Issues


Issue: Individuals In A Country Are Pulled Away From Work On The Project Due To Local Needs

Many projects are initiated without sufficient communications with the locations that will undertake the work. The work then begins. People are assigned to the project by local management. Then they are pulled off of the project due to emergencies or other high-priority local work.

Impact

The effect of this is that the project suffers from the lack of team members. However, there are other potential impacts. First, the project leader may not be informed that a person has been pulled off. Maybe, it was felt to be temporary. The project leader was not on top of what the team members were working on. Second, the effect can cascade if people in different locations are removed from the project.

Prevention

Local management may not have been aware of the importance of the project. Certainly, it is often the case that local middle management may not know about the project. If they do, it might seem remote. If you are going to mount an international project, you must visit each location to determine local issues and conditions prior to the project. Then you will need to establish communications to get an early warning of a problem.

Action

If this occurs, then you can be assured that it will happen again. Action should be taken in terms of establishing communications with all locations. There should be a weekly review of resources allocated to the project. Local management need to be encouraged to present potential staffing demands.

Issue: There Are Different Languages Employed Among Team Members. There Is No Provision For Interpreters

In one of most complex projects we have seen, there were four countries involved with five different languages. Almost all team members only spoke one language. Progress reports on the project were submitted in the native language. While interpreters were available to handle documents, translation took much time. A number of problems became much more pressing due to this time delay. This problem may arise because management lacks experience with a multilingual project. This problem extends to situations where people speak different dialects or forms of the same language.

Impact

There are delays in getting things done. Misunderstandings arise due to language interpretation. This is important in project management because projects are managed through communications. Nuances are important. Significance of topics and issues depend on tone of voice and words chosen. There are likely to be project delays and substantial rework.

Prevention

One thing to do is to not undertake multilingual projects unless managers are willing to provide additional support. If such a project is to be undertaken, then an organized approach must be taken for communications. Common words and phrases must be given. You must establish symbols. For example, project issues can be green, yellow, or red. This alerts everyone to problems regardless of language.

Action

When language problems crop up, there may be a tendency to overreact and apply too many resources to the problem. This can further slow the project down. Instead, you must endeavor to organize the communications more formally so that problems can be identified. Concentrate on issues and status reports. Then you can move on to milestones and end products.

Issue: People In Some Locations Lack Experience And Knowledge About Methods And Tools

Often, because people were trained in the same methods and tools, it is assumed that they have a certain common level of knowledge and capability. This is often not the case. The training could have been provided at different times. Perhaps, the training was not put to use so that the people lost knowledge and have no experience.

Impact

As was said repeatedly in this book, a basic problem in international projects is that people make too many assumptions. Management may assume that people have expertise. The local manager may not know what the methods or tools are and want to seem on board. The impact is that there is a lack of progress and a substantial amount of rework. If one location fails to do its part, then other locations may have to step in. Another negative impact is cultural. You can make people feel depressed and down on the project if their lack of knowledge is perceived to be a weakness.

Prevention

Before starting a project, it is important to identify the methods and tools to be employed in the project at all locations. Then you can move down to each location to determine their skills and experience. Gaps in experience may have to be addressed through consultants or employees from other locations.

Action

If the problem arises, you want to step in and conduct an assessment of methods and tools. You may want to simplify and substitute various methods and tools.

Issue: Communications Across The Locations Are Poor

Most of the time people work alone or with people in their own offices. They communicate very little with other locations. The exception here is upper management and some staff positions. So people are not used to communicating with others in different locations. They may never have met or seen these people before—making communications more difficult in many cultures.

Impact

The effect of poor communications is that issues may be left untreated. Problems may occur in one place that are not communicated to others due to pride, concerns about communicating, and other factors. Project issues grow—affecting the schedule and budget of the project.

Prevention

Preventing communications issues is key to successful project management. As the project begins, there must be an effect to establish good communications prior to problems and issues. We have employed simulations of situations and problems to build teamwork across countries. Another important step is to form teams across locations from the start.

Action

In many cases, managers attempt to search for the cause of the poor communications. This is logical, but it takes time away from the project. It is better to work to improve communications by establishing more joint work across locations. In addition, visits among locations should be encouraged.

Issue: Technology Employed In Different Locations Is Not Compatible

People in one location take their technology for granted. Because they are unfamiliar with the systems and technology in other regions, they assume it must be same. After all, everyone has computers and cellular telephones, don’t they? This feeling is sometimes spawned by vendors who tell customers that their technology is in wider use than it really is.

Impact

With different technology, the project scope tends to grow. There must be either an effort to establish interfaces or work to implement the same technology in each location. In one example, there were different and incompatible e-mail systems. Messages were lost before people became aware of the problem. Another impact is that the project must now change the infrastructure or at least address infrastructure issues that were not envisioned when the schedule and budget were established.

Prevention

A technology assessment must be undertaken at the start of the project prior to setting the budget and schedule. Interface issues should be identified and addressed.

