Page 330 - Global Project Management Handbook

SUCCESS FACTORS IN VIRTUAL GLOBAL SOFTWARE PROJECTS 16-17

this challenge, one has to avoid the self-reference trap, a trap of interpreting the
actions and behaviors of team members from another culture by means of one’s own
cultural values. The first step is creating awareness of the existence of cross-cultural
differences. Some ways for this include understanding your own culture first and then
understanding the culture of culturally different team members. Training can help in
this. For example, on an American-Russian VGS team, the project manager said,
“We’ve taken cross-cultural training to try to understand Russians, and they’ve also
taken classes on how to understand how to work with the United States. How tough
could that be? Well, we have our own prejudiced views of the world, so I’m sure
we’re tough people to deal with, to work with. So, you learn about some of the things,
some of the barriers that you are going to be facing—and that helped.”
A great way to reach this state of cultural awareness is via immersion, that is, living
in the foreign culture. “I spent two times in Russia, three months each time,” the execu-
tive sponsor of this project told us. The net result of these investments is faster and bet-
ter communication, higher productivity, and shorter cycle time with, of course, good
quality being a given.

CSF9: Build a Menu of Culturally Responsive Strategies. Once cross-cultural aware-
ness is created, conditions are in place to develop a menu of strategies to predict and
prevent potential problems or to reconcile cross-cultural project management dis-
tances. The choice of strategy hinges on the competency level in the counterpart’s cul-
ture. Competency implies both a knowledge of cultural values and the ability to apply
the knowledge in a project management interaction. For example, when the American
project manager’s competence in the counterpart’s culture is low, the first option is to
hire an independent facilitator to direct the parties’ interactions throughout the course
of the project. The second option—the dominance approach—is to impose American
culturally defined project management practices, perhaps because of its technological
superiority or dominant bargaining position. Here is how an American project manager
exercised this approach softly in an American-Russian VGS project:

They [the Russians] can’t brainstorm with their superior. Because they have been in a
country [Russia] with the big power distance [e.g., the difference in power between the
boss and subordinate] for so long, they are just used to people telling them what to do. So,
when you ask them to brainstorm and suggest new ideas, they won’t. Because this is a

crucial value in my company, I had them learn to brainstorm. I used all kind of tricks; I
trained them, brought them to the United States for a few weeks, and paid them monetary
incentives, and managed to get them to brainstorm.
Another approach offers mutual adjustment, in which project management practices of
all team members are mixed, using the strengths of their cultures. When cross-cultural
competency of the American project manager is high, he or she can either embrace the
counterpart’s culturally defined project management, which happened on a recent American-
English VGS team, or use a synergistic approach that “recognizes and transcends the indi-
vidual” elements of the cultures involved. It is worth noting that in some project situations,
there may be a need to select a single strategy, whereas in others, all of them may be used.

Project People
This easily may be the top strategic factor given the separations brought about by VGS
projects. As noted by a veteran of virtual projects, there are really only three major suc-
cess factors in a virtual project: “people, people, and people.” That is, no matter how good
other factors are—such as the project management process or strategic alignment—project