Abstract

With the changes in global economy and acceptance of outsourcing for business benefits, era of
global projects execution has lead to development of global project management frameworks
which can be used for different kinds of projects in different industries to mitigate risks of
diversity in teams. This paper attempts to define the unique characteristics of different global
projects, discuss challenges in their execution and best practices based on author’s experience,
root cause analysis of global projects executed during professional career and published
material on subject. The paper also introduces the essential characteristics of the Global
Project Management Framework© developed by Jean Binder, Paul D. Gardiner and James M.
Ritchie. Framework can serve as an extension to PMI body of knowledge (PMBOK®) for global
projects execution. Paper also discuss critical best practices captured during author’s career as
leader for Global Projects execution.

Managing Global Projects: A New Challenge

A difficult and challenged world economy, global market, competition and technological
changes has lead to business organization executing projects with participants representing
various cultures, having different native languages, working in different time zones and
locations. Over the last decade most organizations particularly those in industries which have
adopted outsourcing such as IT, Manufacturing, Services, Infrastructure etc have understood the
importance of managing and leveraging a wide variety of geographical dispersed talents for
executing global projects. Global Project Management has its benefits but also throws its own
challenges and if not addressed timely may lead to increased project risks and high probability of
project failure. This paper documents global projects benefits, challenges, Global Project
Management Framework© and best practices to help project management leaders in execution of
global projects successfully.

Benefits of Global Projects:

When deciding in deployment of either a global team or collocated teams for business critical,
important and strategic projects, organizations undertake cost-benefits analysis of project
execution. Project executed by global teams provide following major benefits:
 Multicultural flexibility,
 Ease of placing critical team members near stakeholders,
 Cost advantage,
 Access to worldwide pool of expertise,
 Optimal utilization of expertise independent of locations,
 Ease of scalability,
 Efficient utilization of resources,
 Increased innovation,
 Faster delivery due to follow the sun time model.

Global Project Management Challenges: Generally Project Managers and management treat
global projects execution same as standard collocated projects execution. Project owners and
managers need to be aware of the peculiarities of global project management and teams in order
to manage them well throughout the life cycle of the project. Following are the major challenges
of managing global projects:

a) Geographical Distance: Majority of Project Managers are trained and experienced to

handle co-located teams which can be controlled, directed and managed efficiently
directly. Geographical distance is perceived as loss of control by project management
team with lack of real time communication, difficulty in real time project monitoring &
tracking, following uniform project management processes and adjustment to different
time zones. Lack of good quality telecommunication services adds further challenges.

b) Culture: Individual team member and groups professional behaviour is influenced and
impacted by diverse social, educational, expertise, regional, religious, and ethnic
background. Lack of understanding of different cultures leads to interpreting reality very
differently. Different teams might believe that their way of thinking, acting and doing
things is the only rational way. Thus, it becomes difficult to develop culture of
collaboration and open communication in teams which are not co-located and are
culturally diverse. Team diversity can sometimes be the source of conflicts and
misunderstandings. Motivation and support of different project sites or team members
can easily get lost by the imposition of rigid processes of dominant teams or
organization’s central / headquarters management team cultures.

c) Communication: Dispersed teams are often put together without the members knowing
each other. Teams face communication barrier as team members rarely or never meet or
have limited face to face meetings. Communication difficulties are further compounded
by teams communicating in different languages or difference in comfort on English as
communication medium. Distributed teams are more prone to communication trouble,
compared to traditional teams, mostly due to non-availability of non-verbal
communication. Teams that meet face to face build up stronger relationships than those
who do not meet. Creating cohesiveness, breaking feeling of difference and building trust
in distributed team is more difficult. Team management also face challenges in
organizing meetings due to multiple time zones, choice of communication medium,
frequency of communications and loss of focus in indirect communication.

d) Stakeholder Management: Global projects are affected by multiple heterogeneous

stakeholders with differing interests, demands and expectations. Majority of capital
budget projects have large external stakeholders such as community / political groups,
environmentalists, regulatory agencies, local and national governments. Such large
external stakeholders in addition to internal stakeholders may require considerable
planning, effort and time for stakeholder management.

e) Excessive Management attention: As some global projects are business critical,

management tend to ‘micro-manage’, thus interfering with plans and de-motivating
project managers and team. Frequent management reviews, high level instructions,
additional reporting leads to pressure on project leadership and loss of productive time.
 f) Inherent Risks. Majority of global projects are large, complex and has many internal
inherent risks. Inconsistent project management methodology in various geographical
regions, lack of cooperation between different Geographical units, different regulatory
frameworks, different understandings and interpretation of contract are some of the basic
inherent risks. Very often not all of the team members and stakeholders are involved in
the formulation of a common project goal, which limit their understanding and
commitment to it leading to internal conflicts.

