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Problems of Multicultural Projects
May 7, 2008 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Communications Management, HR Management, People Issues
Problems of Multicultural Projects (#2 in the series Managing Multicultural Projects with Complementary Practices)
By Johanna Rothman
In my experience, any strictly technical (product) problem solving is secondary to managing the people interaction issues. When managing multicultural projects, I expect problems in these areas:
- Different definitions of milestone and handoffs, leading project teams to misunderstand their commitments and handoffs to other groups. Sometimes the different definitions are due to a lack of understanding of the actual words. Sometime people differ on their meaning of commitment– is a commitment a best effort agreement or will the team do whatever it takes to meet the commitment? Whatever the cause, different meanings for milestones can be overcome with complementary product development practices, especially in project planning, project scheduling, and technical review.
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Uneven project communications and reporting of project state. This frequently leads to lack of trust in other teams. If you don’t know what other people are doing, you may not feel you can trust them. Especially when geography and culture separate teams, this lack of trust can be a huge obstacle to project success.
You might know what other people are doing, but you might not know what they are saying. Language differences, and everyone’s relative ability to use one common language can create many problems in a project. What language are you using as the default language? What kinds of ambiguities do you have in that language? How fluent are all the project participants in the project’s language? Is everyone willing to talk to everyone else, or are there cultural mores that make some people uncomfortable talking to certain teams or team members? Make sure that the language you use for written and spoken communications is adequate for everyone.
There can also be communications problems with regard to holidays, vacations, and overtime. Be specific about what vacations mean, the impact of everyone’s national holidays on the project’s schedule, and general expectations about overtime – these will all affect how the project participants work with each other and report on project state.
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Uneven ability to use common tools, including the project’s intranet. This leads to inability to share designs, source code, tests, and any other project information. When some members of the project team can’t use the project resources, they may resent the people who can use the project resources. In addition, they may stop trying to share their work with the rest of the project team.
To have a chance of success, the PM of a multicultural project must address these problem, for himself or herself and for the rest of the project staff.
Original article can be found at: http://www.jrothman.com/Papers/Multiculturalprojects.html
Johanna Rothman consults, speaks, and writes on managing high-technology product development. Johanna is the author of Manage It!’Your Guide to Modern Pragmatic Project Management’. She is the coauthor of the pragmatic Behind Closed Doors, Secrets of Great Management, and author of the highly acclaimed Hiring the Best Knowledge Workers, Techies & Nerds: The Secrets and Science of Hiring Technical People. And, Johanna is a host and session leader at the Amplifying Your Effectiveness (AYE) conference (http://www.ayeconference.com). You can see Johanna’s other writings at http://www.jrothman.com.
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