Approach

Measure The Current Situation

When someone proposes to do something, you want to avoid rushing out and taking action until you know what is going on. You want to observe and measure what is going on before the project gets underway. This is useful for several political reasons.

You understand the current situation or process better so that you can define the project with greater clarity.
You can help people to understand the problems and limitations with the current situation. You must assume that most people have no desire for change or the new project. They have functioned just fine without it for many years. A fundamental tenet of alcohol and drug rehabilitation is that the person must be aware of and admit that they have a problem before they can be cured. It is the same with the project.
You can validate that the project is, in fact, needed.

How do you do this? By observation. Now we realize that each international project is unique in detail and that there is a wide range of potential projects. However, it is also true that many projects relate to business processes. In order to provide an example, business processes will be considered here. You observe the business process and note problems that arise in doing the work. You seek to have the employees identify problems and issues with their current work. If you were looking at marketing a new product, you would be looking at the marketing process that is followed currently.

What information do you collect? How do you structure the information? An approach that has worked many times from experience is to employ a score card for the current situation. Figure 2.1 below is a score card for a current business process. You can create a similar score card for many other situations. For example, if you were doing a large construction project, then you might include survey information of similar projects that have taken place in the same location. Note that the score card measures the business and technical aspects of the situation as well as political and cultural factors. Also, consider the columns. There is one for each location or business unit. This is because the situation in each organization or location is specific to that unit. Developing the scores is subjective and should be done in a collaborative way with employees and supervisors in each location.

Figure 2.1: Sample Process Score Card

How can you employ this score card? First, you use it to summarize the problems and issues related to the situation in each location. Second, it is useful in presentations to management. Managers see the score card values and they tend to react. The reaction leads naturally to intense discussion about both the current situation and the future project. It will likely result in some change in thinking among the managers.

This sounds like a lot of work to do before you even get started. It is but it is also essential. You have to understand what is going on now and you must start to build up support for change. Remember that collecting information early is much cheaper and easier than making changes later. It should also be stressed that you are not looking in detail at the situation—just an overview.

There are some other things to do when you are collecting this information. You should collect data on the level of current work, what resources are available to support the new project, and whether current projects are making progress. You will be using this later when you propose the project and enter the fray for fighting for resources.

What is another major reason to measure what is going on?

If you do not measure before the project is started, you have no real way of determining the benefits of the work.

The Project Concept

With background knowledge of the current situation at each location, you are now ready to create the project concept. The project concept consists of the general view of the project. It is developed prior to developing the plan or staffing the project. Elements of the project concept include the following:

Purpose of the international project from different viewpoints;
Scope of the international project—what will be included and excluded;
Roles and responsibilities of departments and business units in the project;
Availability of resources to support the international project;
Initial issues that the project is likely to face;
Budget and schedule for the international project;
Likely benefits that will accrue when the work is completed.

Why is the project concept important? It gets everyone “reading off of the same page.” It provides a forum for arguments and trade-offs as to what to do with the project. Creating the project concept also builds consensus in terms of agreement and commitment. As such, it’s really more important than the project plan. The project plan validates the project concept and provides more detail. Now let’s move on and develop the elements of the project concept.

Define Objectives For The International Project

As with each chapter, there are technical, business, and political purposes. Each will be considered for a specific example.

Technical Purpose of the Project

Almost all projects have some technical purpose. Examples might relate to IT, engineering, construction, marketing, or distribution. The technical purpose relates to the physical activity of the project. For international projects the technical purpose relates to the implementation of change in one or more locations.

But you are just starting the project. Here the technical purpose is to get a precise definition of what is to be done in the project. This is simple if there was just one department or location. For international projects, you could have variations of the technical purpose in each location or for each business unit. Why? Because change does not go in the same way in different cultures. Let’s take an example of a marketing campaign for a new product. Sounds simple enough, eh? In one country the decision to buy the product might be made by females. In another country it might be purchased based on a decision by a male. Because of cultural and society factors, the advertising might have to be substantially different between countries. Even the product name may have to be different.

