The  2010 Summer Session of PMBOK Cafe Marketing School studied the relationship between requirements documentation and planning for Change Management. While part of a Project Managers job is to prevent change that may negatively impact a project. What are the strategies that the Global Project Manager can use during the planning stage to identiy the best method to manage and control change?

The Cafe participants divided into two teams.

1. Selling Trust and Buying Commitment
2. Effective Top Down Approach for Change

What and How of Stakeholder Management Approach. Focus on Stakeholder Needs and Requirements.The problem is we don't know current stakeholder status. Our dream is better understanding of our stakeholders,  and take proactive actions. We have to use technology to visualize our stakeholders and be able to forecast stakeholder satisfaction. Roadmap: Proactive Project Management, Technology

Proactive Project Management

Current Situation for Global Project Management

Survey Results

Importance of Proactive Project Management

Case Study: Toyota

Quality Issues

Results: Forecast, Risk, Proactive Project Management

Technology

Quality Control

Real Time

Knowledge Share

Scenario based forecasting

Is Forecasting Necessary

How can we manage stakeholders of a global project in 2012? Today we are going to talk about stress-free stakeholder management in global project in 2012. You are here to seek solutions or ways for making very difficult stakeholder management easier (less stressful or without conflict). We face more difficulties in global project environment due to more diversity with different culture and background. Stakeholder management is also the one of the difficulties. Stress-free stakeholder management in a global project! Metrics is the key! -> dashboard Stakeholder holder management based on feeling is not enough anymore. Even the experienced project manager needs metrics. Road map (Where are we going?) Importance of Stakeholder management, What does stakeholder management mean? Realistic and crucial metrics for stakeholder management.

Importance of Stakeholder management. Positioning of Stakeholder management in project management

Impact of Stakeholder management on project (Cost,Time,Scope). What does stakeholder management mean? Monitor -> Analyze -> Action Monitoring is the starting point and key. Realistic and crucial metrics for stakeholder management. -> “Metrics are the key!”! Satisfaction Data Source: Rules to get feedback from stakeholders

Influence on project Data Source: Stakeholder analysis (ranking) in the beginning of projects.

Trust relationship Data Source: Analyze logs from communication tool like e-mail, chat, IP phone.

What do we need for stakeholder management? Let’s implement metrics driven stakeholder management!

Scenario: Global Stakeholder Dashboard

The President of your Company has been instructed by the Shareholders to more closely manage sustainability and the environment. Your PMO has identified that this requires that sustainability and environmental values shall be standardized. Along with sustainability, profitability, customer satisfaction and all the other stakeholders shall be balanced using a Stakeholder Management approach. You have been assigned to manage the Project “Global Stakeholder Dashboard”. The project has a fixed deadline of 2012. Document the details of what will a “Global Stakeholder Dashboard” look like in 2012? Discuss with your Project Manager Peers, Outline your Idea and Present your views.

Forecasting Presentation

Metrics Presentation

Team Management

Success of the project depends on team success. The single biggest factor on any project is people. Managing people is very important in the management of a project. Since defined process are executed by people, it has to be carried and synchronized in way with the common goal in mind. People and process are equally crucial to projects.

A Japanese Idiom "Ten people, ten colors". It means it is very common to have difference of opinion, understanding, beliefs and values across the team. Conflicts and  cultural difference are very common problems in offshore  teams also. All members reach total agreement, share one vision and common sense like one big family. Working together with respect and trust.

"Teamwork is not a new idea. Readers can trace the basic concepts of organizing and managing teams back to biblical times. However, in today's more complex, multinational, and technological sophisticated environment, the work group has reemerged as a business concept and its unified team performance is now regarded as crucial to project success (Thamhain & Wilemon, 1998; Willimas, 2002).

Some of the biggest constraints facing global teams, is coordinating people schedules across time zones, Language Barriers and Cultural Differences. 

Seven beliefs for great high performance.

1. Clear and Public Accountability
2. Trusted Competency
3. Give and Take
4. Total Transparency
5. Shared Glory
6. Meaningful Mission value
7. Outcome Optimism

Team Building is the key to a strong business and project success. Success in team building is measured in two ways: by keeping conflicts down and performance up. If Team works as a family success is guaranteed. Build trusted teams and have successful projects.

Presentation Communication and Culture

Communication is a key factor in project Success, The differences in culture are one of the crucial elements in project risk. This presentation shows how to plan for Cultural diversity in Projects.

Poor communication is the factor that most often causes a global project to fail. Nearly 28 percent of more  than 1,000 respondents singled out poor communications as the number one cause of project failure. 30% of people in class survey believed 60-80% of projects failed due to poor communications. Communication constraints on global projects are "The Culture GAP", Different backgrounds,  Reactive thinking and Negative thinking. The way to overcome these are to have an Open mindset,   Positive thinking and Respect for each other. How to do this we need to Remove communication barriers and Solve Logical Barriers. How do we  Solve Mental Barriers (Culture differences)? We need to communicate formally and informally. Better communication can  Understand and respect each other Solve Physical Barriers Use technology as supporting only where appropriate Get face-to-face communication if required. Use technology as supporting only where appropriate Get face-to-face communication if required.

Hoi Fan Wong

Akihisa Iwakawa

Masaki Iwakura 

Collaborative Brainstorm

What rules would you include for your team on a Global Project. The main team is in Japan. Team Members from around the world will be working on a global project together. How can you manage team expectations from a Japanese perspective?

Share your thoughts here collaborate together.....

2010 S2W3 JBP

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.

Workshop Participants Created a Survey in the Workshop to create data for their Presentations.

How many % of communication problems are caused by cultural differences?
	0-20%   3 27% 20% to 40%   4 36% 40% to 60%   2 18% 60%80%   2 18% 80% to 100%   0 0% Other   0 0%

How many % of the communication problems are caused by physical restriction or poor communication technology?
	0-20%   1 9% 20% to 40%   5 45% 40% to 60%   4 36% 60% to 80%   1 9% 80% to 100%   0 0%

How many % of communication problems are caused by missing ground rules, like lack of agenda, failure to attend on time etc.
	0-20%   0 0% 20% to 40%   3 27% 40% to 60%   6 55% 60% to 80%

Brainstorming Stakeholder Management

Japanese Project Managers brainstorming Stakeholder Mangagement on Global Projects.

2010 S2W2 SM