Exactly About Project Management of a Global Team

By Zakary Coogan


The planet is getting smaller. Well, it isn't really physically getting smaller but that is one way of saying that global communications have become so fast paced that the world is really one community in a lot of ways. With the advent of the internet, email, instant messaging and VOIP, it is possible to do business with trading partners world wide without ever leaving your working environment.

For many businesses who are about the cutting edge of new business paradigms, the thought of a geographically isolated business is becoming obsolete. It's entirely possible to put together a business consortium or a project team made of subject matter experts spread across all time zones and from around the world. The truth is, this kind of decentralized management of business projects is starting to become more of the norm than the exception inside the twenty first century business environment.

So equally as those in marketing, product development and investments have previously learned how to maximize a project team that is separated by hundreds or a huge number of miles, the project manager also needs to adapt the project management methodology to accommodate a similar approach to getting business done.

Conventional project management is a systematic approach to choosing a project from scope to implementation which has proven successful in a huge number of companies. We have no reason to abandon this nicely toned methodology. But as start up business paradigms come to play, we have to adapt even a standard methodology like project management software to fit the way business is completed in this century.

Communications is the key to any successful project. This can be a challenge of utilizing a team from across a fantastic geographical divide. It is possible you may execute the entire project with team members you never see. So to facilitate frequent or more to date communications, we must exploit the technology we have at our disposal such as...

Blog sharing working environments. Group sharing environments online are becoming more and more common. By starting a tool set on line by which team members can post status reports, leave emails, update the project management software, file expense reports and stay in touch with each other, you facilitate the sort of communication that keeps the group moving forward successfully. Blogs, private message boards are also excellent means by which an ongoing "conversation" can be carried out between down line that anyone can check into and get trapped with the content of what may be done and what is being planned for that project.

Controlled email trees. As the project manager, email can be an obvious way to quickly keep active in team members. However, it can get chaotic trying to keep up on fast moving email trees. That may be a good reason to trap all emails trees within your online project management software so the contributions of everyone on the team could be captured for further review.

IM staff meetings. IM could be expanded so it doesn't just bring in two participants. You can schedule your weekly staff meetings employing an IM conference room and capture the complete proceedings in the IM log thus assuring yourself that nothing that's said will "fall through the cracks.

By becoming skilled at using cyberspace as the primary "location" of your project team's interaction, you can literally create a team of highly specialized talent that could be located from anywhere in the world. This vastly expands your ability to tap the best minds for your work and to streamline the project management software process. It will take time to become accustomed to and there will be some missteps along the way. But if you can conquer global team management using internet tools, it will be a valuable skill for successfully executing global projects for the business.




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