As was stated in Chapter 1 you want to try to create tables, lists, and charts that support communications. In Fig 2.2 there is a simple table for the technical purpose for the marketing campaign. Look at the differences. In country B you have access to both sexes and can reach them through television. Thus, the campaign can be shorter. You will know how the product has performed in less time. In country A printed media is more important. It will take longer given that the population tends to adopt new products at a slower pace. For whatever project, you should construct this and the tables presented later.

Figure 2.2: Technical Purpose by Area

Why is this politically useful? Here are several reasons.

Construction of the table requires that you get a good understanding of the environment in each location. This serves to increase your awareness of the area and market.
By reviewing the table management can then perform trade-offs and may, in fact, change the purpose. The project can be dropped or changed. This is cheap and effective to do at the beginning. It gets much more expensive later on.

Business Purpose of the Project

The business purpose is the true purpose of the project whereas the technical purpose is how you are going to go about achieving it. The business purpose typically reflects a combination of goals. Examples are:

Increased sales and market share;
Reduced costs;
Improved productivity;
Increased performance in terms of throughput;
Reduced error rates and improved quality;
Improved controls.
Greater business flexibility to respond to changing conditions.

However, as with the technical purpose, you have to project these fuzzy goals down to the level of the location or business unit. Figure 2.3 gives the same example. Now you can start seeing more differences. Country B’s marketing has not been going well. It is desired that the new campaign will help straighten out this situation. Management information is necessary for headquarters, but the in-country managers just carry out the campaign. They do not initiate marketing campaigns.

Figure 2.3: Business Purpose by Area

By now you should start to see the complexity of international projects. You are dealing with multiple objectives in multiple dimensions—very tricky.

What if you just defined the overall objectives and did not worry about each country? Then you probably would not get much support from each country. Oh, they might pay lip service to the project, but the project would probably be DOA—dead on arrival—at the remote locations.

Political Purpose of the Project

At the core of most international projects is politics. There are various politicalagendas. Here are some that we have encountered frequently:

One or more top managers want to use the project to increase their power or prestige. This occurs sometimes in firms that launch some improvement initiative such as Six Sigma.
The headquarters feels threatened by a major business unit and so initiates the project to increase the power over and control of the business units.
The project is started in reaction to what a competitor has done in one or more locations. This is often a panic reaction.
There may be pressure to do the project from external sources such as investors. Examples of this were efforts by firms in the late 1990s to implement e-business.

These political purposes are not bad. They are not good. You have to define and recognize them. Here is a fundamental rule of international projects.

An international project is shaped by the political objectives for the project.

There are additional overt political goals in addition to these general ones. Some examples are:

Achieve increased levels of standardization across business units.
Narrow the focus of business units to their core activities.
Instill a greater sense of the corporation overall across all locations.

You will also want to create another table similar to the ones for the technical and business purposes. However, you probably will not want to reveal it to many people. You want to use it yourself to be constantly aware of why the project was started.

Once you have developed the objectives, then you can check on whether they align with each other. This is important and something that is not carried out often enough. In the VietNam War, the technical goal related to seizing territory and eliminating enemy soldiers. The political goal was to win the war. However, these were not aligned. The real business and technical goals should have related to the “hearts and minds” of the population.

Determine The Scope Of The Project

There are two ways to look at the scope of an international project. One is to consider the dimensions of the project overall and in each country or business unit. The second is to consider the impacts that derive from the dimensions. Here is a list of possible dimensions for you to consider.

Number of locations;
Number of departments involved in the project;
Extent of systems and technology;
Number of processes involved in the project;
Other projects.

These dimensions reflect what is to be done.

Next, we move to the impact factors. These may include:

Cost;
Benefits;
Risk;
Elapsed time for the project.

Obviously, if you change the values for the dimensions, you will change the resulting factors. A bigger project can result in more time and cost as well as increased risk.

What you seek to do is to involve management at both the local and headquarters levels in trade-offs regarding scope. There are a number of benefits and reasons for doing this.

Managers gain a common understanding of the scope at each location or within each business unit.
You are more likely to prevent future scope creep and project change in direction.

