PDU Opportunities
Without meeting face-to-face, it can be difficult to build the kind of trust and camaraderie within a virtual team that is common in many office environments. To create the informal conversations that turn co-workers into friends and, ultimately, into high-performance project teams, virtual teams must rely heavily on instant messaging.
By using instant messaging, real-time conversations help team members share project information, increase productivity and get to know each other better. This personal knowledge gives team members an awareness of others’ schedules and priorities, creating a more efficient workflow.
“I [have come] to use it to broadcast status messages to my team when we have a project underway and I need to push a quick status,” Mr. Hoenig says.
It also makes having a consistent vocabulary even more important—a vocabulary that comes from earning the PMP credential, says Mr. Hoenig.
“A key benefit of the PMP is it provides a common base of terminology for business functions and processes. While each location may have some differences, we can rely on the PMI standard definition as a foundation for discussion,” he says.
Just as languages and customs vary from country to country, business practices do as well. While being direct and getting to the point is highly valued in some cultures, others expect friendly conversation before discussing business.
Even the channels project managers must go through to get approvals or ask for assistance can be very different depending on where they work, says Mr. Aramburu.
“You need to know the exact type of communication you will use depending on the culture where you are implementing the project,” he says.
Mr. Aramburu cites experience as his greatest teacher and says gaining his PMP credential and learning to use structured project management processes has been the key to communicating with international players.
“The PMP [familiarizes you with] common processes, tools and templates that you can share with all cultures. From one country to the next, you will use almost the same things to plan, execute and control the projects,” he says.
When working with a team that is culturally diverse and globally dispersed, it is important to acknowledge the various work styles and behaviors of those involved. Project managers have to understand and respect differences to build trust and respect within their teams.
“After earning respect, [teams] can work together in a much better and more organized way,” Ms. Vestin says.
It is also important to create realistic sponsor and stakeholder expectations about a project’s results, she explains. Learning how to discuss project priorities appropriately with both of these groups has been one of the greatest benefits of earning her PMP credential, she says.
“It has given me the right approach to talking to sponsors, key stakeholders,” she says. “It has also made me understand the environment of [global] projects better.”
In the world of bid management, solid project management helps pull together the various pieces of a proposal on deadline. When a global virtual team is put in charge of this task, oversight and coordination become even more crucial.
To ensure his team meets its goals when given short turn-around times, Mr. Lim provides his team members with individualized responsibilities.
“By having frequent communications and clearly delineated roles, responsibilities and deadlines for each team member, our team has delivered on many winning bids,” he says.
Beyond helping him produce a quality deliverable in a competitive international arena, earning his PMP credential has opened up doors when networking on a global scale. It has allowed him to stay on the cutting edge of the global project management field.
“As a PMP, there's a sense of camaraderie that bonds us and allows us to speak the same language using the internationally accredited framework of [A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge] PMBOK® Guide,” he says. “Discussions at events with non-PMPs tend to start off about taking and passing the PMP exam, whereas discussions with fellow PMP [credential holders] delve straight to handling project issues in the context of the PMBOK® Guide and project best practices.”
