What is a major contingency for international projects? The team members must be drawn off the project for other work. Here is another guideline. Have each team member create their own plan that indicates what other work they will doing. You should review this with them and discuss the possible demands. This is much more precise that just yakking about their other work in general terms. Later in the project, they can update this and indicate to you what is going on. This will prevent many unpleasant surprises later. Moreover, if a team member has a number of real conflicts, you can consider if this person should be replaced on the team. This is a much better idea at the start of the project than in the middle in a panic situation.

Now suppose you have developed the plan and have a list of issues. How do you test if these are both complete? First, go through the list of tasks and ask if any of these have risk. If they do, then do you have the associated issues identified? If not, then you can add more issues and link these to the tasks. Second, go down the list of issues. Ask if these apply to the international project. If one does, then go down the list of tasks to see if the appropriate tasks are present. If not, you can add tasks. The end result is that you have verified both the issues and the tasks. Another step to take is to review the milestones and label the ones that involve major issues. These issues are related to the tasks that produce or lead to the end product.