International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments

2017-07-07 02:10:07

Carry Out Proactive Resource Allocation

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:

Identify the critical resources to the project. These may be individual who are working on tasks with risk or on tasks where there is severe time pressure.

Arrange a weekly meeting with the appropriate line manager(s) to review the use of their resources in the project and the projected use of the resources in the upcoming week. Since there are often multiple locations, you will have to resort to telephone or videoconferencing. A good day to do this is Thursday—before the end of the week, but also far enough in the work week.

At the meeting, you will first review how the current week went. Identify any times when the person was pulled from the project. Discuss why and how this happened. This will indicate to them that you are aware of what is going on. They will be more reluctant to do this in the future. Now turn to the upcoming week. Ask what is going on that would interfere with their work in the project. This may force some of the hidden agendas out in the open. Discuss what they will be working on in the project. Agree on what is to be done. In general, you should have people work on your project on Tuesday and Wednesday. Why these particular days? Well, Monday is just after the weekend and there may have been problems over the weekend that have to be addressed. Thursday and Friday are days when people are getting ready for the weekend.

Update The Plan

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:

Provide network access to all team members so that they can view and update their tasks in the plan.

Supply a minimum amount of training in the project management software (about 4 hours) so that they know how to open the plan, enter tasks, update tasks, and save the results.

Have each team member update their tasks twice a week. Since the detailed tasks are 1–2 weeks in duration, this is not an undue effort. There are typically only a handful of active tasks at any given time. The method for updating is as follows: mark all completed tasks as complete; if there is slippage in a task, then a new task is created that links to the original task, indicating the date created and reason for the task; new tasks are also entered in this way. Recall that there is detail for 3–4 months in advance so the team members will also enter detailed tasks in the future so that you always have the future 3–4 months of the plan in detail.

After the plan has been updated, the project leader reviews the plan to see what changed overall. Has there been a slippage? If so, then you can filter the plan and examine what changed. You can then contact the specific team members that caused the schedule to shift. More issues may be added.

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.

Track Project Work

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.

When you encounter the team member, talk in generalities at the start. Inquire about their personal life. Try to remember the names of their spouses and some personal fact. This shows that you care about them and more than just the work. After this, you can then ask how the work is going in terms of any problems that they are facing. You can also here ask about other work that they are doing beyond the project. Listen for the tone of voice. What is more exciting to them—the project or the regular work? Work to uncover any new issues. Volunteer to help them. Then you can get to status.

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.

Review Milestones

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.

Determine The State Of The Project

The state of an international project is the real status and condition of the project. It is an overall view of the project as opposed to the status. The project score card that is addressed next is another method for determining the state of the project.

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.

Employ A Project Score Card

A score card approach is useful because it allows you to measure an international project in a consistent manner over time. It can also be employed to measure multiple projects. Score cards are also valuable because they give you the opportunity to measure more than just budget and schedule. Fig. 7.2 presents a score card that includes a number of subjective factors. Like the other score cards in this book, you will want to adopt and change it to fit your requirements.

Figure 7.2: Score Card for an Ongoing International Project

Here are comments on some of the elements of the score card in Fig. 7.2. Some of the items on issues will be discussed in Chapter 10:

Number of people involved in the project. In general, in an international project you seek to involve more, rather than fewer people. Involving more people increases the support for the project. Also, you are less dependent on one person if people are being rotated in and out of the project. The impact on a department is reduced since no one person is being kept from the work for too long.

Turnover of staff in the team. Some turnover is good; a great deal of turnover is negative.

% of tasks ahead with risk. This is to measure the percentage of hours in future work in the project that has risk and issues.

Ratio of controllable issues to total issues. Controllable issues are those that can be decided by the project with minimal management involvement. Obviously, the lower the ratio, the higher the risk.

Number of lessons learned in the project. If there are only a few lessons learned, then either the project is very routine or else lessons learned are not being captured.

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.

Carry Out Change Management

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.

How do you accomplish this? Early in the project, you must analyze the situation that the project is to address. Get people involved to talk about their work and problems. As they discuss their problems, they will begin to wonder if the problems cannot be fixed. This will start to give you support for change.

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.

Figure 7.3 compares the Quick Win and traditional approaches. In this figure there are two solid lines for the Big Bang and two dotted lines for Quick Hits. One line shows the implementation method. The other shows confidence in the project. In the Quick Hit approach confidence builds. In the Big Bang graph confidence increases, but then declines because nothing is happening.

Figure 7.3: Big Bang and Quick Win Approaches to Project Implementation

Of course, not all projects are amenable to Quick Wins. However, changing processes, implementing new systems, and putting in new policies do fit within this. Care must be taken when using this approach.

The changes that you make must be consistent with the results of the project. Otherwise, they will have to be reversed or undone—causing more problems.

Care must be taken to ensure that the project does not get sidetracked into just doing Quick Hits.

Management may want to stop with the Quick Hits. Be on guard for this.

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

Deal with Scope Creep

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:

Planning for the project. In the second chapter, the project concept was presented as something that is essential to get consensus and understanding of purpose, scope, issues, and other factors.

Extensive informal communications. This is stressed in Chapter 9. By communicating with both headquarters and field locations, you can pick up on potential factors that could affect the international project.

Contingency planning for potential changes. At the start of the project, you should express the idea that people will want to make changes. Indicate that this is natural. However, also tell them that the following questions will have to be addressed. Then when someone proposes a change ask the questions. It is also a good idea to run through several examples of change so that they fully understand the process to be followed.
- What is the change?
- What other changes are there?
- What are the business and political factors behind the change?
- What will happen if the change is not carried out in the project?
- What will happen if the change is made later after the project is completed?
- If the change is made, what will happen to the budget, schedule, and resources?
- What are the real benefits of the change?
- How will the benefits of the change be measured?
- Will the original benefits of the project be affected if the change is not made?
- What will be the role of the person or group that is suggesting the change? Will they have “skin in the game”?

Periodic review of scope. Sit down with the team and review the project with the view of detecting potential changes.

Alter Project Direction

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.

Measure Project Results

There are several things to measure after a project is completed. One is the project itself and the other is the result derived from the project. Let’s consider each of these. To measure the project you can use the following:

The project score card;

Budget versus actual analysis;

Issue analysis as described in Chapter 10;

Assessment of lessons learned from the project.

In order to measure the results of the project, you have to have measurements from the situation before the project was started. Incredibly, many organizations do not carry out these measurements. They never really know if they are any better off, other than a vague feeling. Here are some techniques to employ:

Undertake comparison of score cards between the old and new situations.

Have individuals involved in the work make comparisons between the old and new. This approach can be very useful to management—especially if it is conducted at the in-country level.

Conduct surveys of customers, suppliers, or employees.

When should you carry out this analysis? Do the project analysis at the end of the project. Otherwise, people will have moved on to other work.

At the end of a project there is likely to be some unfinished business. There are some things for follow up. Should you not stop the project and keep it going to finish these things up? No. Gather the data and start a new small project. Remember that some people may want to use this as an opportunity to not use the results of the project.

If you have defined the scope of the project properly, then the project results will be used. However, if the scope of the project was not created right, then the project may end, but there may be no benefits since there are additional steps that must be taken. As an example, consider the implementation of new software in five locations. Assume that the scope was restricted to the IT work. The project ends when the system is installed and working. But who is to say that it is being used? After a system is installed, there must be training and conversion to new business processes that are consistent with the new system. If these are formally in the project plan, then there is likely to be system success and overall project failure.