Virtual team member

This post has reference to an Email from a reader of my blog who wishes to become a virtual team member. "Renuka Prasad" is an experienced .net developer and wishes to be a Virtual team member. Her husband is transferred to locations where she cannot find suitable positions, hence she is happy to work from home and utilize her skills instead.
Renuka wrote to me looking for specific answers.  Her Email excerpt follows:

"I went through your blogs. "Virtual Organizations" is a stimulating thought. This may be the IN thing for SME in the future. In my observation a small hiccup can be to bring the team in concurrence with the standard processes and procedures because of the diversity of the group.

I am yet to get a clear hang of how it works.

What I understood is that we will be having a MS App-V Client installed on to our local systems and we will be connecting to the App-V Server which has applications installed. When requested the client gets package with complete set of  required dll's which is them unpacked and  used by the client.

My doubts are

• Can we get large applications by virtual streaming from the APP-V Server to the client. even Databases.
• Can all types of files be used for virtualization."

Renuka , I am going to take your concerns regarding App-v first.

Dll's are very technical stuffs and may certainly reside inside the application cache but they are not much of a concern for App-V user. App-V can cache, part or full of the application.  What is fascinating  here with App-V is that admin can even upgrade client application without your knowledge. Please take look at these videos in Youtube for getting started

To answer your specific questions

a)Yes, but it is not actually streaming to your system. Streaming is done with RDP or VPN. App-V  caches to your local system and only connects as per the App-V client settings. Supposing you have Visual Studio 2008 in your App-V client, then you can run VS 2008 just like you do from your desktop start menu. In fact, you wont even be able to make out the speed difference.

b)It is not exactly a file concept when it comes to App-V and it is the application cache that works.
 

 Take a look at how App-V architecture works from the above diagram .

Now to the second concern on how process and procedures may affect the virtual team's performance.

Agile project management is a good solution to this. It is a very innovative process that is task oriented than process oriented. You can find principles of Agile management in my website as well.
If an entire project is assigned to an external contractor and he is going to work solely on it .. is called outsourcing.
If we split up the tasks and work as a dispersed team, it can be called virtual team. Hence we make use of the team structure, management and tools for Agile project management. This will reduce the process overloads and maintain quality in  a Virtual Team .

Renuka , I wish you all the best and happy "Virtual Teaming".

Please continue sending me responses and comments. Kindly also subscribe to my feeds(if you use a feed reader).