Global Project Management Framework©

Global Project Management Framework© developed by Jean Binder, Paul D. Gardiner and
James M. Ritchie provides a set of recommendations that can have a positive influence on the
execution and performance of global projects. Framework is based on the models from
Organization Theory. The Organizational Change foundation of the framework shown in Fig A
allows an approach while defining project lifecycle processes and practices, and the
implementation of the recommendations during global project execution. Framework addresses
processes and practices with respect to Global teams, Global communications, Global
organization, Global Collaboration tools and techniques.

Organization can select which areas of improvement are required, depending on their specific
business and project needs. They can also determine the order and priorities to implement the
groups of recommendations, depending on their corporate cultures and availability of enterprise
Project Management tools and technologies. They have the flexibility to select which particular
recommendations are applicable to their global projects, considering their main diversity
characteristics and business. Framework is recommended to be applied along with Project
Management Institute® methodology of Project Management. Framework consists of five
interdependent Key Knowledge Areas and five sub categories of Success Factors each.

 Global Teams: The knowledge of effective global project team management can cover
the stakeholder and team management challenges. Success factor for building global
teams are :
 – Cross-cultural Collaboration: Major skills for cross cultural collaboration are:
 Keep communication simple
 Understand cultural diversity
 Develop understanding of individual cultures
 Develop and demand tolerance.

– Global Team Leadership: Effective leadership can produce effective results with
global teams. Some of the critical behaviour of global leadership are:
 Creating meaningful goals
 Building confidence and commitment
 Create opportunities for all
 Create supportive environment.

– Trust Building: Building trust in global teams is the most critical factor for high
team performance. In global teams, there are inherent trust bursting factors which
may become unmanageable. Following is the recommended process for trust
building:
 Identify the level of trust required in team
 Determine the weak communication channels in team
 Establish trust in the initial phases of the project
 Maintain trust during the project implementation
 Build on trust created past projects to create a healthy and collaborative
environment for future projects.

– Conflict Resolution: Every team has internal conflicts at some points in project
life cycle. If not resolved timely can lead to project failure. Following are the
guidelines to deal effectively with conflicts:
 Use powers of observation and active listening skills to smell conflicts
 Do everything to minimize potential conflict
 Establish tools and processes to minimize team conflict (i.e. Development
and sharing of communications plan, agreement on conflict resolution
process, regular meetings and good communications skills)
 Dealing with conflict at its initial occurrence
 Have virtual team building exercises and meetings to celebrate successes,
recognize accomplishments, and reward achievements.

– Coaching over distance. Global project managers can improve the performance
of distant team members by adopting a ‘coaching’ style and encouraging them to
think for themselves and work independently without regular monitoring and
directions.

 Global Communication: The knowledge area deal with communication process to

handle dispersed stakeholders. These processes are complement to communication
processes as defined in the PMI PMBOK® guide. For effective global communication:
– Identify Internal & External Stakeholders and define their individual
communication requirements and communication channels/ medium
 – Agree and document rules and templates for communication

– Global Communication Strategy. Process for communication strategy is as

follow:
 Identifying the types of information to be communicated;
 Gathering the communication requirements from key stakeholders;
 Determining how the communication will effectively happen.

– Global Communication Techniques. Process for collection of status from team

members, compilation and distributing to stakeholders is as follow:
 Periodic collecting information from the global team members
 Distributing information to the global stakeholders in as agreed format and
periodicity.
 Exchanging project information with program offices and other project
teams

– Global Creativity. Using modern Knowledge capture tools such as brainstorming,

respiratory grid, black boarding, storytelling etc to increase productivity.

 Global Organizations: The knowledge area deals with all recommendations on creating
organizational structure for successful global projects.

– Global Project Structures: Global Project Managers apply a combination of

following structures according to the organizational culture, the availability of
resources, complexity of projects and customer requirements to organize team
structures:
 Offshore based centralized Project Management
 Distributed Project Management with local onsite project coordinators
 Distributed Project Management with functional coordinators
 Matrix organization by utilizing global network of organization project
managers

– Selection of International Human Resources based on availability of skill pool,

expertise, impact of local labor laws on project execution, labor cost and cost of
communication & logistics.

– Global Program Management Office: Establish Global PMO based on PMI

Program Management framework® to ensure that all projects and programs are
aligned with organizational objectives, efficiently coordinate work effort, and
provide the best use of resources within projects and programs.

– Organizational Support: Global projects require support of different organization

support groups such as resources management, logistics, IT infrastructure, admin,
HR, legal and finance for successful execution of project. Therefore, processes
 and practices that foster cooperation and collaboration are required and agreed
with all support group stakeholders during project initiation phase.

