During wk 1 my question asked what the 11 degrees of distance were. For Wk 5 my question is,” In managing projects that involve multi-cultural teams did you have to address any of the issues listed below and if so what was your approach to resolve these issues. The issues are:
Technical complexity
Business environment
Project work
Team culture
Work processes
Managerial tools and techniques
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Hans RobbersSenior Director| SalesforceVlissingen, Netherlands
Paulette
All of the topics are relevant for multi cultural teams and appeared one way or the other. There is no recipe to handle them everytime. However what helps is to exchange information eg. let the team work together in one place and preferable at the business location to get familiar with the environment. Sorts cultural, business env and project work.
Technical complexitiy is to start early and ensure there is a virtual environment and assign a configuration manager. Every day at end of day everyonem ust provide compilable code.
Processes can be the same as a normal project when there has been a period of working in one environment, same applies for management. One condition is you need to use all kind to social media to keep the team together. Pictures of team members in cubicles and meeting rooms. video conferencing, blogs, chat, mail, telephone, twitter etc Saving Changes...
Ian NobleParents And Children TogetherReading, United Kingdom
Paulette,
In multi-cultural projects there is definitely a challenge understanding each other's culture and ways of working, and there is a common mistake of not recognising this from the beginning. Therefore it is worthwhile finding a way to explore this very early in the formation of the project team. This could be a facilitated workshop, or even some multi-cultural awareness training for the project team. It is important that the project manager does not impose their culture on the rest of the team, they have to remain flexible.
Where the team is remote from each other, it is important for them to get together at regular intervals, definately at the beginning, but then on a regular basis. It is important in these face to face meetings to establish the team ways of working, and then to explore what is working, and what could be improved.
One difference I found in multi-cultural teams is difference in attitude to risk, and risk management. I found that what to one person can seem as sensible risk management, can appear as very negative to another. Saving Changes...
