The Challenges of International Projects
This is a guest post by Elizabeth Harrin.
The world of
business is continually shrinking: we work in an environment with real-time
audio visual communication with colleagues on the other side of the world and online
translation tools. Even small companies can operate internationally with
outsourcing agreements and partners overseas, which means that project managers
in organisations of any size face the challenges of managing international
projects.
And that means
far more than just calculating that when it’s 9am in ‘my’ London it’s 4am in
London, Ohio. International projects come with two main challenges: the people
you are working with won’t necessarily work in the same way as you, and the
people you are working for won’t necessarily want the same things.
Having an open
mind about these challenges is the first step in being able to address them on
an international project team. You need a pragmatic approach, especially as
national culture plays a big part in how we act, and we can’t change who we are
– we can just learn how to make those differences work for everyone concerned.
This can be
difficult for project managers to get their heads around. Once you are in the
position of managing an international project, you may well be one of the more
senior project managers in your team. You have gained that position through
hard work and successful project delivery. You expect your project team members
to behave in certain ways and people from different cultures won’t always
behave the way you expect. As you can imagine, that causes problems and
conflict on projects.
Making international working easier
Project
managers taking on international projects face a variety of practical
challenges. For example, time zones are important. How will you conduct
real-time team meetings? Who is going to be the person who gets up in the
middle of the night for a call with the Brazilian development team to go
through the testing results? In the absence of incentives for the project team,
the project manager will find it difficult to recruit volunteers.
Protecting the
interests of the UK-based team also falls to the project manager. A project
sponsor who doesn’t appreciate that you have just spent half the night on a web
conference with the manufacturing supplier in New Zealand won’t look favourably
on your request to send everyone home at 3pm. Project managers with
international components to their teams not only have to educate team members
in how to work well together, but also have to manage upwards and ensure that
senior stakeholders understand the constraints of this type of project. In
reality, international projects take longer and involve higher travel costs
than projects where the entire team is co-located – and that isn’t always a
welcome message to the executives.
Practical
suggestions aside, the easiest way I have found to work with international
teams is to build cultural understanding. As I found when living and working in
France, you can be linguistically literate without being culturally literate.
At a pub quiz I couldn’t answer the questions about children’s TV programmes or
what was found under the streets of Paris (I think, if I remember rightly, that
it was the river). But the pub quiz was in an Irish bar, and there weren’t many
of them around so that was a change of environment for many of my Parisian
colleagues.
Cultural
understanding relies on the emotional intelligence of the project manager, his
or her leadership skills, adaptability and ability to inform and train the
teams.
Using software to help international communication
Aside from
cultural understanding, your next challenge is communication. Successful
communication relies on the soft skills that a project manager brings to the
table. These are the ability to listen, hear the unspoken concerns and
messages, and respond clearly in a way that the other person can understand.
Being able to
put those soft communication skills into practice is something that can be
helped by technology. People need to be able to hear and speak to each other in
some format before the project manger’s emotional intelligence can be put to
good use. Technology can help with the challenges of international projects,
even if we have to accept its limitations with regards to the interpretation of
messages communicated using it.
There are lots
of technologies available to project managers with virtual teams, whether they
are based all over the world or in multiple offices in the same time zone.
Instant messaging gives project teams the ability to connect informally when
their status is shown as online. This can promote collaborative working as team
members can quickly and easily ask questions of their colleagues instead of
waiting for a scheduled formal meeting. In general, the more communication the
greater the bonds and understanding between team members, so provided this
facility is not abused, it can help improve working relationships. In practice,
it works best when all users are in similar time zones where the difference is
only a few hours.
The next step
up from one-to-one messaging is web conferencing, where multiple users join the
same online conference. Applications such as WebEx allow you to hold a virtual
meeting with the team. Web conferencing means you can make changes to documents
in real time or show product demonstrations to the rest of the team without
having everyone in the same room – lower travel costs and a reduction in time
spent out of the office even if you don’t have the international element to
contend with.
Instant messaging
and web conferencing allow synchronous communication, but asynchronous
communication is also useful for project managers with international teams. You
could opt for something as simple as a shared calendar, where team meetings and
project milestones are recorded for everyone to see. When you connect from a PC
configured to a different time zone, Outlook will automatically show the
meeting at the correct time where you are. However, I have been caught out by
the same feature in Google’s calendar, which didn’t seem to adjust for daylight
savings time for some reason – and I missed my conference call.
Whatever
software you choose to use to manage your project, you will quickly realise its
limitations. A good project manager knows when to use the tools, and when to
set the tools aside and lead with understanding and instinct.
Spending some
time with your team members overseas is the best way to understand how they
work, but desk research before you go (or if budget constraints mean you can’t
go) will be beneficial. You will find out a great deal about how team members
will most likely react in the project environment if you see them react, but
that of course relies on you having the time to do that period of ‘getting to
know you’.
Even if you
don’t have lots of time, be curious in the time you do have. Many people love
talking about how their countries work and a short discussion early on in your
project can make a big difference. This knowledge provides you with a framework
to manage the differences that will occur and also the confidence that you can
develop an appropriate way of working together. In a shrinking world, projects
are expanding, and the keys to success in international projects are shrewd use
of the available technologies and excellent cultural awareness.
