Managing International Projects and Teams Meaning

International project management (IPM) is the management of projects that involve multi-national resources and teams working together to attain the project goals.

International project management is the management of projects internationally or across borders and cultures, therefore international project management requires a specific set of skills to ensure success when managing international projects. In particular, the importance cultural awareness plays in international projects and how the Hofstede 5-D model can be used in an international project management framework.

With globalization, businesses tend to be no longer confined within their national boundaries. They expand internationally to achieve the basic goals like:

• Increasing their market share.
• Reducing the overall cost by leveraging international talents and resources.

Project Team Roles

Project Manager

The project manager plays the chief part in the project and is responsible for its success and quality. His job is to make sure that the project proceeds and completes within the specified time frame and the ascertained budget, and accomplishing its goals at the same time. Project managers ensure that resources are sufficient for the project and maintain relationships with contributors and stakeholders.

A project manager is entrusted with various duties and responsibilities like:

• Managing deliverables according to the decided plan
• Developing a project plan
• Leading and managing the team
• Deciding the methodology used in the project
• Establishing a project schedule and determining each phase
• Providing regular updates to upper management
• Assigning tasks to team members

Project Sponsor

The project sponsor is the driver and in-house champion of the project. He has a vested interest in the successful outcome of the project. They are typically members of senior management those with a stake in the project’s outcome. Project sponsors work closely with the project manager. They legitimize the project’s objectives and participate in high-level project planning. Also, they often help resolve conflicts and remove obstacles that occur throughout the project, and they sign off on approvals needed to advance each phase.

Project sponsor duties:

• Make key business decisions for the project
• Approve the project budget
• Ensure availability of resources
• Communicate the project’s goals throughout the organization

Project Team Member

Project team members are mainly the people who work on various phases of the project. They could be in-house staff or external consultants and maybe working on a full-time or part-time basis. Their roles can differ according to each project.

The responsibilities of the members can be summed up as the following:

• Provide expertise
• Contribute to overall project objectives
• Complete individual deliverables
• Work with users to determine and meet business needs
• Document the process

Composition of Project Teams

The project team’s compositions may differ based on the organization’s culture, scope, and location. Some of the examples of the team compositions are given below:

Dedicated

This is the simplest structure for a project manager. In this composition, all or most of the members are appointed to work full-time on the project. The project team has to report directly to the project manager, and the lines of authority are well-defined so team members can concentrate on the project’s objectives. Dedicated project teams are usually seen in organizations, where most of the resources of the organization are involved in project work, and project managers have independence and power.

Part-Time

Some projects are assigned to a team as additional temporary work, with the rest of the organization’s members carrying out their regular functions. The functional managers have control over the team members and the resources assigned to the project. On the other hand, the project manager continues with other management duties. Also, Part-time team members can be assigned to more than one project at one time. Part-time project teams are mostly seen within functional organizations. Matrix organizations use both dedicated and part-time project teams.

Some compositions vary based on organizational structure, like a partnership-based project where one lead organization appoints a project manager to coordinate the efforts of the partners. Some vary based on the geographic location of their members, like virtual teams. Virtual teams fulfill the needs for projects where resources are situated onsite or offsite or both, depending on the activities.

The success of a project cannot be accredited to a single person. It is the contribution of every member of the team and people associated from outside. It is imperative to keep an account of how many people are related to your project and which role should be assigned to each one of them. A proper training and thorough knowledge of the subject can guide you with the same.

International Project Management and Cultural Dimensions

The application of Hofstede’s 5-D model was originally used for International Business and Marketing applications, because it is quite effective in understanding a country’s cultural differences and social norms and gaining insights into the subtle differences and needs of different cultures, we can quickly see the value in its application in international project management, particular from an engagement perspective.

International Project Management Uses for Cultural Dimensions

The model could be used to select the most aligned countries when evaluating and considering which countries should be involved in the project, for example if you are embarking on an international change project, it might be unwise to start with a country with a high Uncertainty Avoidance score, it might make your life as an international project manager easier and the project more successful to start in a country that is open and embraces change. Then move in some senior managers to the countries with high Uncertainty Avoidance to show confidence in the change project.

But quite often, you may not have the luxury of selecting which countries will be part of the project, in this situation analysing the country’s cultural dimensions will give you great insight into how best to manage within this culture for the greatest change of success.

From an international project management perspective, let’s consider an international project that includes Australia and China. A quick comparison using the 5-D model highlights the areas of close alignment and the areas of stark difference.

Close Alignment: We can see quite quickly that the Masculinity of both countries are pretty close, masculinity is slightly more important in China than Australia, but not by much. We can infer that both country’s consider masculinity slightly important and it is probably wise to not lead with talking about your feelings and it is safe to say that males would dominate the workforce and generally competitive in nature.

Reasonable Variances: It is also clear that Uncertainty Avoidance scores differ, but not but a great amount. Interestingly we note that China has a lower score and is less concerned with uncertainty. This might suggest that there are slightly more informal business rules, possibly based more on personal relationships and in the case of China short term changes are of less concern as long as the long term strategy is the key focus. It might be wise to relate how the changes this project will help to enable the long term goals.