Critical Success Factors for Remotely Managing Global Project Teams

  Teams   Knowledge Shelf  

More often than not, little time and thought are allocated to planning and preparing how to best manage the people on a project team. Managing the project team is usually addressed as part of managing the project: there will be team-related events in the project plan, in addition to project work tasks that are assigned to the project team members. How effective is it to manage the people on a remote project team in this manner?

Over the past ten years, I have worked with people from North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, Japan, and South America. More recently, I have been managing remote project teams; and as soon as we factor in remoteness—where the project team is located across the globe, rather than in the same city, country, or even continent—the need to pay close attention to people management, above and beyond project management, becomes very clear.

With a remote project team, the tendency to act like a supervisor often happens because it seems easier to tell the remote team what to do; hence, we tend to manage the project resources rather than the people. Managing people poorly can negatively impact the people, the team, and the organization, resulting in lowered company morale and even lead to missing quarterly financial targets. The project manager orchestrates many activities and resources to meet the project’s goals and needs to …

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