Managing differences in project environments

With the current trends in business and technology, the odds that you will manage a project consisting of stakeholders from the same culture, located in the same environment, and representing a common business function decrease as each day passes. In the past, these more complex project situations were assigned to proven, experienced project managers. Today, you are likely to deal with cross-functional, cross-cultural, or virtual environments (or combinations of these three) in your initial project management opportunity. Thus, it is important to review key aspects of managing differences in project environments.

Five Key Principles

No matter the situation, there is a common set of principles that you can apply to better manage any project where there are significant differences in the composition of the team. The differences can include location, business function, or cultural aspects. Let’s take a look at the five fundamental principles that will guide your efforts in any of these situations:

1. No new management techniques  required - The first principle to understand is that it does not take additional or new management techniques to be effective at leading these types of projects. These project situations just place more emphasis and importance on the project management fundamentals reviewed in earlier posts. In particular, these aspects of project management become essential:

• Well-defined and properly planned project
• Effective project sponsorship
• Buy-in and commitment on success criteria
• Well-managed expectations
• Clear roles and responsibilities
• Effective communications
• Effective risk management

In addition, the discipline to properly document plans, meeting minutes, decisions, and issues is generally more important due to the need to ensure proper and clear communications.

2. The right leadership approach - The best project leaders in these situations are ones who possess the right mix of communication, facilitative, interpersonal, and expectation management skills to
accomplish the following:

• Instill confidence in the stakeholders that he can lead them to the accomplishment of the project objectives.
• Take the perspective of each stakeholder group to ensure each group believes they are included, understood, valued, and “heard” in the project process.
• Create alignment around the project goals and concentrate the team’s focus on what unifies them (the common ground).
• Help each stakeholder group understand how their piece (work process, interests, and needs) fits into the overall puzzle.
• Take a flexible approach by maintaining focus on the major project priorities and an understanding that everything else is just a means for getting there.

3. Effective communications -  Effective project communications are a bedrock aspect of project management. Specifically, in these types of project situations, here are the key points to keep in mind:

• Use communication mechanisms that are accessible to everyone.
• Use project collaboration environments and techniques that are accessible to everyone.
• Develop a project vocabulary. Be willing to use their terms and terms they understand. Be mindful of any confusion over terminology being used.
• Plan on frequent touchpoints to compensate for the lack of face time, especially in virtual project team settings.
• Document project communications, especially anything discussed verbally, to ensure mutual understanding and agreement.
• Ensure each team member is clear on the following at all times:

1. Project goals
2. Team members’ roles and responsibilities
3. Team members’ assignments
4. Project schedule
5. Project collaboration environments and tools
6. Chain of command and reporting relationships 

4. Verify understanding - In these project situations, more time is necessary to verify that you are being understood and that you (your team) accurately understand the other stakeholders. A few specific things to be mindful of include the following:

• Be wary of any assumptions.
• Ask the extra question to make sure.
• Establish and clarify team norms and procedures.
• Explain project processes and the value they serve.
• The larger the project, the more effort to get through requirements definition and review cycles.
• Requirements gathering needs to use multiple methods to ensure completeness and understanding.
• Take the time to walk through their current processes.

5. More project management effort - This is somewhat implied by the first principle in this list, but it is important to understand that the project management component of these type of environments is more significant (as a rule). There can be a wrong perception that the effort to leverage these latest technologies and business trends to gain efficiency and to accomplish projects faster also means less project management effort. Incorrect. The effort to lead, facilitate, ensure understanding, and build teamwork in these situations is at least equal, and in most cases much greater, than the effort to do the same with a collocated team.

