The emergence of an integrated worldwide economy is spawning a number of projects in international locales—opening up a wealth of opportunities for project managers who know their way around the globe.

At the end of this article, you can find out if you truly are a global project manager by taking our quiz.

“The project management [practitioner] is an integral global resource in the current global economy,” says Roger Beatty, Ph.D., PMP, Herndon, Virginia, USA-based senior project manager in the federal practice at global IT management firm CA Inc.

But getting ahead in the new world order takes skills outside the normal project management prerequisites.

The job entails dealing with complex issues, such as cross-currency budgets, multinational regulatory bodies and sociocultural and geopolitical matters. And then there are the added travel time and costs to deal with.

Two of the most important attributes for global project managers are cultural sensitivity and intellectual curiosity about other people and nations, he says.

“The most experienced global project manager has visited at least three continents,” Dr. Beatty says. Not only is this one of the best ways to learn a foreign language, but it also helps people become more familiar with the customs or traditions of people living there.

Yes Means No?

Alice Roberts, PMP, a program manager at Australia-based Hyro Ltd., a digital business services company, knows a thing or two about working on global projects. Nearly two years ago, she relocated from Australia to Hyro’s division in Bangkok, Thailand. There, she manages 20 to 60 software development and systems integration staff and clients around the globe. “And even when the client is located in Asia Pacific, we work with multinationals, which inevitably have stakeholders and software suppliers on other continents,” Ms. Roberts says.

She quickly realized that in Thailand showing respect and honoring hierarchy are valued traits. “I learned I was being treated as a farang, that is, a Westerner or foreigner and that ‘yes’ doesn’t always mean ‘yes’ in this culture. I also learned to talk slower as New Zealanders tend to talk very fast.”

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The article is based on material in the white paper “Global Project Manager Self-Assessment,” by Roger Beatty, Ph.D, PMP, at the PMI Global Congress 2007—Asia Pacific in Hong Kong.