Global eCollaboration Competition (GeCCo) event organized by IPMA Young Crew enables young project management professionals to get competences and skills that will help them in their future career to work in virtual international teams.

Virtual project teams are usual part of project management in economy nowadays. Striving for lower costs and performance optimisation drive companies beyond the border or beyond their continent enabling global benefits. Virtual project teams are very well defined by Powell, Piccoli and Ives in their literature “as groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.”

On this collaboration many factors influence the output of the work and different challenges are found on that way. Project management literature and many experiments are covering this topic providing guidelines and real situation examples but for young project managers, with lack of experience it is hard to follow. Young PM professionals will work on virtual projects through their career so virtual international environment is something they will meet in their professional life. In this different environment it is hard to learn unless they are given the opportunity to practice. This is the reason why Global eCollaboration Competition (GeCCo) should be important part of experience for any young PM Professional. For 4th year in a row, Young Crew is organizing GeCCo event – the event whose goal is to bring together all YCs, enhance the cooperation between them and to spread awareness of the importance and benefits of virtual teams.

The concept of GeCCo is to connect participants in multinational teams in virtual environment to work on project management case study for 24 hours. During the competition, not everything is about work, it is also about getting to know each other, share knowledge and experience with team mates, and get insights from professional keynote speakers and GeCCo organizers. This year the event enables even more learning by introducing GeCCo Academy that will take place every 2nd week starting from 14th September. Here you can check out Case studies.

This year GeCCo will be held on 7th and 8th November and for participating 16 national Young Crews have applied. Now is the time for young project managers to embrace the opportunity that they have and apply for individual participation at their Local Organizers. All information about application and GeCCo are avilable on the official web site. In order to develop PM skills, the best performing team assessed by the Jury Committee will have a chance to take IPMA Level D certification that would built their competences and provide global recognition of them.

It is important to be aware that today the road to virtual project success is a trip around the world and GeCCo is the best starting point.

By Vlatka Večerin,

Marketing  Manager of GeCCo 2015