With the prior principles understood, let’s review a few proven tips and techniques specific to leading cross-functional projects:

1. Ensure proper project sponsorship and governance - Any time a project’s scope addresses more than a single business function, it is critical that the project sponsor have jurisdiction over all the business functions affected. If the sponsor does not have this jurisdiction then a process (often by a senior level committee—steering committee, change control board) needs to be established up front to deal with any territorial issue or change request that affects the cross-functional environment. 
2. Designate functional leaders - As part of your project organization and your role-responsibility matrix, include functional leader positions as the primary representatives from each distinct group. These roles are instrumental to facilitating the project process and to reducing your workload. 
3. Acknowledge the importance and value of each group - Although you might serve as the ringmaster and steadfastly communicate the vision and process approach for the project, you should be quick to acknowledge the importance, value, and role that each group contributes to the success of
   the project. You don’t have all the answers, so you need to facilitate the execution of the project and instill a sense of ownership into each of your functional leaders.
4. Get commitments from respective resource managers - As part of the collaborative approach that is needed for these types of projects, make sure to work closely with the various resource managers who are responsible for assigning the appropriate personnel to the project. In many cases, the resource managers are the bosses of the individuals who will serve as your designated functional leads. Invest the time with them. Review the project definition with them. Include them on the review and acceptance of the project plan, especially the resource plan and project schedule.
5. Ensure project alignment - In case you were not involved in the project definition process, make sure your cross-functional project is aligned with the other projects underway or planned in the enterprise. There is nothing worse for team spirit and commitment than to start a project that has an
   obvious conflict with other initiatives.
6. Focus on workflow process -To add more value to the project, to better serve your role as facilitator, and to help you make better decisions, invest the effort early to understand the complete workflow process that is affected by the project. In many cases, your functional leaders will have silo outlooks and will not fully understand how they get the inputs they do or how their outputs affect the rest of the operation. 
7. Kickoff meetings are essential - Kickoff meetings are always excellent tools for setting expectations and communicating the same message to the key stakeholders. On cross-functional projects, where multiple departments or business units are involved, this type of event is critical to getting the project started correctly and to improving the chances for success. 
8. Resolve issues aggressively - On cross-functional projects, you are likely to see issues occur that do not have a clear owner. It is imperative that you take an aggressive attitude toward finding resolutions to any issue to protect the project’s critical success factors.
9. Look out for dysfunctional relations - Now, you would think that since the various functional areas are all members of the same, common organization that it would be one big happy family. Well, people are people, families are families, and dysfunction is always close by. Just understand that in many organizations, there can be historical disputes between functional groups or individuals within the group that affect your project’s performance.
10. Invest time on communications planning - Communication is key to project success. For crossfunctional projects, you need to invest additional time in planning your project communications due to the heightened importance they will have in this setting and to the increased number of stakeholders that need to be included.
11. Invest time on requirements definition - The requirements definition process is often the source for missed expectations. This is especially true with cross-functional projects due to the increased breadth of scope, the number of stakeholders, and the team dynamics that can come into play. In addition, as mentioned in the fourth principle in managing these types of projects, more effort is needed to verify understanding. The key is to plan adequate time and effort for a thorough requirements definition phase, so you can avoid the common problems that contribute to insufficient requirements definition, including the following:

• Reluctant signatures - Stakeholders who approve requirements without a real understanding or buy-in. Be especially cognizant of stakeholders who are quiet, susceptible to peer pressure, or who offer no nonverbal signs that the light bulb has gone on.
• Misunderstandings, assumptions, and unstated expectations - Use multiple requirements gathering methods, leverage visual models, ask extra questions, and focus on change impact.

Now let’s review a few proven tips and techniques specific to leading cross-cultural projects:

Be respectful - Take time to consider the effect that the different cultures, time zones, holiday schedules, and work-day schedules will have on the project. Common impact areas are terminology, risk management, communications planning (including best times for status meetings), and
the project schedule.

Potential culture impacts - Understand potential cultural effects on project communications and team interactions. Specifically, be aware that due to cultural differences, others might not be as assertive or willing to speak up to the degree you would expect. In addition, review any conventions that you plan to use for status reporting. Make sure the conventions do not convey some unintended meaning and that everyone is comfortable using them.

Listen for understanding - Even with a common language (in most cases, English), the use and the sound of the language can vary dramatically. The key here is to kick your active listening skills into high gear and focus on understanding. Don’t let yourself get distracted or tune out because of accents or the irregular use of certain words. Stay engaged, be patient, ask questions, clarify terms, and don’t stop until you are comfortable that you’re on the same wavelength with your cross-cultural partners.

Plan on more formality - To reduce the impact of cultural differences and to ensure mutual understanding, cross-cultural projects are more mechanical, formal, and by-the-book. You just need to plan on this and realize that project management shortcuts are not as likely in these environments.

