Projects Without Boundaries

Clear, proven solutions for virtual project management challenges Projects Without Boundaries offers project managers a clear framework for bringing both project management practices and project team leadership principles to the virtual space. Written by a team of authors with years of experience managing nationally and internationally distributed teams, this book provides a suite of best practices, checklists, and actionable strategies for managing a project and building a high-performing team in a virtual and multicultural environment. Real-world examples illustrate the application of the concepts discussed, and the Virtual Project Readiness Assessment facilitates both team evaluation and transformation planning for virtual project management improvement. Each chapter focuses on the critical challenges encountered while managing virtual projects and details proven solutions that improve a virtual organization, boost project performance, and facilitate positive outcomes. Globalization and technological advances have merged to create dynamic, productive teams that work together from around the globe; this opportunity can bring great difficulty for project managers, who must negotiate hurdles that do not exist on traditional projects. This book provides ready-made solutions specific to distributed and multicultural teams, to help you achieve the full potential of the global talent pool. Overcome common challenges of virtual projects with distributed teams Navigate complex team dynamics to ensure effective collaboration Work seamlessly across borders, time zones, and cultures Determine optimal virtual communication and collaboration tools Apply traditional project management practices in a virtual setting A team fails or thrives on the strength of its management. Fitting the group's needs, expectations, personalities, and skills into a cohesive whole is seldom simple — and distance adds an additional layer of complexity. Projects Without Boundaries provides expert guidance on keeping it together, with proven practices, tools, and virtual team leadership strategies.

Traditional forms of collaboration are not sufficient for competing effectively in the more complex and dynamic environment of today’s business world. Face-to-face meetings between people of similar backgrounds have given way to increasingly complex working relationships. Organizations must be able to gain rapid access to knowledgeable people to meet constantly changing conditions and demands. More fluid, flexible, and easily reconfigurable collaborative relationships are necessary to produce the innovations that can make or break organizations3⁄4even entire industries3⁄4 and provide the opportunities that attract the talented and motivated employees who will make the difference between success and failure. Business Without Boundaries helps managers address these challenges. The authors explore a number of wide-ranging, real-world cases to identify hands-on principles for successful collaboration. They offer managers and executives practical steps and tools for creating, facilitating, and supporting complex collaborations throughout their organizations. And they explain how to “team” across boundaries in the new global economy. The recommendations are specific enough to apply to particular forms of complex collaboration (for example supply chains, global product development teams, interorganizational alliances) but general enough to apply to new forms that have yet to emerge.

Karstified rocks of different lithology cover more than 10% of the continental surface of our planet. It is known that some 20% or even a few percent more of the global population largely depends on karstic groundwater but in many karst areas all over the world there are limited natural resources including absence of drinking waters. The problems of water shortage, equitable water use or water protection from pollution, become more problematic when they come to transboundary regions. The Dinaric region is a classical karst area where created borders of newly established countries after the civil war in 1990s resulted with an urgent need to create ambience for sustainable water management. The project DIKTAS is one of the first ever attempts to establish sustainable integrated management principles in a transboundary karst aquifer of the magnitude of the Dinaric Karst System. This volume presents selected papers from the conference held in June 2014 in Trebinje, Bosnia & Herzegovina including presentations of some of the project’s achievements but also number of other research results conducted in karst environments worldwide.

