication app or a security key.

14. Install Apps and Integrations

When browsing the Shopify App Store , remember to start small and focus on selecting only the crucial apps for running your business efficiently. You can always add more as your business grows.

For new ventures, it's best to begin with apps that support designing, marketing, customer service, and increasing sales. Also, consider apps that cater specifically to your industry. For instance, a boost sales app is one of the necessary tools that every store needs to improve the conversion rate.

Similarly, brands offering intricate products can enhance the customer experience and minimize returns by utilizing quiz apps to assist customers in making informed choices.

15. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

If you're looking to bring more people to your Shopify business without paying for ads, getting your website to show up higher in search results is crucial.

That's where Search Engine Optimization (SEO) comes in. It's about making tweaks to your website so it ranks better in search engines , which naturally brings in more visitors. 

For Shopify stores, there are some simple SEO techniques you can use to boost your website's ranking:

• Choose a memorable, unique name for your store that incorporates relevant keywords.
• Write compelling product descriptions that include important keywords.
• Use high-quality images and videos to spot your products.
• Don't forget to add SEO-friendly titles and descriptions to every product, collection, and page on your store.

16. Submit Your Sitemap to Search Engines

An important part of your Shopify launch is making sure your customers can find your site by submitting your sitemap to search engines.

Example of Apple HTML Sitemap

A sitemap is a file which identifies all of the pages on your website, and publishing it helps search engines keep up with your site.

Additionally, using Search Console gives you insights into the keywords people are using to find your site. With this information, you can tweak your site to ensure it shows up in search results for the right reasons.

17. Add Some Sales Channels for More Revenue Streams

These days, customers expect brands to be everywhere—online, in stores, and on social media. Many people now discover and buy products on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Surprisingly, in-store shopping is also making a big comeback, with half of Gen Z preferring it even though they grew up online.

To reach your customers effectively, choose the social media and marketplace channels that best suit your brand and integrate them with your Shopify store. Research where your customers spend their time and shop most often.

Here are some online sales channels you can add to your store:

• Instagram and Facebook
• Google Shopping
• Buy Button and Checkout links

These channels connect easily with Shopify, so you can keep track of orders, inventory, and customers all in one place.

18. Build a Pre Launch Marketing Plan

Launching your store is exciting, but it’s important to build some hype beforehand to attract visitors right from the start. Here’s how you can create a buzz before your store goes live:

• Spark Conversations: Get people excited by asking for their opinions and encouraging them to share your posts.
• Build Your Email List: Create a simple sign-up page to collect email addresses from interested visitors. Offer them something special, like discounts or early access to your products, to sweeten the deal. These email addresses will be like gold when it's time to send out launch announcements and exclusive offers.
• Team Up with Influencers: Partner with influencers who vibe with your brand's style. They can help create more words about your upcoming store and introduce you to a wider audience.
• Share Helpful Content: Start a blog or create content that speaks directly to your target audience and ties into your products. This not only helps improve your visibility online, but it also creates your brand image as a trusted expert in the market.
• Invest in Ads: Put some money behind targeted ads on social media or Google to connect with potential customers. Even a small budget can go a long run in getting your brand popular by the right people.

By creating excitement and gathering a list of interested customers before you launch, you’ll set your store up for a successful opening.

19. Test Your Shopify Store Before Launching

All your hard work will be wasted if your customers run into problems while trying to place orders. It could be anything—a coupon not working, shipping prices not updating, or a payment gateway being down.

These issues can cause customers to abandon their carts, leading to lost sales. So, it’s crucial to test your shopping cart and checkout process thoroughly before launching your Shopify store.

Try creating a dummy account and placing an order to make sure everything works smoothly. You can also ask friends or family to place orders and give you feedback.

20. Put Yourself in Customer’s Shoes

To really make your eCommerce store a hit, you need to see it from your customers' perspective . The best way to do this is to actually shop on your own site.

Think about what you'd want to buy and why. Notice any issues you run into while browsing, picking out products, and checking out. This will help you spot problems that your customers might face.

Look out for:

• How well your website performs (Is it slow or fast? Is it smooth?)
• How easy it is for customers to navigate
• How simple it is to place orders and check out

By shopping on your site like a customer, you can identify and fix any issues, making the shopping experience better for everyone.

Why an eCommerce Website Launch Checklist Matters

Leading up to your launch, there's a lot to juggle. But ensuring a seamless eCommerce experience is key to success. Here's why having a launch checklist is essential:

• Peace of mind: Checking off each item ensures you haven't missed anything, easing your worries.
• Smooth launch: A checklist helps streamline tasks, so you can focus on celebrating and connecting with customers on launch day.
• Customer happiness: Completing the checklist reduces the chances of disappointing customers, setting the stage for positive experiences.

Now that your checklist is complete, it's time to launch your eCommerce website. Stay open to feedback, tweak as needed, and keep striving for happy customers and increased sales.

Final Words

That's it for our Shopify store launch checklist!

Taking the time to complete a pre-launch checklist can save you from a whirlwind of last-minute stress and scrambling. These tasks are essential for a successful Shopify store launch.

By following this Shopify setup checklist, you can ensure that you've covered all the necessary bases and are well-prepared for a successful launch. If you ever find yourself stuck, our team of Shopify experts is just a message away.—just reach out and share your needs with us.

We hope our guide will be helpful and enjoyable. If you have any questions or suggestions during the preparation for launching or anything else, we would love to hear from you in the comments below!

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