Critical Success Factors For International Projects

Collaborative effort. If there is one thing that is true of international projects, it is that you have to have widespread involvement and participation in the project. If you involve only a few people, then the others who are not participating may end up resisting the project results. Moreover, experience reveals that involvement leads to commitment and dedication—key factors for success.

Gather lessons learned as you go. Traditionally, people gather lessons learned at the end of a project. It is too late for international projects. The people are gone—to other work. They have no interest. Therefore, you must work to gather experience as you go.

Cultural sensitivity and awareness throughout the project. It is impossible to know and be aware of all of the cultural factors and their impacts at the start of the project. So you will have to have a great deal of sensitivity toward culture so that you can pick up on new factors and take them into account.

Proactive resource allocation. Recurring problems in international projects are the conflict between people’s regular work and the project work. To be successful, you must have a proactive approach to allocate human resources so that work on the project goes on.

Project organization and manager and team member selection. How you structure the project and the people that are selected have always been important in all projects. It is no more true than in international projects. Structure includes how you divide up the project and how you deal with issues.