With the globalization of products and services in today’s business environment, many project teams find themselves in a decentralized execution model with their counterparts located in multiple locations worldwide.
To ensure a smooth process from start to finish, there needs to be established guidance at the beginning of a project for all parties involved – beyond just the core project team. Perhaps the primary business area has defined a project and it will be led from a team within the United States. If they are going to utilize a team overseas in executing the project, however, they need to understand how the overseas group truly does their work.
Project managers should fully vet a global delivery project with all teams before work gets underway.
Four key questions and considerations:
1. Who are the teams involved?
Identify and involve all parties from the onset of the project, so there are no surprises down the road.
2. What is the integrated process required to execute the project?
Make sure to establish the entire process from start to finish, so all key stakeholders and team members know how it will work. Establishing guidance creates a common knowledge level set among all teams.
3. What aspect of the project will each team implement?
Make sure each entity is aware of exactly what they need to accomplish.
4. When is each team expected to complete their portion of the project? What happens next?
Set the time-frame parameters and expectations. Obtain concurrence between all groups to establish a unified and focused start of project execution.
Bi-directional communication early on in the project will help remove roadblocks and make obstacles easier to overcome at any point in the process.