In order to carry out the analysis, you can employ a spider chart. Figure 2.4 is one example. Note that there is no precise number for the values on the lines. They are subjective by intent so that you generate a great deal of discussion.

Figure 2.4: Example of a Spider Chart for the Scope of an International Project

This example pertains to improving processes. The solid line chart represents a version of the project with a narrower scope. There is little organization change, for example. The dashed line represents a major reengineering effort and has much more risk, cost, and elapsed time. However, it yields only slightly more benefits. You would generally prefer the solid line version of the project.

Now you will want to draw similar charts for some of the locations or business units. By doing this you will better understand the risks and other factors involved in the scope.

It is sometimes helpful to use trigger thoughts or ideas to generate ideas for versions of the scope. Here you could consider some of the following:

Money is no object for the project. This shows one extreme.
Time is not a problem. This allows you to consider stretching out the project.
Adopt a very narrow view of the project in terms of what will change.
Adopt a comprehensive view of the project in terms of change.

Establish Roles, Responsibilities, And Resource Availability

Let’s suppose that you have narrowed the project down to two versions of the scope. It is useful now to consider what roles each organization will play in a version of the project. In order to define roles and responsibilities, you can employ the table in Fig 2.5. This table identifies each role in the first column. In the second column you enter the headquarters role. In the last column the role of the location or business unit is placed.

Figure 2.5: Roles and Responsibilities for an Alternative Version of an International Project

Often, everything will move along smoothly until you present this table. People start to get excited because they start to see the impact of the project on them and their people and other resources. You can use these tables to support the trade-offs in scope.

You are not finished yet. Given the roles and responsibilities, each business unit and headquarters have to define resources needed as well as any issues related to resource availability.

Estimate Costs, Benefits, And The Schedule

Of course, you cannot do these estimates with precision. That requires the development of the project plan. Here you will develop estimates based upon past projects for the costs and the schedule. This is another reason for developing lessons learned from experience. To assist in doing the estimates, you should develop lists of potential costs and benefits. Examples are given in Figs 2.6 and 2.7, respectively.

Figure 2.6: Examples of Cost Elements

Figure 2.7: Examples of Benefits

Identify Potential Issues For The Project

Go to the table of contents and look at the contents of the last four chapters. Lists of specific issues are given that are covered in these chapters. You will want to start with these and add to them. To help you, consider generating issues in the following categories:

Organization;
Management;
Systems and technology;
Customers;
Suppliers and vendors;
Project work;
Project staffing and leadership;
External factors such as laws, regulation, and competition.

Note that there are also negative benefits that you must consider. These are the answers to the following questions.

What will happen if the project is not carried out?
How could the resources be utilized otherwise?
What will happen if the project is deferred?

What is the purpose of generating a list of potential issues? One reason is political. You desire to ensure that management has a realistic idea of what lies ahead. This will dampen expectations.

A second reason is to employ the issues to discuss how to resolve issues. It is absolutely critical that people agree on an approach for resolving issues early before issues start to arise and become pressing. It is difficult, if not impossible, to develop a consistent method for issues management while at the same time solving major issues across the globe.

Determine Project Interdependencies

Projects tend to be interdependent in many potential ways. In this action you will work to identify the other projects that your project concept links to, how they depend upon each other, and what the potential issues and problems are. You can then add these issues to others in the previous section.

Here are some ways two projects can interrelate.

They share the same resources. This creates resource conflicts.
They employ the same network or technology. This can create a load and stress on the network and other resources.

They contradict each other in terms of policies, procedures, or organization.

The results of one project are necessary for the other project to be successful.

They compete for the same limited pool of available funds.

The projects together exact too much stress and load on the employees or management in one or more locations.

Now create a table. Yes, another table. The rows and columns of the table are the projects—both current and new. The table entry is the way in which two projects (for the corresponding row and column) interrelate.

