Brainstorming The Marketing School of Project Management

This cafe will explore how to “Market” good project management to senior stakeholders, Management, Sponsors, Project Management Offices, etc.. How to “Market” that good project management is aligned with the Organizations Objectives and it will solve problems and provide solutions to customers.

2010 S3W5 MSP

Brainstorming The Marketing School of Project Management

This cafe will explore how to “Market” good project management to senior stakeholders, Management, Sponsors, Project Management Offices, etc.. How to “Market” that good project management is aligned with the Organizations Objectives and it will solve problems and provide solutions to customers.

2010 S2W5 MSP

Market and Competitive Risk in Global Project Management

Market risks are influenced by competitive risks. Technical risks give impact on individual project progressing. We are here to introduce how to manage market and competitive risks to make the profit. The problem is we cannot control the market and the competitive risks. Take risks smart and change risks to opportunities.

Gathering information is the most important factor to win competitors in our market place. Get better market information than competitors. If you want to get information on your competitor’s and it may be necessary to spy on your competitors. Analyze the collecting information whether its issue or risk. Classify quantitative and qualitative risk. Prioritize the risks. Making marketing strategic options. Appropriate Timing? Suitable Cost? Matured? Target Age? Change Strategies,  Investment (M&A),  Political and regulative action,  Head hunting,  Change the target The key way to deal with the market and competitive risk is to be able to change the strategy.

Stay focused on the result of the project to make the profit, so monitor these risks. Take risks smart and change risks to opportunities.

Questions and Answers. Why is best to finish a project first? To make a profit it is most important to be first. For example Toyota Prius entered the market first. But there is also opportunity in the second to market. For example in Japan IBM is known as watching the market and being the second to enter the market. What does take a Risk Smart mean? We don’t need to take all the risks, we need to prioritize and focus on the important risks in the market.

Market and Competitive Risk in Global Project Management from Robert Higgins on Vimeo.

Brainstorming Global Risk Policy

Workshop Participants Brainstorming on Global Risk Management. What are the toprisks to perfroming Global projects? How can we deal with these risks?

Link to Linoit Full screen Interactive

Risk

Interactive Live

Lessons Learned Stakeholder Management

Stakeholder Management we talked about specific people on projects.   ‘A stakeholder is a person or group who has a direct interest and impact on the project outcome and determines whether the project is a success or not’ Kathy Schwalbe, 2006) .

Stakeholder Relations

Global Projects have more complexity because of time and place.  This workshop focused on what are the practical things we can do to perform Project Management better.  The goal is to create a project culture where people can flourish.  This session had 13 Project Management Professionals from 5 countries.  It was a great multi-cultural environment where basic concepts were debated.  We networked outside of the Workshop and we collected almost 20 responses from a Linked-In discussion groups.

The main question for the workshop was. "how might we manage people, who are separated by languages, culture, time and place?  How can we set expectations, keep our team members happy despite cultural differences? How can we define done?  Allot of the discussions focused on taking the time to create a shared value among teams is important.  There was advice on how to plan travel to include cultural activities.  Alternatively, some people felt that email, English and ethics were all we really need.

Communication and Culture

This was a recurring theme.  Communication is a cause for failure. Differences in culture are a risk.  Ways to mitigate against Culture failures are; to have an open mindset, positive thinking and respect for each other.

Project Managers must work to remove barriers to communication.  For example technology and travel.  Use as much technology as needed.  Email is the primary method to communicate, but voice and video should be used to communicate as needed.  If email, voice and video can;t remove the barriers, travel is important for building relationships.  During the lessons learned phase, it is good practice to look at the variance of planned versus actual and examine was communication a factor. Successful communication means successful projects.  Project Managers need to fill in the gaps between cultures, setting the common rules can overcome some of these culture communication gaps. Solving communication problems is better project management.

Team Management

Team Management focused on how to manage teams.  Like communication, teams are focused on people.  How we manage people influences project outcomes.  The Japanese concept of "Ten people, ten colors", means that it is common to have a difference of opinions on teams.  Differences need to be reconciled so that all team members share one vision.  The dream is for the team to become a family.  How to do it is to have respect and trust.

Team performance is critical for project success, global teams have issues with culture, language, time and the application in which to communicate with each other.  The main ways to overcome these are to have transparency and shared mission value on teams. Building a team is a key to a strong business and success.  Teams that can function as a family are guaranteed success.

Managing Customer Requirements

Happy Scope.  To manage difficult customers, requires understanding that they may not be able to express the requirements in detail.  Lack of information, Ambiguity and the Wrong Information are problems that contribute to project failure. The best way to solve this problem is to reduce the scope and produce the prototype.  While Risk can not be eliminated by reducing assumptions we can reduce the risk of project failure.  Their phrase is "No Assumptions equals No Risk".  The practical way to accomplish this is to have a clear road-map.  First Collect and define the requirements, next analysis find the gaps where are the assumptions, third Visualize by prototyping.

Global Projects require that determing what the customer wants takes more time to confirm the requirments and prototyping to confirm the quality.

