Manage the International Team and the Work

From the very start of this book, it has been emphasized that a major problem in international projects is that people in a location can be drawn away from the project to do other work. Often, if they do not tell you, then you will not know this has happened until you inquire about the status of the work. Moreover, this approach is reactive.

The goal here is to define a proactive approach that heads off or at least minimizes the extent to which people are pulled from the project. Here is a technique that works:

In traditional project management, the project leader updates the plan in a meeting or through contact with team members. This has several drawbacks in international projects. First, it is almost impossible to reach everyone. You would be on the telephone all of the time. You could do no other work. Second, it lowers the project leader to the position of a clerk—demeaning. Third, the team does not participate.

You require a better and faster method in which team members collaborate and participate. Here are the steps of a winning method:

This is a proactive approach that gets the team members to participate and define and update their work. The project leader is then really functioning as the project leader and not doing clerical work. Look at the third step again. Notice that team members cannot just slip a task and input a new duration. If you allow people to do this, you will lose traceability in the plan. Accountability will also suffer. Another benefit of the method is that it saves time since updating is being performed in parallel. In addition, the project leaders’ time is focused on where there are problems.

This section deals with your overall involvement with the project team as work is being done. Your goal here is to gain a better understanding of what is going on and how the work is being done. Through this you will gain insight into the real state of the project. You also may uncover more issues.

In communications the emphasis is on informal contact. Never have team members come to you. Always call them or go to them. This shows that you care enough to get out there. Try to go to team members unannounced frequently. If you always announce your visits, then people will change to show you and tell you what you want to hear. This is like Potemkin villages in the days of the czars in Russia. The czarina, Catherine the Great, wanted to see how the people lived. The officials were aghast. Potemkin came up with the solution. The czarina would take a boat down the main river and she could then see the villages and talk to people. Potemkin arranged for a model village to be created so that wheels could be attached to the houses. During the day the czarina saw a happy village which was very clean. As she slept on the boat, the village was moved down the river and changed. The same scene was repeated for several days—a small, but interesting project.

You will encounter some difficult personnel situations. People may not get along with each other. A team member is not doing work in the project even though you have talked about this repeatedly. How do you handle situations such as these? Begin to contact them more frequently. If they see you coming or hear from you more often, they will begin to realize that their work is really important to the project. If you fail to do this, then they may feel that there is no big problem. Remember it is what you do that is more important than what you say in project management.

Even after visiting them repeatedly, nothing happens. Then what? One of us has adopted an extreme approach. You move in with them where they are working. Now the pressure is really on. In one case, this took a long time to get across. It finally worked, but it was an ordeal. The person was quite dense.

You have no time to review all of the milestones in an international project. There are too many and there is too little time. You have to be selective in reviewing milestones. Which ones do you review? Concentrate on the milestones that have risky tasks and issues associated with them. Milestones that are routine and not critical in that mistakes can be easily corrected can be given less attention.

Here is a proven method for selecting which milestones to review? At the start of the project rate each milestone on a scale of 0 to 3 as follows:

• Level 0, no review. This category is reserved for simple situations.

• Level 1, existence. Here you just check to see if there is evidence of the work.

• Level 2, structure. The end product is in 14 parts. Are there 14 parts?

• Level 3, content. This category is reserved for areas of risk and where the work leading up to the milestone has issues.

Update the rating as time goes by.

How do you review a level 3 milestone? Obviously, it depends upon the nature of the project and that of the specific milestone. However, many milestones are reports, analysis, and similar things. You don’t have time to read all of the documents. Also, how could you determine where there are problems and weaknesses? A proven method is to have the two team members who performed the work make a presentation of their work in a lessons learned meeting. During the meeting watch their body language and listen to their tone of voice. Look for topics that they gloss over. This will tell you a great deal about the parts of the document or end product that should be reviewed in detail after the meeting. Of course, if you have followed the method of successive outlining that was discussed earlier, then the problems will be lessened.

