International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments

Introduction

In a standard project, the project team consists of individuals with specific skills and/or experience, and those who have specialized business or technical knowledge. It is not as simple as this in international projects. Team members are sometimes assigned to projects for political reasons. There are a number of other differences, including:

• Collaboration. There must be more cooperation and collaboration in international projects as many of the tasks are replicated or adapted from one country or location to another.

• Parallelism. There are more opportunities for parallel effort since work can be going on simultaneously in multiple locations at one time.

• Changing requirements. International projects tend to require different skills at different phases or parts of the project. This leads to more team turnover. Turnover also occurs due to management changes in direction.

• Conflicts with normal work. Most international team members are not dedicated to the project. In fact, in the past 20 years, we have had only one project with fully dedicated resources. People have to do major parts of their regular job in addition to work on the project.

• Semiautonomous work. In a standard project in one location, the project leader can oversee the detailed work of the team members. This is not practical or possible in international projects. Even with e-mail and the telephone, you are only marginally in touch.

A suitable method for team management must reflect these realities for international projects. Managing an international project in the traditional manner can lead to many problems that will be discussed in this chapter.