– Global Collaborative Networks. Organizations establish and maintain their

competitiveness not solely by optimizing their own potentials, but more often by
being able to use the resources of others. For global projects success cooperation
among different individuals and group such as vendors, suppliers, service
providers etc is required. Program and project managers have the responsibility of
driving these networks towards their common project goals, by coordinating,
collaboration and communication activities, and managing the sharing of interests
between the common objective and the goals of the individual companies or
groups.

 Collaborative Tools: This knowledge area provides generic strategies for the
implementation of collaborative tools: basic technologies (e-mail and telephones),
synchronous audio and video tools (audio and video conferencing), synchronous text and
image tools (instant messaging and web conferencing), asynchronous knowledge sharing
tools and asynchronous project management information systems. This knowledge area
represents the main enterprise project management technological solution available to
global projects. Enterprise can choose and standardize tools(COTS or open sources)
based on their requirement for project management for following:
– Audio and video conferences
– Text and image communication including document management
– Knowledge sharing
– Enterprise Project Management Software
– Workflow Management systems

 Collaborative Techniques – The knowledge area provide techniques, systems and

procedures need to be available to all stakeholders involved in global projects to increase
adoption of the new set of tools
.
– Basic Techniques: Use email and telephone a collaborative Project Management
tool. Using calendar and Mobile e‐mail access, project team can work out of the
office without missing any appointments or conversations. By means of
collaboration calendar tools project managers and teams can organize their
meetings effectively and efficiently crosswise multiple time zones. Teams can
also utilize free open source Instant Messaging to beat language and
communication style obstacles.

– Audio and video techniques: Using audio and video conferencing Project
managers can organize team buildings to generate trust, commitment and manage
conflicts
 – Online meetings: With modern Web based conferencing tools global teams can
talk and share information of the project online.

– Knowledge sharing techniques: By means of centralized information SharePoint,

Wiki etc, project team members can share data, documents etc and there will be
only one version instead of sending out by e‐mail many files with different
revisions.

– Collaborative Enterprise Project Management tools help global project manager

to plan, coordinate, control, and monitor distributed and complex projects using a
single system. It enables project teams to collaborate across departmental,
corporate, and national boundaries and to master growing project complexity.

Figure B illustrate the resulting framework for global project management consisting of
five interdependent Key knowledge areas and five sub categories of success factor each.

Organization can decide which segments of the Cartesian framework are applicable according to
their business strategies and implement those parts of the model to improve their efficiency on
global projects execution. The organizational policies, standards and culture can be improved
according to the recommendations and this model can serve as guide to develop organization
Global Project Management methodology and detailed processes based on technological choice,
company cultures and the different cultures of people participating in the project execution.

Global Project Risks Management

Discussion on Global Project Management cannot be complete without addressing global risks.
Global projects like any other projects have inherent risks. Besides the typical risks that any
domestic projects face global projects have some unique risks. Compared with domestic projects,
global projects have following unique risks:

 Political
 Legal
 Economic
 Socio-cultural

Among these risks, political risk is the most difficult to mitigate. To mitigate it, overseas project
stakeholder should locate and choose overseas projects carefully. Cooperating and keeping good
relationships with the local government are also necessary. Multinationals make effort to build
political relations to influence political decision in their favor. In recent past corporate are
working together to influencing visa and other regulatory hindrances. Legal risks arise from
legal and regulatory obligations, including contract risks and litigation brought against the
organization. Legal risks can be mitigated by contract review by specialist legal teams during
RFP and contract negotiation and project life cycle. Legal team should be involved immediately
if there are risks of contract terms and conditions breach at any stage in project execution.
Economy/Financial risk includes interest rate fluctuation, inflation, foreign currency exchange
rate fluctuation, tax rate increase etc. Effective economic risk mitigating strategy is to allocate
risks to local vendors, partners and local entity of company through contracts is a very normal
method in Global projects practice. Currency fluctuation risks can be mitigating by carefully
planning which currency of payment should use in the contract. Socio-Culture risk is another
significant risk. To mitigate culture risk, foreigners should understand and respect local culture.
Appointing overseas project manager who is good at cross-culture management and has previous
working experience in host country are also useful.

In order to manage different types of risks in each phase of project lifecycle and to identify vital
risk in global project a flexible and agile approach is required to risk management that take into
account complexities of project, cultural diversities and high level of uncertainties.

Global Project Management Key Best Practices:

Organizations continue to look for the key to unlocking the mystery of Global Project
Management best practices, but the steps that go into successful global project management are
similar to standard Project Management procedures that, if executed, will improve a project’s
chances of success. Some of the best practices which can help to face Global Project
Management challenges are as follows
• Executive Management Support. Despite their best intentions, global project teams and
project managers do not always have enough authority to make all the decisions necessary to
accomplish project goals. This is where timely, substantive and consistent support from
senior management can make a huge difference in a project’s results. Timely decisions,
allocation of sufficient resources and effective escalation management are key management
support which can help successful execution of projects.

