A new project is beginning that takes students at Texas A&M, Germany, UT Dallas, and San Antonio, and gives them a single goal to complete over the course of a few years. The hope is to find new ways to deal with distributed workforces and find new ways to use collaborative technology to make it more efficient.
In the first year of the study, students will be assigned a task and a goal, with the work separated into components.
“For example, the group at Texas A&M might do the modeling, a group at UT-Dallas the animation and the group in Germany the final lighting and rendering,” says McLaughlin.
In the study’s second year, McLaughlin notes that students at each location will collaboratively tackle one task at a time, such as modeling, then animation and then rendering, while interacting asynchronously via e-mail and file exchanges.
“In year three we’ll use the same team structure, but we’ll change the way they connect with one another,” he continues. “We’ll use technology to create synchronous immersive connections whenever possible.”
The distributed model they are using is modeled after the current state of the Visual Effects industry, where studios in California, India, and Europe typically collaborate on a single film.
via Study Measures Technology’s Impact On Creativity In Long-Distance Collaborations.
Now a days this problem of diverse long distance workforce is increasing because of evolution of outsourcing concept.. so i fully agree with your thoughs about long distance workforce and its management needs.