Techniques for Leading Virtual Projects

Any project that consists of team members not collocated in the same physical location is a virtual project to some degree. The more geographically dispersed the team members and the more interaction that is done with non–face-to-face communications, the more virtual the project is.

With the continued advances in communications and information technology, and the common everyday use of mobile phones, remote network access, email, web mail, pagers, and instant messaging, the ability of people to productively collaborate on common work is increased dramatically. And, of course, the reduced office costs and the increased ability to leverage outsourcing options are very attractive to most organizations.

However, these potential productivity gains and cost reductions do not happen automatically, especially in the demanding environment of most projects. There is a tremendous amount of energy needed to plan, coordinate, and manage a virtual project team. Let’s review a few key tips and techniques specific to leading virtual project teams:

Get some face-to-face time - If there is any way possible to get face time with your virtual team members, do it as face-to-face interaction is instrumental in building trust, developing relationships, and jump-starting project momentum. The following scenarios are recommended for your consideration:

• Get everyone together for the project kickoff meeting.
• Try to collocate the team for the first stage (or as long as you can) and then let team members return to their remote locations.
• If none of these are possible, try a mini-kickoff session that focuses on the work planning and identifying risks.
• Depending on the project phase and the nature of the work, look at split work environments (such as two days on-site, three days remote, or one week on-site every month).
• If it’s available, look to leverage video conferencing as much as possible. If not, consider creative use of digital pictures.

Establish team norms - Facilitate the rules and procedures that will guide team interactions and productivity with the team. Key items include the following:

• Core hours everyone needs to be available (online)
• Access to team members during non-core hours
• Preferred team communication and collaboration mechanisms
• Preferred meeting times, especially important when members are in different time zones
• Reporting status
• Project repository
• Contingency plans for network or phone outages
• Team directory

Responsiveness is the difference-maker - The key to successful virtual project teams is  responsiveness. If people are easily accessible and respond quickly, most organizations couldn’t care less where people are working. These environments do require team members to be professional and
mature.

Set up protocols for virtual meetings -Virtual meetings are the lifeblood of a virtual project team. Here are some key reminders to make these meetings more productive:

• Use technologies that are available to everyone.
• Use technologies that are reliable for everyone.
• Use technologies that meet the security requirements of the project and sponsoring organizations.
• Ensure everyone understands how to use the technologies.
• Make sure to send agenda and reference materials in advance of the meeting (or just post to the project repository and send a link to it).
• Review protocols for asking questions.
• Keep discussions focused on items that pertain to all participants. For other items, take them offline. Stop the discussion and assign an action item to schedule a separate meeting with those involved.
• Instant messaging conferences might be appropriate for core team meetings.

Establish clear time zone references - This might not be as much of an issue, but in this age of multiple time zones and daylight savings time, take the time to review and clarify time-zone designations and conventions. This goes a long way to avoiding meeting time conflicts. There are two recommendations here:

• Use the newer time zone references, such as Eastern Time (ET) to refer to whatever time it is on the East Coast rather than Eastern Standard Time (EST) or Eastern Daylight Savings Time (EDST).
• Reference city or state to clarify the intended time, such as Chicago time, London time, or Arizona time.

Verify productivity early - To ensure that the virtual work environment generates the expected level of productivity needed for project success, pay close attention to initial work efforts. The fundamentals of work assignments apply the same here, but they’re even more important:
• Invest time to clarify work expectations and completion criteria.
• Provide all necessary resources.
• Keep work packages small—less than the standard reporting period.

Use preferred communication methods of customer and sponsor - Either as part of your initial communications planning or as an observation you make during the project, make sure to communicate with your sponsor and your key customers in the manner they prefer and in the manner that best fits their learning style. If this is in person, meet them in person. If it is via phone at 7:30 a.m., call them at 7:30 a.m. If it is email at the end of the day, email them. The two important things to note here are the following:

• The communication mechanisms you use for the core project team might likely be different than what you use for sponsor and customer communications.
• Use the methods they prefer, not what you prefer. This approach leads to fewer miscommunication and expectation management issues.

Here I am ending today's post. In the next post we'll review vendor management