Best practices when coordinating a multi-company projects
Teodora TodorovaIT Project Manager| INDUSTRIA TechnologySofia, Bulgaria
I am looking for best practices/guidelines on dealing with multi-company projects.
Right now I am the project manager for a consortium of 8 different companies working on a R&D project. During the preparation stage I faced many issues like engagement of the stakeholders and overall coordination. Having people from different companies and counties has many challenges - organizing an all hands meetings, common tools, common language.
We are almost ready to kick off the execution and I am still struggling to define the methodology that we are going to apply.
My thinking is that we need to be as agile as possible but on the other hand we will need really strict rules and overall structure.
What will be a good best practice?
Thanks in advance for any ideas. Saving Changes...
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Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Teodora,
a consortium is often used to achieve one joint goal by 2 or more partners. Each partner is accountable for reaching the goal, but the partners have different capabilities, so in that sense they are not equal. Partners have an interest that others fulfill their specific responsibilities. An appropriate governance setup and mutual understanding of each other's interests, responsibilities and capabilities - in one word transparency - is key. As are escalation means, claims handling, conflict solutions. And overall there is a customer.
Private public partnerships PPP provide good examples of consortia. There are methods and lessons on the web for those, e.g. from APM International. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
I am working as program manager in a company where most of the initiatives have the same characteristics that you stated. R&D projects are assigned to the business unit I am working on which is one of the divisions inside the enterprise PMO. The question can be answered from multiple views but always driven by corporate strategy. You know, an organization can have multiple business defined into it and each business could be a company by itself but all those business must be aligened with a corporate strategy. So, in our case (and other case I have to work on) some initiaves are started becasue a corporate strategy then "cascade" to the other business and some others are specifically for a business strategy but must be aligened with corporate. Adding to add, in my case, beause each business is located in different regions in the world then it adds a new layer because regional strategy must be taken into account. At least, strategy is the driver to deal with all related to resources (all type of resources). For example, initiatives that must be implemented because a corporate strategy have the high level of priority no matter when the initiative is estimated the negotiation starts about how resources will be assigned and sometimes the time framework varies from region to region. Things like that. I hope my answer helps. Saving Changes...
Agile does not mean that you can't have governance. Disciplined Agile for example provides a number of good ideas on how to implement a lean governance approach which balances risk against the effort/cost of keeping the organization safe.
An executive steering committee with representation from each company's leadership can help to provide senior governance and your team's defined "way of working" should be blessed by that committee.
Adding to the above, when working R&D with multiple companies, extra care is needed with intellectual property (IP) and other proprietary information such as financial data. You may have to segregate your data sources so that Company A cannot access the IP of Company B.
In addition to things like separate access restricted servers, this should also be considered for meetings. You may need some separate meetings for different partners, and all-team meetings may have general information sharing at the beginning, and then some attendees may need to leave the meeting before limited access information is discussed.
This also applies to export controls. If partners are in different countries, there may be laws governing technical data exchanges. Exports don't just apply to physical things. Transfer of information including conversations with persons from other countries is considered an export. Saving Changes...
Teodora TodorovaIT Project Manager| INDUSTRIA TechnologySofia, Bulgaria
Thanks to all that commented here, all inputs gave me ideas how to structure the particular methodology that I need right now. Saving Changes...