This article has been adapted from material published
on A Girl’s Guide To Project Management and is reprinted with permission.
(Pic Courtesy: Google images)
Friday- Top 3
Here are 3 articles that are sure to make you a better professional:
- Why networking is of importance
- 23 daily habits that will make you smarter
- How you can become so good that you can’t be ignored
What inspires you and keeps you going?
Introducing Project Rio
Will Power and free resources for wannabe Project Managers
You never know where inspiration comes from
.
I have been doing random stuff to keep myself going and one
of it has been watching youtube videos. I recently watched a TED talk by Kelly
Mcgonigal and that led to watching more talks by her. This one is my favorite.
It talk about Will power and what we can do to attain it and
how smaller interventions actually change the way we think.
I also read up her “how I work” series in LIfehacker as it seems very natural to see how she does it in real life. I hope this video gives you the will power you need to pick
up or face a storm in your own work space or life .
Guilty as charged
I multitask and can do it well. Really well.
I put hours at work, I blog, I write, meet lovely friends,
keep in touch with everybody and barely give anyone the chance to complaint.
The last few months, I have stopped multitasking. Not really
deliberately, it just happened. Work was crazy and by the time I was home I didn't
feel like doing hundred more things. I wanted time for myself, sometimes doing nothing.
And I felt guilty, especially about not being able to meet
friends or writing my blog like I used to do. I wanted to be away from my
laptop. I even stopped browsing. I stepped away.
I probably haven been writing but every day I am full of guilt
that I haven’t been doing what I should have. I see other bloggers or
professionals who are doing well, so inspired, so full of energy and I still don’t
feel like writing.
It could be writers block, it could be doing the same thing
for so many years now or it can be just wanting some time for myself.
Today, I browsed through some articles and wanted to know if
there are more people like me who feel the same. Or am I just losing my fire?
I read about mothers feeling guilt , about difference in the way men and women approach work and multitude of other stuff.
Bottom-line, yes we should be responsible in what we do but
I just feel sometimes it’s okay to do random stuff out of the daily routine. It’s
okay to want some time for yourself to get recharged and then be back or choose
not to be. Enough of guilt!
So yes I have been spending some time doing nothing except regular
work. And to my all my readers if you have expected articles and seen the same
one and no new updates over and over again- I was busy in my balcony looking at
the mango tree and sky and birds. I was spending more time with myself than
with anything else, definitely not my laptop.
Have you been through same situations may be in different
context?
I am hoping I will be writing very soon, but bear with me if
it takes time- blogging is tough. Meanwhile
enjoy your schedule and what you are happy doing and if you are not- take a
break minus the guilt. It will certainly
help!
(Pic Courtesy: Soma)
Scrum Team has stabilized- what next?
Most transformations start with the basic idea of either getting teams to start working in Agile or streamlining their existence process.
At a certain point, teams stabilize, velocity improves, quality soars and things look up.
Is the goal to repeat the same cycle day after day or is there more to work through once the team stabilizes? I have always though that the trying to get teams working in Agile is more like a bicycle- if you stop pedaling, it stops.
Here are 5 things to consider as next steps to keep the team going:
- Baseline velocity- Always know your baseline velocity, when you started and ways you can work on it.
- Focus factor- when the team stabilizes, it’s a good idea to know if the team has the right focus. Its velocity/work capacity. For more info read Jeff Sutherlands article here .
- Failure trends and patterns- The commitment made by the team always doesn't match the outcome. Looking into why stories fail and trying to identify a pattern might lead the team to understand the underlying problem. It could be user stories that require infrastructure, it can be kind of stories that haven’t been worked on, it can be a story requiring a new technology. Once you have identified the pattern, it becomes quite easy to find a resolution.
- Estimations- If in every sprint more than 20 percent of stories remain not done, along with other factors you might want to have a look at the way estimation is being done by the team. Some teams commit more by underestimating stories in trying to please the management and keeping to the team’s velocity. Of course by the end of the sprint teams fail to deliver. There are more managers and Product Owners who always push the team to commit more, so they have enough work on hand ever sprint fearing lesser work meaning team members might be free most of the time. Bottom-line, under estimating doesn’t help as much as over estimating doesn't.
- Linking and tracking the layers- Stop looking only at team levels and start looking at the bigger picture, look into the your program and portfolio management and how it is coming down to the team. Look into the quality of the user stories and how everything is affecting the team.
To learn about how to get into project management read my book Stepping into Project Management (Welcome to the #PMOT World). To connect with experienced Project Manager's from all over the world, get mentored or shadow for a day see the SIPM Community.
Interview with Siddharta Govindaraj
Today
we interview Siddhartha Govindraj, who specializes in Lean/Agile processes for software
development. He has also contributed in the book "Beyond Agile: Tales
of Continuous Improvement" published by Modus Cooperandi Press, Feb 2013
and Published in the March
2011 issue of the Cutter IT Journal on "Use of Kanban in Distributed
Offshore Environments". An occasional organizer of events as a part of
Chennai Agile User Group and speaks in conferences in India and abroad.
