How to manage a virtual group in a company? [closed]

Question

I have worked as a software engineer for more than 6 years. Recently, my boss has asked me to build and manage a virtual team. While I'm glad I can do some management work, I don't think it will be easy to do the management.

My team members are only part-time on this project, they come from several teams, and their direct manager is not me. They want to be given technical work but my boss wants us to organize some activities.

I'm trying to work out how to balance these two conflicting requirements.

Overall, my team manages several parts of an internal BBS which features topics about innovation. Unfortunately, the BBS is not very popular and few colleagues want to spend more than a second on it. They say that they are too busy, but more likely it is an excuse, probably because the BBS is not user-friendly. I don't know why BBS is so important.

However, my boss likes the BBS and want my team to make it better. Personally, I don't know why this BBS is so important.

Overall, I need some guidance about how to approach this.

Answer 1

I don't know why BBS is so important.

Big red flag! If you don't see the point of using a tool, particularly one for bringing together technical experts, then you will almost certainly not be able to convince others to use it. Group-building is about communication, and nothing kills group action faster than the perception that the effort is useless to begin with. To have a chance, you must start out with a vision, a cost-benefit analysis, or something that will make others think "This might be useful to me". If you don't have one, and your managers can't provide one, realistically you can only expect to fail and try to blame the non-invovement on others. Not a nice outlook.