Participant surveys

Surveys of Project Management Professionals

Workshop Expectation Survey

Summary See complete responses

According your experience, which tool was useful for sharing the project requirement with stakeholders and for managing the change requirement?
	E-mail   8 73% Web Portal   3 27% File sharing server   2 18% Conferencing   4 36% Face-to-face meeting   9 82% Hard Copy Document   4 36% People may select more than one checkbox, so percentages may add up to more than 100%.

How does the Projects Manager ensure (pursuade) accptence of change (alternative proposals)?
	Historical data and benchmarking   3 27% Innovative solution using makey trends and technology   2 18% Third party consultaion   0 0% All the above   6 55% None of above   0 0%

When you request the evaluation of project proposal from other vendor or staff, what is your recommended approaching?
	Requesting your team member   7 64% Using independent party (advisoring board)   0 0% By yourself   4 36%

When you request evaluation of proposals from other vendors or staff, how much reliable do you feel normally?
	Under 25%   1 9% 26 % to 50%   5 45% 51% to 75 %   4 36% Above 75%   1 9%

Marketing Project Management Top Down Approach

Scenario

As a Project Manager. You analyzed the Scope Requirements of your customer. Based on your previous projects your team concludes, The project cannot meet the requirements that the project will be in jeopardy. You are going to propose changes. How will you communicate/market to the Customer your Proposed Changes to the Scope of the project?

Top Down Approach

PMBOK Cafe Marketing Top Down from Robert Higgins on Vimeo.

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.

Brainstorming Stakeholder Management

Japanese Project Managers brainstorming Stakeholder Mangagement on Global Projects.

2010 S2W2 SM

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

PMBOK Cafe Presentations "Japanese Best Practices"

How to succeed in Global Project by the Japanese way?

Cultural Environment of Japanese Project Management

Communication Issues in Japanese Project Management

Team Building and Managing Risk in Japanese Project Management

PMBOK Cafe Presentations "Stakeholder Management"

The theme was How to collect Requirements, set goals and manage conflict.

Communication and Culture

Team Management

Managing Customer Requirements

The Marketing School of Project Management

How to promote and sell good Project Management in Organizations.  How to Communicate Value? What is the The Future of Project Management? What tools and skills will we need to become better?

 “Marketing and Selling the Project to Senior Stakeholders.” The first phase of Planning “Collect Requirements” is a critical time when stakeholder influence is the highest. Project Managers must quickly access whom on a project needs access to information propose a solution that solves a problem and adds value to the organization. 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.

Japanese Best Practices

Japan has a long history of Culture? Projects have been completed in Japan for thousands of years.? Today, Japanese Companies are leading the world in terms of bringing new products to market.? Many of the concepts of Project Management have been imported from Japanese Business? For Example Kaizen, Ishikawa Diagrams, Affinity Diagramming, Scrum, Lean and Kanban.? The Third PMBOK Cafe is going to explore the unique nature of performing Project Management in Japan.

Participants shared their knowledge, and experiences.? The PMBOK was used as a base to compare what is different in Japan.? For Example; Project Charter, Project Plan, Earned Value Management, Risk Management etc.? What kind of Cultural Differences in Japan impact Project Management?

Scenario

In the future 2010 April, you are managing a large global project.? Most of the Project Team will be Japanese.? The Head Office is in Tokyo.? The Tokyo Office will conduct the majority of the planning/controlling/monitoring.? The customers will be global. There will be a manufacturing team in China. There will be an Information Technology Team in India. The Marketing Team will be from the USA.? The Project Managers from each team will come to Tokyo for training in Japanese Project Management Methods.? All the Project Managers are Project Management Professionals, with technical experience in their domains.

Before the planning begins, you are the activity owner for Team building activities.? Since most of the project will be planned/managed/controlled from Japan, the methods will be Japanese? The goal of the team building activity is to teach the offshore Project Managers about Japanese Business Culture and Project Management methods.