He was nominated for the Brickell Key award in 2011, an award
given by the Lean Software & Systems Consortium for recognizing
achievements in the lean-agile industry and is also a Fellow of the Lean
Systems Society.
He is very interested in the behavior of decentralized and distributed systems.
He is very interested in the behavior of decentralized and distributed systems.
Agile
becoming mainstream now, how do you think the world of project management has
changed?
In one way, yes….. definitely
more and more organizations are seeing the value of agile in terms of
incremental development and faster time to market. However, there are a few
aspects where agile is still to make a significant mark. First, the people
aspect of agile has still not fully permeated into the culture of many organizations.
The idea that motivated, self-organized teams can deliver better software is
not yet in the mainstream. I also think that many companies need to invest in
the technical environment. The third aspect that companies often neglect is
looking at delivery as an end to end system in the organization. Agile is often
applied at the team level, and systemic impediments are not fixed. So there is
still a long way to go.
While older companies
have a tough time with transformation, the good news is that newer companies
like Facebook have been agile right from the start. Over the next decade,
success of these newer companies will establish the culture for the whole
industry.
As
someone who creates tools for Agile and Lean project environments, please tell
us what according to you is the most important: the tool or the expertise of
the project manager?
Of course the
expertise of the people in the project is the primary criteria for success.
Where tools will help is in aiding decision making so that people (both within
the team, and management) have better insights to take better decisions.
This questions also
leads to an interesting difference between agile project management tools and
traditional project management tools. In agile, a lot of decisions are taken by
the self-organized teams. Hence the tools need to be able to support the needs
of the team. If the team decides that the tool is an overhead or is not adding
value to them, then it becomes worthless. By contrast, the primary need of
traditional tools is targeted towards managers, who are the decision makers to
micromanage the team.
A big problem is when
an agile tool is used in a traditional way – i.e. the team does not feel the value,
but is forced to use it so that the managers can micromanage them. My personal
opinion is that tools that encourage this behavior rarely lead to truly agile
culture.
Tell
us why you decided to create your software and did you use agile way of managing
it while n development?
The previous answer
has some insight into why we launched our tool. We saw that many organizations
implemented tools which support agile mechanics, but not the agile mindset.
Such tools get deployed, teams hate to use them but are forced to do so because
the management doesn't trust the team and wants to control exactly what is
going on in the team. Well, guess what? The team only updates the tool rarely
and the data is unreliable so it helps nobody. This does not help build an
agile culture.
What we wanted to do
was to build a tool that a team will find easy to use and useful for their own
self organization. Basically, we took traditional, proven methods that teams
use in a physical space -- card walls, task boards, story maps and so on, and
made them available in an electronic format. This gives the benefit of
electronic tools, while still being in a format that teams find useful for
themselves.
What
according to you are the 3 qualities that every Agile Project Manager should
have?
First, curiosity to
keep learning. Secondly, soft skills to connect with people (within the team
and outside) and build relationships. Finally, the ability to influence people
and drive change and improvement.
I haven't said
anything about knowledge of agile. This is easy to learn, and anyone can learn
what a product backlog is and how a particular process works. But the qualities
above are difficult to train, and very crucial for agile success.
If
someone new, stepping into Agile Project Management asked you about the 3 books
to read, what would you recommend?
My favourite three
books are:
1. Agile Software
Development -- Alistair Cockburn (Quick note: This book isn’t about agile, but
methodologies in general. It’s a great background about how and why agile
works, but perhaps not what you are looking for if you want to know specific
mechanics like how to story point a story)
2. The principles of
product development flow -- Donald Reinertsen
3. Kanban -- David
Anderson
Where
can someone find the link to your software and your books?
My site is at http://toolsforagile.com.
I blog at http://toolsforagile.com/blog/ ,
I've also been a
contributor to this book - http://amzn.to/beyond_agile
Thank you very much
for your time.
Does Agile mean NO Managers?
In trying to move in the right direction Agile-wise too
soon, there are organizations who will consider removing managers or team leads
completely from the equation.
However, removing the title doesn't mean, the role or the
job has been removed and these management positions are simply disguised via
different names. There are scrum masters sometimes who are actually functional
managers for the team.
I think the reason these roles overlap is because sometimes
organizations don’t realizes the role of a scum master.
A scrum master is the facilitator for the team and does not
make decisions for the team. I think this is the trickiest factor that no
management realizes. Scrum master isn’t the decision maker or someone who will
appoint stories or tasks to the team. So a manager cannot disguise himself into
this role.
So, one way to resolve this problem is to never merge both
of these roles. Scrum master and the functional manager shouldn't be the same
person. Even by overlapping roles for one team, you send out the wrong message
to the other teams.
The managers can happily co-exist with the agile teams and
they can be great blocker resolvers. They should be the one helping teams
deliver more by removing all impediments, looking into the patterns and trend
of all teams and see what can be done to minimize the recurring causes of the
issues.
If management interferes and spoon feeds teams in every
chance they get, teams never come close enough to becoming self-organizing
teams and making their own decisions. Management can choose to either make
teams adopt Agile better or make decisions that messes it u for the organization.
(pic courtesy: google images)