How do you determine the state of a project? Let’s put it differently. Suppose that you are appointed to take over an international project that was in trouble. What would you do and ask? Here is a list of questions:

• What is the status of the oldest outstanding issue? Why is it still unresolved?

• If you take the latest version of the plan and go out to the team members, would you find that what they are working on is accurately reflected in the plan?

• Are team members working in isolation to each other or are they working together?

The second question is of particular interest. Several things may be observed. First, they may not be working on the project at all—not a good sign. Second, the plan may be accurate—very good. Third, the team members may be working on the project, but they are doing work that is not in the plan. However, it is important work. What does this mean? First, the plan does not accurately reflect the extent of the work that is required. This means that the schedule for the project is probably faulty and too optimistic. Second, it means that you may have encountered an example of an iceberg project. What is this? An iceberg project is one in which a substantial part of the work is being performed unmanaged and undetected—just like the percentage of the ice that is above the water line. What should you do if you meet up with this situation? Assume that you have just touched on the tip of the iceberg. Gather more information and develop a more complete plan.

As you review the score card, you can see that it goes beyond simple budget and scheduling measurement. You can also see that many of the items relate to themes in this book. This is done by intent.

To reinforce the project management methods, score cards must use these factors.

Otherwise, people will tend to ignore the methods since they do not see them being reinforced.

How often should you build the score card? Every 3 months might be useful. If it is done more frequently, there is too much effort. If it is done less frequently, then the value is reduced. Who should build the score cards? The project leaders with the international project coordinator.

International projects often involve change. People tend to resist change. However, if there is no change, then the results of the project may either be failure or a lack of benefits. Change management often goes hat in hand with project management.

You must first get the people who will be using the results of the project to admit that the way they do their work now is not good and has problems. This is consistent with drug and alcohol addiction in which the person must first admit that they have a problem. Once they admit that they have problems, then they are on the road to a cure. It is the same in international projects. If people don’t feel that they need to change, then they will resist using the results of the project. After the project is turned over, they may just return to their old ways!! It has happened many times.

Later you will likely run into another barrier to change. People will say that many efforts have been tried before, but that there have been no real lasting improvements. They lack confidence that you can deliver results. What should you do in this situation? A possible answer is to implement improvements that lead up to the final project results. This approach is called Quick Hits or Quick Wins. The basic idea is that implementing the project results is too traumatic in one step and it may be too long so that people lose both confidence and interest. The alternative is to implement several waves of changes or Quick Hits that yield benefits, raise confidence, and prepare the way for the results of the project.

Nevertheless, this is a useful way to introduce change that is an alternative to the “big bang” approach followed in many cases.

Scope creep is an infamous phrase that is as old as projects are. Scope creep can be defined as the unplanned expansion or change of a project after it has been started. How does scope creep arise? Here are some reasons.

• The project was not carefully defined at the start. People just started into planning.

• There was no consensus or agreement on what was to be done in the project. People just assumed. Like the old saying, “Making assumptions makes asses out of you and me.”

• There is lack of communications to detect potential scope creep and change. When change comes, it is often too late to be handled well. Much of the project may have to redone.

• There is no method or approach for dealing with changes. It is all ad hoc, reactive mode—deadly. The project leaders lose control.

Many people accept scope creep as a fact of life in every project. However, it does not have to be this way. If you carefully plan and keep people informed as well as make provisions for dealing with change when it comes, it can be managed better.

Some useful guidelines for dealing with scope creep are the following:

During a longer international project, it is possible that the project will have its direction changed due to internal business needs or outside factors. In traditional project management, there is no organized way to deal with this. With the lack of a method, many project leaders just change the project plan and keep going. They do this after every change. After a few changes, it becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to track changes and find out what happened. The baseline schedule becomes meaningless. People lose confidence in the project. The team morale plummets.

The use of templates can help shield the project plan from changes.

Unless the project changes dramatically, project changes can be accommodated within the template.

This provides for greater stability. It also reveals the flexibility inherent in using templates.

Here is another guideline. Do not respond to each change separately. Instead, bundle several changes into a new release of the project plan. This is the same technique employed with software and engineering releases of upgraded products.