Summary

This Second PMBOK Cafe was very interesting. The most interesting time was the discussions.  People passionately and actively discussed this topic in detail. The quality of the presentation, in terms of content of the presenters was very good. All of the Project Managers who have experience agreed that having good communication, a shared team culture were important for managing global projects.  Especially in the requirements phase.  Collecting requirements and communicating them has an extra layer of difficulty when we have multiple cultures participating.  Good projects allow more time when collecting requirements from global projects.  Not only collecting the explicit details that are captured in data and forms, but take the time to get to know each other as people.  Will Ames "The key ingredients are United Airlines and Asahi Beer." http://bit.ly/Cs9t9.

On behalf of myself Robert Higgins, Rajeev Supekar and Melinda Liow we would like to thank everyone for collaborating and working together on Project Management Knowledge.

PMBOK Cafe Presentations "Global Project Risks"

What are the top Overall Risks to Global Projects?

The goal of the Fourth PMBOK Cafe workshop is to explore the Global Project Risks. What are the top Risks? If these Risks happen what will be the effect? What can we do to manage these Risks? Participants explored this concept as individuals, teams and as a group.

Political/Regulational/Economical

Socio-Cultural/Uncertainty/Organizational

Risk Management and Traning for Japanese Project Management

Brainstorming The Marketing School of Project Management

This cafe will explore how to “Market” good project management to senior stakeholders, Management, Sponsors, Project Management Offices, etc.. How to “Market” that good project management is aligned with the Organizations Objectives and it will solve problems and provide solutions to customers.

2010 S1W5 Marketing Proj. Manag.

The 2010 PMBOK Cafe First session Third Workshop discussed the aspects of Team Building. The scenario is that a global project with team members from around the world have come to Japan to participate in some team building activities. The PMBOK Cafe Participants discuss the Japanese perspective on what a team is and how Teams should communicate between each other. Japanese metaphors of a/un, Takarabune, and Sugoroku were used to describe how Japanese people communicate. Very Interesting insights in to how Japanese people view communication on Global project Teams.

"Takarabune" Team

"Communication has a lot of bones." Team

Takarabune Team~

Akiko Oguma, Shinsuke Hamada, Yuichi Kaneko

Japanese Project Managers discuss team building on a Global Project using the concepts of Takara Bune and Sugoroku. Takarabune is The ship of good fortune that sails with 7 different gods. The analogy is that global projects require different people to work together.

The process to get people to perform as a team is similar to the Sogoroku which is a kind of Japanese Traditional Board Game. The process involves working through natural conflict and understanding each others perspective to build a team.

PMBOK Cafe Takara Bune~Japanes Ship of Good Forutne from Robert Higgins on Vimeo.

Title Japanese Project Management

Welcome

Self-Introduction We are a team discussing about team building and Culture team.

Shinsuke Hamada=Heartfuly and Humanity Presenter,Yuichi Kaneko=Logical thinking presenter , Akiko Oguma= Dreaming Presenter

Subject Perform Global Project Management

Input?Performing Japanese Project Management

Constraints Cultural Differences make Team building Diffcult

Output?Dream??Board Takarabune and Sail to Reach "We Are the World"

KeyPoint Make a global team members sympathize for Japanese style project management!

ROADMAP 1. What is the metaphor of our Takara-Bune? 2.What is the metaphor of our Sugoroku? 3.Unifing the Takara-Bune and the Sugoroku makes great power of Japanese Project management

Takarabune

1-1        What is “Takarabune”?  A Japanese traditional imagination sail boat (a kind of yacht)

1-2         Takarabune Story; The ship loading a lot of treasures which appear Japanese legends, such as Koban(Gold moneys, Rice, fish, Silk fabric, Tsuru (Japanese national bird). Seven Gods board on together to deliver “Lucky” to people.?It also shows starting a new sailing at new year.

1-3         Takarabune metaphor; Global project team board on a Japanese traditional Lucky treasury ship with “cooperate”, “sympathizing”, ”go on to success a global project”

Sugoroku

2-1     What is “Sugoroku”? A Japanese traditional board game.

2-2     Sugoroku Story; From old period ( Maybe before Edo priod) to now, Japanese children play the game in Oshogatsu (During New year’s holidays).

2-3    Sugoroku metaphor ; Can show How to build a global project team by Japanese style   Knowing each other (by mind)->

knowing diffrences each other country ->

cause confulicts ->

hold many nomini-cation after work ->

accept each other’s differences and can trust each other ->r

Everyone can make efforts and cooperate together!

Unifying

3-1   Takarabune is an expected situation of a Japanese project management and Sugoroku is a procedure to build a project team.

Make a global team members sympathize for Japanese style project management!

Conclusion

ROADMAP 1. What is the metaphor of our Takara-Bune? 2.What is the metaphor of our Sugoroku? 3.Unifing the Takara-Bune and the Sugoroku makes grate power of Japanese Project management 

KeyPoint 1.Takarabune  2.Sugoroku 3.Unifing

Output?Dream?Cultural Differences make Team building Diffcult

Constraints?Board Takarabune and Sail to Reach "We Are the World"

Input?Performing Japanese Project Management

Subject?Perform Global Project Management

Self-Introduction We are a team discussing about team building and Culture team.

Shinsuke Hamada=Heartfuly and Humanity Presenter,Yuichi Kaneko=Logical thinking presenter , Akiko Oguma= Dreaming Presenter