• Competency based team formation: Team composition, selection and formation be based
on competence, expertise and experience without any biases on organization diversity
guidelines. Team composition be reviewed with local HR and Resources Management group
to optimize cross-functional expertise and determine individual preferences in working
together.

• Agreement on project goals, project plan and project scope definition: It is advisable to
have program and project managers as well as team-members agree on a clear understanding
of project goals, including outlining the business objectives, setting a time frame in which
they are to be accomplished, and spelling out why they are necessary. Team members are
recommended be part of project goal setting and planning in initiation phase of project.

• Building Trust by shared goals: The key for successful virtual team working is interaction
that develops trust through actions and communicating individual roles and shared goals. It
is critical to build relationship to work cohesively even in virtual environment.

• Build multicultural skills: All team members particularly Project Manager, team leads,
Business leads and architect have to develop themselves to be a Global Citizen. Project
leadership has to take the time upfront to understand all the environments and cultures they
are working in.

• Develop and use Communication Plan, Templates and Team Standing Operating
Procedures: Defined project communication plan with clearly agreed standard operating
procedures and templates helps to improve communication conflicts and barriers. It achieves
timely simplified communication with standardized tools, formats, and terminology.

• Use Collaborative tools and technology for team interaction. Use of email, mobile
technology, IM, collaborative Project Management tools etc help to improve team interaction
and develop a collaborative culture.

• Tool based effective virtual team meetings: Use Web conferencing tools to create, foster,
and force engagement and interactions frequently between teams. Group IM can be good tool
for unplanned interactions.

• Increased Quantity of Communication: For success of global project leadership is

required to invest on increased communication. Regular periodic communication will keep
team focused, maintain commitment, enhance motivation and maintain relationships.
Encourage greater ownership from remote team members.
• Collaborate, Collaborate, Collaborate: Team members perform much more effectively if
they are in active communication with each other so that each dependency is clearly
understood and managed. Hold periodic information sessions with the team to discuss issues,
and collectively figure out correction strategies. The method of communication is not as
important as the action itself. Keep everyone informed. Collaboration is the key to success
for a global project.

Global Project Management Framework Implementation

A simple scalable and standardized implementation of Global Project Management Framework

is to implement five global key knowledge areas, unique global risks management along with
industry standard guide to the Project Management body of Knowledge ( PMBOK® Guide)
produced by Project Management institute ( PMI®). Fig C describes Global Project
Management Framework implementation.

Conclusion

Global projects execution had additional challenges in comparison to standard collocated

projects execution and if not addressed timely may lead to project failure. The Global Project
Management Framework© defined by the authors Jean Binder, Paul D. Gardiner and James M.
Ritchie provides a new set of practices, processes and skills to execute global projects.
Framework extends PMI Project Management methodology with areas of knowledge that require
special attention for successful global project execution.
References:

1. Jean Binder, Paul D. Gardiner & James M. Ritchie “Global project management
framework: a Cartesian concept model” EMEA Congress May 2009
2. Kathrin Köster, 2009, International Project Management Kathrin Köster, Heilbronn
University
3. A Guide to Project Management Book Fourth Edition PMI USA 2004
4. Harold D Kerzner , 2009, Project Management A Systems Approach to Planning,
Scheduling, and Controlling , John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
5. Global Project Management Handbook David I. Cleland Roland Gareis 2nd edition
Mcgraw-Hill 1994
6. A model of success factors for Global Project Management Jean Binder, Paul D.
Gardiner, James M. Ritchie, IPMA Vol XXXII Page 4
7. Next generation of Meeting Tools for Virtual Project Teams Cornelia Veil IPMA Vol
XXXV Page 41
8. Risk Management for Overseas Development Projects, Shuying Li, International
Business Research, Vol 2 No 3 1999
9. Three perspectives to global projects Managing risks in multicultural project networks,
Kirsi Aaltonen, Mervi Murtonen & Sampo Tukiainen, VTT TIEDOTTEITA . Research Notes
2491
10. Master's Thesis Nora-Martina Neu Managing Stakeholders in Global Projects
Norwegian University of Science and Technology 2013
11. Master Thesis Software Engineering Thesis no: MSE-2009-11 June 2009 Success Factors
in Building and Maintaining Trust Among Globally Distributed Team Members Samireh
Jalali and Branislav Zlatkovic School of Engineering Blekinge Institute of Technology
Sweden
12. http://www.globalprojectmanagement.org/index.php/publications

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