Massive Change is a modern illustrated primer on the new inventions, technologies, and events that are affecting the human race worldwide. The book is a part of a broader research project by Bruce Mau Design intended to provoke debate and discussion about the familiar objects and techniques that are transforming our lives. In essays, interviews, and provocative imagery aimed at a broad audience, Massive Change explores the changing force of design in the contemporary world, and in doing so expands the definition of design to include the built environment, transportation technologies, revolutionary materials, energy and information systems, and living organisms. The book is divided into 11 heavily illustrated sections covering major areas of change in contemporary society - such as urbanism and architecture, the military, health and living, and wealth and politics. introductory essay, extended captions, and interviews with leading thinkers, including engineers, designers, philosophers, scientists, architects, artists, and writers. Concluding the book is a graphic timeline of significant inventions and world events from 10,000 B.C. to the present. Massive Change is the umbrella name for wide-ranging research project initiated by Bruce Mau Design and the Institute Without Boundaries, a new post-graduate design program headquartered at his studio. The project will include not only this book but also a travelling exhibition, public events, an on-line forum, a documentary television project, posters, and a product line. The overall aim of the project is to explore the changing force of design in the contemporary world. The book focuses on the powerful, newly designed technologies and systems (and the failure of outmoded ones) that increasingly influence our daily lives. the debate about genetically modified foods, the race to decode human the human genome, the development and worldwide trafficking of sophisticated military weapons - even the increasingly intrusive security systems at airports: all are examples of massive changes that involve the field of design. The book presents images and text that explore the impact of these subjects, both the seemingly mundane as well as the mind-boggling and microscopic. As the text in Massive Change explains: No longer associated simply with objects and appearances, design is increasingly understood in a much wider sense as the human capacity to plan and produce desired outcomes. The book is divided into 11 sections, each focusing on a specific economy at work in the world today, both the traditional (such as manufacturing), and the often-invisible (globalization and politics). The pages combine images, extended captions, general essays, and interviews in a clean, simple design. The imagery in Massive Change is irresistible, and stands alone as a compelling reason to own this book. beautiful. For example, a photo of a smoky blue blob, as the caption explains, is really Aerogel, a material developed by NASA to collect fast-moving space dust. And a featherless, naked chicken staring at us from the page is just that: a new, genetically engineered broiler that requires no plucking and yields more meat, a boon to poultry producers yet a frightening harbinger of our future food supply. Massive Change is a well designed, intelligent, visually provocative exploration of the myriad subjects percolating through popular culture: those we read about in magazines and on Web sites but rarely understand in any meaningful way. It poses the question: Now that the human race can do almost anything, what will we do next?

This book is about project success and the secret to achieving this success, effective project leadership. Filled with samples, templates, and guidelines, it covers the five principles of effective project leadership: building vision, nurturing collaboration, promoting performance, cultivating learning, and ensuring results. Using nontechnical language, this practical guide explains how to integrate these principles into daily work to help you effectively set up, manage, and align your projects for success.

Knowledge management is a prerequisite to sustain a competitive advantage in project-based companies. However, in these companies and projects in general, activities like knowledge acquisition and sharing are often very complex tasks. This book presents a new portfolio of various concepts and insights into the management of knowledge.

Infuse your lyrics with sensory detail! Writing great song lyrics requires practice and discipline. Songwriting Without Boundaries will help you commit to routine practice through fun writing exercises. This unique collection of more than150 sense-bound prompts helps you develop the skills you need to: • tap into your senses and inject your writing with vivid details • effectively use metaphor and comparative language • add rhythm to your writing and manage phrasing Songwriters, as well as writers of other genres, will benefit from this collection of sensory writing challenges. Divided into four sections, Songwriting Without Boundaries features four different fourteen-day challenges with timed writing exercises, along with examples from other songwriters, poets, and prose writers.

More than a century after the Hmong fled atrocities in southern China, they became trapped in a long civil war in Laos and were involved in more than a decade-long alliance with the United States, fighting against the Communists' expansion in Indochina during the Vietnam War. The Hmong who sided with the United States in the war had faced two major impacts. First, the war had caused unimaginable suffering, a great loss of lives, and a dramatic effect on their natural way of life. Second, after the war, those who managed to escape to Thailand had felt their future was in limbo, while those left behind faced starvation, mass massacres, and persecution. In A World Without Boundaries, Xiong weaves descriptive details of haunting and vivid accounts of suffering of a people in a social and political culture that not only perpetuated nepotism, corruption, and wars, but also fostered an inequality among ethnicities, genders, and social economic castes. It is a story of acts of violence, bloodshed, and heartbreak, of love and sacrifice, and above all, of a people who continue to endure many difficulties, yet strive to achieve a better life in an increasingly complex world after they have lost everything. Book jacket.