Page 348 - Global Project Management Handbook

MANAGING GLOBAL PROJECTS 17-5

economic, political, and security policies and regulations until the user acceptance
tests or project deployment. Owing to culture differences and diversity, a global proj-
ect team may fail to reach a common understanding of requirements and completion
criteria for the proposed solution. Ineffective communication and relationship man-
agement by global project teams may fail to capture the changing customers and their
expectations, which may jeopardize final project delivery.

Global Contract
In the multinational context, it is not easy to define the statement of works that will
get customer sign-off to establish a contractual baseline. It is even harder to track the
change requests and revision enhancements from country to country during project
execution. On the other hand, inadequate business partnership agreements internally
with subcontractors through global sourcing also may contribute to the uncertainty
and instability of service and delivery quality.

Virtual Workplace
For a global project, team members are working from remote locations through differ-
ent communication methods to form a virtual workplace. If the project manager fails
to establish proper management disciplines, execution processes, team structure, and a
project management system, then he or she will have difficulties in planning, execut-
ing, monitoring, controlling, and closing the global project with all team members
located worldwide. How a project manager creates a command, control, and commu-
nication center to manage a virtual workplace will determine the effectiveness and
final results of the project.

Innovation and Reuse of Intellectual Property
Technology is changing every day. The project is only a temporary endeavor for a
defined charter. Project team members come and go as expected. It is critical to the

success of a global project to encourage innovation and reuse of intellectual property.
The ability to increase the efficiency and productivity of a project through constant
innovation and reuse of existing intellectual property has become a core competency
of a project. Hence, creating intellectual property, managing it efficiently, and reusing
it frequently have demanded an intelligent project management system.

Total Risk Management
In general, it is highly recommended to manage a project by closely monitoring all the
risks and open issues throughout the project life cycle. For a global project, it is good
practice to collect and consolidate all the known risks and manage them globally.
Very often, issues and risks in one region may become a global phenomenon over
time, especially in the area of security, e-commerce law, currency exchange, and taxa-
tion across country boundaries. In practice, global project management is a worldwide
risk management. It is a big help to the project manager to have a project management
system that allows him or her to follow through on all the issues and risks.