Action

If this problem surfaces, it may be necessary to scale back the technology in use. In one case, most locations used Lotus Notes. However, because some locations did not have this software, it was decided to resort to e-mail and to database management systems. Simplification of the technology is often an essential part of the early work on a project.

Issue: The Project Leaders Do Not Have Prior Experience In International Projects

Project leaders may have been chosen because of their knowledge of the business and of prior project success in one country. These do little to prepare people for dealing with multiple languages and cultures—and different locations.

Impact

Project leaders when thrust into the world of international projects may perform well and rise to the challenge. Or they may fail. In either case, management cannot afford to take the chance. The project leaders may provide a false sense of security and progress about the project. They may hear what they want to hear and then pass it along to upper management. Project issues may worsen. Progress is much less than what is reported. The project loses its credibility.

Prevention

Prevention begins with selecting project leaders more carefully. You can select people with prior international project experience. You can look for individuals who have worked in different countries and speak other languages. In addition, attention must be given to the organization of the project. As was stated in earlier chapters, you should consider having a project leader in each location. Another step is to have the project leaders on the road most of the time in different locations.

Action

One way to address the problem is to substitute project leaders. However, this can slow the project down. Confidence in the project may decline. Instead, you should establish a steering committee for the project and use project leaders in multiple locations. The problem, after all, may not lie with the project leader, but with how the project is organized.

Issue: Project Team Members Lack Experience And Knowledge About Conditions In Other Countries

Going beyond the project leaders, problems arise among team members. You can have critical team members in one country who have traveled very little and are unaware of the cultures in other places. They may have been chosen for the team based on their technical or business knowledge. It is too bad that cultural and societal experience turned out to be more important.

Impact

Some team members in projects we have participated in have acted arrogantly and assumed that staff in other locations were dedicated to the project and to them full time. This causes much ill will and antagonism toward the project. The situation often deteriorates rapidly before the project leaders and management are aware of the problem. It surfaces often when the line manager in a location brings the problem up with his counterparts in other locations. People do not respond to the team members. Or they mislead them with optimistic reports.

Prevention

Selection of team members in international projects is a critical success factor in international project management. For international projects, team members must be informed of cultural and other factors in each location. They should be presented with a variety of issues and situations and tested through simulation. From our experience, the result often is to search for new team members.

Action

One action is to replace the team member. However, this can leave a gaping hole in the project. Another, better course of action is to identify other team members or new team members and assign them to joint tasks with the individual who has created the problem. It is not feasible to have the project leader act as a liaison for each and every communication with other locations.

Issue: It Is Difficult To Determine Status Of The Work In Various Locations

We encountered one project leader in Singapore who was leading a project involving three countries. She received complete and accurate information from two of the locations and assumed that this was true overall. It was not. Team members would reassure her when she visited them. Then there were no results. She did not know what to do. We suggested that she visit their location without prior notification. This changed the attitude of the team members. She had found that they would hold a meeting prior to her visits generally. The project was turned around.

Impact

When you report on status, it is in the context in terms of culture and language. The impact of not getting proper status means that the project leader and managers are left in the dark. They begin to lack confidence in the project leadership. The project could be terminated or shortened.

Prevention

To prevent this problem, you must address how status will be reported. But this is not enough. You also have to examine how status is verified and checked out. It is clearly insufficient just to get information. Prevention must focus on milestones and end products. If there is not a regular stream of milestones, then the project status is more difficult to determine since you are forced back to consider work in progress.

Action

There are a variety of actions that you can take if status reports are not adequate. One is to provide a template or outline structure for status reports. A second action is to ensure that there are sufficient regular milestones. A third step is to have more reporting on issues. Finally, there is nothing like informal unplanned telephone calls and visits.

Issue: There Is Too Much Attention On Project Details That Many Issues Are Not Identified

When an international project gets going, the tasks tend to take over the attention. There is much detailed work to do. Therefore, it is not surprising that with tight deadlines and management pressure, there is little time to consider the big picture and wider issues. This was certainly the case of two firms. One was a drug store chain. The other was an automobile manufacturer. In each case, they rebranded their store name and a model of a car, respectively. Everything was planned out. But no one looked at what the new names meant in one of the local languages. In both cases the names were derogatory. Customers who spoke this language did not patronize the store chain or buy the product.

Impact

Issues left untreated are one of the major causes of project failure. As the team becomes buried in the work, it becomes harder and harder for them to deal with the big picture.

Prevention

At all times the project leader should keep lists and information on larger issues as well as small issues within the team. Team members need to get out to where the project results will be felt. The team overall needs to kept in touch with reality. This can have the benefit of raising the level of awareness of the importance of the project.

Action

If you find that important issues are not being addressed, then you know that the problem is present. The first step is to carry out a project review where you undertake to assess what issues are present and their status. You also should pause the project and have the team consider the larger picture.




International Project Management
International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments
ISBN: 0470578823
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 154

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