Let’s consider an example. Suppose that there are two projects going on in three countries. One is network expansion and upgrading (called A). A second is a project that has been started to upgrade employee skills through training (called B). The third is the project concept for a new human resource system (called C). Figure 2.8 gives the table. Note that the diagonal is always blank since it corresponds to the row and column being the same project. Both B and C require the network and also people resources. The training and upgrading of staff skills will have to be dome again when C is carried out.

Figure 2.8: Project Interdependence Table Example

This table helps management to understand competing demands among projects.

Present The Project Concept

Now you have to gain approval and consensus from management for the international project. Let’s start with how you go about working with management. In collecting the information on the current situation, you started to create grass roots support. With the development of the project concept, you can now involve management in trade-offs related to purpose, scope, roles, etc. This gets management involved and moves them toward commitment.

You also will have to present the project concept. Here is an outline to follow. Notice that there is no mention of the technical approach for the project. There is probably little interest, understanding, or time for this.

Overview of the current situation. Here you highlight some of the issues and problems today.
Impact if the issues and problems are not solved and the project is not undertaken.
Benefits and effects of the project after it is completed.
Costs and schedule of the project.
Roles and responsibilities.
Action items.

Does this outline look familiar? It should! It follows the general structure of successful television commercials.

Multiple Projects And The Project Slate

The discussion in this section has focused on single projects. A trade-off approach has been defined to determine the most appropriate project concept for an international project. However, in the real world there are multiple projects that are reviewed and approved at the same time. The same approach can be extended to multiple projects.

The real world is a political world where there are multiple projects, hidden agendas, and trade-offs. It is better to make trade-offs in a proactive way. The project slate is the set of approved projects at a particular point in time.

Here are the steps to follow:

Step 1: Identify potential projects at both the local and international level.
Step 2: Undertake to develop project concepts for each of the projects with the most promise.
Step 3: Collect the roles and resource requirements for the projects.
Step 4: Prepare a resource analysis table.
Step 5: Perform trade-offs and select which projects are to go ahead and which of the current projects should be cancelled.

What is a resource analysis table? A format appears in Fig. 2.9. In this figure the locations or business units are listed as rows in the first column. In the second column comments about non-project work are entered. The next set of columns is for the major current projects. The third set of columns is for new projects. The entries in the table for these columns are comments about resources and resource requirements.

Figure 2.9: Resource Analysis Table

How do you employ this table? Well, much of life is a “zero-sum” game. That is, there are only so many resources. If you allocate a resource to one project, it is really not available for other projects. The purpose of this table is to actively support trade-offs between projects and regular work with regard to resources.

A fundamental lesson learned for us has been that companies embark on international projects without performing this kind of trade-off analysis. Projects are approved individually without regard for the available resources. You have to look at the available resources and what has already been committed before you can commit to more projects. This is a basic point of the book. This theme will return again and again in almost all chapters. If resources are not proactively considered in approving projects, here are some of the major problems that are likely to occur.

A new project will be approved. When work begins, each location and business unit will be forced to make on-the-spot trade-offs. What is more important? To finish the current project; to complete other work; or to start another project? From the wording it is clear that the new project loses.
The new project will begin to cause a ripple effect. Problems in other projects due to resource shortages will start appearing. It is as if starting the new international project is like casting a stone in a lake—the effects emanate out from where the stone hit the water.

That is why you must work to sell the new project to management and employees at the local as well as headquarters levels. That is also why you want to encourage people to review current projects and kill off those that are not making progress or that will not produce substantial benefits.

Management Review And Approval Of International Projects

There are many good project ideas that never get supported. Why? Because people want management to approve everything. What is everything?

Approval of the project as a good idea.
Approval of funding for the project.
Approval of resources for the project.

It is asking a lot to ask someone to approve all of this without further analysis. That is why you should get approval for the idea now and pave the way for more analysis. You can identify the project leaders and develop the plan. This can lead to funding. The third stage is for management then to determine where the resources are going to come from. That is why resource issues are so important. You can approve something and throw money at it. But that does not make the project come true. You have to obtain the resources for the project.

Super Business - Project Management Articles

Approach

Technical Purpose of the Project

Business Purpose of the Project

Political Purpose of the Project