BENEFITS AND DRAWBACKS

Setting up a virtual organisation brings a number of benefits to Reuters. The ability to draw in people from dispersed companies, cultures and countries is one such important benefit. Bring them in instantly, use them directly to tackle the problem, and move on. The virtual organisation acts as a 'just-in-time' skills pool, which shrinks and grows, and can even change its skill sets, to match the workload and requirements. "We need to break down functional barriers, and mix disciplines. We need to cross geographical barriers to communicate and promote usability across all Reuters operations world-wide", side Garrison.

As the consultancy based operations were broken down and changed to project based teams, all the team members play a number of different roles on different projects. For example, Ian, Joanne, and Carolyn work on both Customer-Centred Design Process and User Interface Desing Manual Projects at the same time. "I don't want to replicate skills in different projects", said Garrison, "I need to mix and match the best people that I want."

Besides, through the virtual team members, resources can be shared. For example, through Microsoft's United States product-research laboratories, customer performance support team members from Microsoft provided a software tool not released to the market yet.

For the virtual team members, skills and knowledge can be learned and shared with others from different companies in the world, "Every consultancy can work on their strengths, and their weaknesses can be picked by someone else strong in that area." said Wendy Aldred, usability expert in Admiral.

However, "the virtual team does not come cheap", said Garrison. Reuters paid about 8-15% more for Usability Group's staff costs in general. Also, due to the fact that different people come from different working environments and need to work together in the virtual space, cultural barrier is the first thing that Reuters had to face. As Carolyn O'Flaerty from Logical explained, "It's very important that members of the virtual team are in the office for a certain amount of time because you develop realtionships with them that helps to establish good working relationships". Secondly, tight monitoring of the team performance is important to the success of the virtual concept as team members are separeted geographically.

This example illustrates the evolution of a virtual team and the impact it has made on the organisational design in Reuters' Usability Group. Every employee is actually a member of the virtual team. They work as peers instead of in a hierarchical structure. A person can be a team leader in one project and a team member in another project at the same time.

ATTRIBUTES OF THE VIRTUAL ORGANISATION

It has been the largest downsizing (cutting cost and reducing staff) that Reuters has had in the corporation within the pst 10 years. Instead of 24 experts, Greg Garrison only started off with 2 people for the usability project. However, he was given a sufficient budget to make this project a successful one.

After an initial evaluation, Greg Garrison was convinced that no single consultancy in the UK could provide all the experts that he needed. In response he 'invented' a virtual organisation, cherry-picking the top talent from companies around the world. It is 'virtual' in the sense that most of the team members are not Reuters' employees. They are experts from a number of organisations such as Logica Uk Ltd, Microsoft Corporation, Admiral Computing Ltd, PA Consulting Group, and the University of Loughborough, working together on the usability project without relocating. This is evidence of an alliance.

The evolution of the virtual team was rapid, the team started with 6 experts in January 1993 and the number of experts has been changing since. The virtual team had a maximum of 83 members at one point of time, yet dropped down to 53 after a few weeks. "This is the beauty of the virtual team", as Garrison explained, "I need an organisation which would be a constantly evolving and changing team of experts - some of whom could be from other companies, some of whom would be independent - but most of whom would not be permanent Reuters staff. I want to employ them very flexibly on a project-by-project basis as and when I need them." Currently, the virtual team has 43 members consisting of a core of between 12 and 24 who work on-site at the Reuters' office in London. Some individuals contribute from other United Kingdom locations and consultants based in the United States and Europe participate in the team remotely using computer-based conferencing and video conferencing. Underlying ICT clearly facilitates this work.

Anoter business reason for Garrison to adopt a virtual organisation was so that the development team could work closely with customers. Without the need for relocation the team members can work closely with customers regardless of their geographical locations. Customers from different locations can join-in the desing phase and participate in the usability testing in Usability Laboratories located in New York, Tokyo, Singapore, Cyprus,Geneva and London. This demonstrates the presence of vertical integration and the importance of globalisation. The direct interaction with development teams takes place frequently via video conferencing. The idea of building the customers into the desing process at multiple stages enables detailed feedback to designers and product developers and improvements in desing and service provision. This demonstrates a high degree of collaboration. As Garrison said "there is something psychological about a developer sitting in a cubical watching a customer in a different country using their product. When they see it in 'real time' they are less biased".