International Project Management
Bennet Lientz, Kathryn Rea
- 277 pages
- English
- ePUB (adapté aux mobiles)
- Disponible sur iOS et Android
International Project Management
Bennet Lientz, Kathryn Rea
Ă propos de ce livre
'International Project Management' provides specific guidelines for achieving greater project success. It is the result of 15 years of work on international projects by the authors across various project areas and industries. The authors address a need for modern techniques in project management geared and suited to international projects. They offer lessons learned from failures and problems in international projects, and suggest alternative solutions for project issues. Industry examples include manufacturing, distribution, communications, media, transportation, government, IT, marketing, energy, medical care, tourism, and others in forty countries across five continents. The purpose of this book is to answer: * What is an international project and why is it different?
* What are the critical success factors for managing international projects?
* How are vendors and outsourcing managed across national boundaries?
* How do businesses effectively address cross- cultural, social, and political issues?
* How are international communications set up and coordinated?
* What should a manager look for in an international project leader?
* How does a business select the right vendors for an international project?
* How are inadequate or incompatible infrastructure and technology issues overcome?
* How are the legal and bureaucratic limitations on project management dealt with?
Foire aux questions
Informations
Part I Launch Your International Project
Chapter 1 Introduction
What is an International Project?
- A company is doing a major construction project in a country that involves many subcontractors.
- Two companies are merging their operations.
- An organization is implementing major new systems and technology across all business units.
- A company is deploying a new product in a region.
- There is a new marketing campaign for an innovative consumer product.
Examples of International Projects
- International efforts by governments. The war against terror is one example. Others are international police efforts, foreign aid, government promotion of trade and business, and health care initiatives. Regional government organizations such as APEC, the Organization of African Unity, and others are examples.
- International nonprofit and aid agencies. These organizations regularly are involved in small and large scale efforts around the world.
- Efforts by firms to enter new markets and expand their customer base. We see this all of the time in supermarkets and other retail establishments as new products appear.
- Mergers and acquisitions. Companies for the past decade have moved to acquire other firms across national boundaries.
- Support for standardization. With common and more powerful technologies and systems, it is possible now to impose the same systems and methods on all locations of a firm. Implementation of ERP systems in many companies are examples of this.
- Marketing initiatives. Companies tend to seek new customers and follow their existing customers around the globe.
- Establishment of communications and roads. Critical to any international project is the ability to communicate quickly and effectively with remote locations. The Romans, for example, established a road that was second to none until the twentieth century. The elapsed time for a governor to send correspondence to Rome was not equaled until the twentieth century.
- Sensitivity to local culture. All empires that have been lasting for many years adapted their regulations and rules to the specific culture. Those that tried to impose their will failed. An example is Attila the Hun. He conquered many lands quickly, but when he died, the empire blew apart.
- Establishment of an organization that was international. This is critical to the success of an international project, or even a large project in a single company. Each department has its own style. The organization that carries out projects must be flexible and knowledgeable about what is going on. Techniques and methods that work in one place often fail in other places.
Trends in Global Business
- Expansion of individual firms to sell their products and services in other countries. This began in the nineteenth century, but really accelerated after World War II. Today, you see the same products and services in almost all countriesâleading to resentment of the invasion of the local culture.
- Standardization in government regulations and simplification.Governments around the world have seen the benefits of expanding trade and business through changing and simplifying regulations through free trade zones and other measures.
- Mergers and acquisitions. This will be explored in Chapter 12 in more detail. Today, you can see that the number of individual large companies doing business in just one country or area has greatly diminished.
- Requirement for a global presence to be viable in an industry. Whether you look at automobiles, banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, or one-hundred other industries, you can see that there is drive for global presence.
- Worldwide manufacturing and distribution. When you buy any complex product that has multiple components, chances are that individual pieces were made in a variety of locations. Assembly was then carried out somewhere else.
- Economies of scale. By having one headquarters you achieve administrative economies of scale. By centralizing manufacturing activities of the same type you have additional economies of scale and lower costs of operations.
- Strength in size. For many firms there are major benefits to increased size. Retailing is a good example. A Wal-Mart or Carrefour can obtain goods at lower prices and then be more competitive.
- Penetration of new markets and increased sales. The elapsed time to enter new markets has been dramatically reduced. In addition, a company can enter a market on a test basis and then later withdraw or retrench if the conditions are not favorable.
- Access to human resources. Many firms are challenged with labor problems such as a lack of personnel with specific skills or high labor costs. Operating internationally can help ease these problems.
- Lower cost of operations. With economies of scale and flexibility in moving and locating operations to lower cost locales, the cost of doing business is reduced.
- Maintenance and expansion of the firmâs competitive position. You often either grow or risk dying out. This has been the case in banking, insurance, and the automotive industry. When a competitor has success in expansion, you often have no choice but to copy the move.
Technology and Systems Trends
- Telecommunications. The middle twentieth century saw the worldwide telephone system being established. Fiber optics and satellite communications greatly increased both the capabilities and the capacity for communications. Costs have been dramatically lowered. A telephone card can let you talk to most of the people of the world for a very low per minute charge.
- Networking. Networking technology has taken advantage of the telecommunication advances to allow for high-speed data and image communications.
- Mobile communications. Cellular phone use has continued to rise rapidly over the past five years. While the growth is lower today, it is still on the rise. Mobile communications not only offers convenience to people and organizations, but it offers an alternative to standard land-based communications. This increases reliability of communications overall and encourages businesses and individuals to carry out more work overseas.
- Hardware and systems software. Twenty years ago, hardware was much more expensive. Further back, there were many incompatible systems. The dominance of first IBM and then Microsoft has created standards for computing and common computing environments. Both of these facilitate and make feasible many international projects.
- Computer systems. In the earlier days of IT (information technology), most computer systems were built for a specific firm in a specific company. The emergence of software packages changed the landscape. Many ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems can be tuned and set up to run in many different countries operating with different currencies and different rules and regulations.
- Internet and World Wide Web. Probably, nothing has been more dramatic in impact than the use of the Web for communications and supporting the operations of multiple locations. Information is more available and widespread than it has ever been. There is a greater awareness of what is going on around the world. This in turn has fueled the interest in international projects.
- Ability to clone the infrastructure and replicate it in many locations. Look at retailing or manufacturing. Today, you can take the software in one location and establish it in a location thousands of miles away with the same type of hardware and networking technology. You can then adapt it to local conditions more easily due to flexibility. You can obtain vendor support in many countries similar or comparable to what you have at home. One retail firm boasts that they can establish a new remote location within 60 days.
- Ability to control remote locations on a more or less real time basis. Going back in time, the method for control was to empower the remote manager with almost all power and discretion of authority. Times have changed. Today, for many firms, there is a daily monitoring of what is going on in each location. Production schedules can be established, fine tuned, and changed overnight.
- Ability to provide for standardization. The te...