Leading Global Projects

This book is a must-read for anyone responsible for projects and initiatives that span functional and geographical divides. Authors Moran and Youngdahl bring extensive experience and learning from industry practice to present a clear and straightforward treatment of the leadership skills and knowledge required to lead projects that are global in nature. They have written the first book of its kind to address the three essential skills of global project leaders - strategic project management, project leadership, and cross-cultural leadership. The authors argue that global project leadership is an essential skill in our project-based world and that we are all either intentional or accidental project leaders. Intentional project leaders pursue formal project management education and even certification whereas accidental project leaders find themselves leading global project and initiatives as a result of a special assignment or promotion. Moran and Youndahl have found that the vast majority of global projects leaders fall into the accidental category and have written the book to be accessible to those who have not necessarily pursued formal project management education. Experienced intentional project managers can skip the single chapter on project management fundamentals to move to the more advanced chapters addressing topics such as influencing without formal authority across functional and geographical boundaries and leading global projects at the edge of crisis. • The only book that combines themes of strategic project management, project leadership and cross-cultural leadership • Rich with examples and stories to illustrate key skills and knowledge required to lead global projects

'Leading Global Projects' builds on the foundation of project management skills and clearly connects project management to the strategic objectives and leadership needs of an organization. The authors draw from examples of project leadership in numerous countries and regions, as well as a variety of corporate and organizational contexts.

Based on the authors' personal experience and research, "Leading Global Project Teams" looks at effective global team leadership from a holistic perspective, showing that globalization strategy and global execution must be tightly aligned with many working as a collective, collaborative team that happens to be separated by distance, time, culture, and organizational position.

Engineering businesses today run through projects. Projects are successful when we have effective project leadership, which builds effective teams and teams. All these attributes increase the performance of the organization and enable it to achieve competitive advantage. Project management is the need of today’s businesses for acquiring business development and attaining business performance in local as well as in global markets as business performance is driven by competitive advantage, which is possible through successful project management. Development of new products and other competitive products and services is done through the implementation of projects. Projects are deployed for process improvements, which further add to the profitability and growth of the business. This book discusses the aspects of project management processes, project leadership, and team building in context to project management together, which improves business performance.

Project managers leading international projects must deliver value and align the project outcomes to the wider strategic goals of the organization. However, they are faced with the challenges of cross cultural communication and behavioural differences, large-scale and technically complex projects involving multiple stakeholders, and slow decision making when speed is of the essence. Leading International Projects helps overcome these challenges by taking a holistic approach, drawing on systemic, behavioural and psychological perspectives to build team trust, communicate to avoid misunderstanding and conflict, and identify and minimize risk of derailment. It provides a practical toolbox for successfully managing international projects. Leading International Projects provides case studies from experienced project professionals working internationally, each offering deep insights into the challenges of cross-border projects and practical ideas on how to lead successfully. It presents the experiences of consultants and senior project management professionals and their reflections on projects that they ran. Practical guidance on managing the complex dynamics of international projects is provided through individual, team and organizational diagnostic and development tools. Online supporting resources include lecture slides, a further reading list and research papers on culture and international projects and on hard or soft skills.

Align project outcomes to the wider strategic goals of your organization with this guide that brings together case studies from leading project professionals.

Ongoing research shows that whilst 90 per cent of large companies are conducting global projects to take advantage of distributed skills, around-the-clock operations and virtual team environments, less than one third of them have effective, established practices to help project managers and team members working over a distance. As a consequence, most organisations struggle to reach the required levels of quality and effectiveness from these projects because their methods and practices are not adapted to a global multi-cultural environment, where most communication is in writing and asynchronous. Global Project Management describes how to adapt your organisation and your projects to thrive in this environment. The book goes beyond the recommendations on collaborative tools, to suggest the development of best practices on cross-cultural team management and global communication, recommend organisational changes and project structures, and propose alternatives for the implementation of the new practices and methods. The text is filled with real-life examples and techniques and illustrates how to apply the recommendations as part of the successful management of any global project.

Seminar paper from the year 2010 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 1,3, University of applied sciences, Munich, course: MBA, language: English, abstract: In this assignment the authors will look into the subject of challenges and best practices in international projects. A single examination of all the various challenges in the world of global project management like multicultural communication, geographical distance or asynchronous interactions - resulting from multiple systems happening and taking place in more than one location and are requiring different technological knowledge for e.g. - is confronted to a broad presentation, examination and evaluation of best practices: namely concrete business orientated solutions like global teams, collaborative tools or global project organizations. The theoretical introductory part exposes lack of sensitivity to local cultures, the general issue of complexity which arises in lack of control, variety of regulations and rules, different time zones and also the "treatment of the international project as a standard project" as main challenges for and reasons for failure of many international projects. All these rather impeding and logically challenging findings are visibly summarized in the "Five Dimensions of IP" figure, concluding that there are five dimensions which will affect every project in a different manner and in different decrees of intensity. Next, there is the description and visualization of new, interesting international PM tools like the risk register, quality gates. Additionally the authors come up with general rules and advice as the agreement on binding communication rules, templates and one language for successfully working global project team. In the last part the uneven challenges and best practices couples are kind of "married" by presenting two successful international projects: The SWAP project from the leading central European energy supply company O