Whether you are managing an on site project or an offshore one, getting the best out of your team takes effort, planning and tact. More so with offshore projects because of the ‘X’ factor; so much is unknown to you when you step out of your own circle. The offshore team can be based anywhere in the world but it is usually the developing countries that are the most tempting. The biggest motivation behind offshore projects is financial, therefore strong. The challenge is to convert this motivation into a successfully supervised project and we have 25 rock solid tips just to achieve that;

1. The most basic thing you can do while managing an overseas project is to understand the culture of your offshore team. There are words and actions acceptable in your culture that may be extremely offensive to your workers. Similar is the sense of humor of different cultures; what is funny to you may be offensive to them and there is not worse way to lose respect in another's eyes than to appear as if you are laughing at him. Your job as the PM is to learn about the differences in culture, appreciate them and make sure you deal with your offshore team in a manner that does not offend them.
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Andrew Filev is the author of the Project Management 2.0 blog and CEO of Wrike. He has a very interesting view on Project Management, which he describes as Project Management 2.0. He also created an amazing PM Tool that supports his notion of Project Management 2.0: Wrike.

I had a great interview with him, which I will share with you in three parts over the next few weeks. This is part one in which he explains the concept of emerging structures and how this relates to Project Management.

Emerging Structure

Bas: "There are two terms you use when talking about Project Management 2.0 and Wrike: collective intelligence and emerging structure. With “collective intelligence” you make use of your entire organization. But could you clarify “emerging structure”?"

Andrew: "Sure. Let’s say there is a group of people working on something. You may have a top-down approach, when the manager or the head of the group implies structure. In the project management case, it’s most likely a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The project manager spends some time at the beginning of the project and designs a WBS that will stay throughout the project. It will probably be extended a little bit, made more detailed, but there is little chance that the WBS will be changed dramatically. Because that is very hard to do, it would require the project manager to re-plan everything himself, and that’s a lot of hassle.

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The second half of this year will be all about "Tribes". Master marketing blogger Seth Godin has written yet another book: "Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us". Although details are not known, "according to Godin, Tribes are groups of people aligned around an idea, connected to a leader and to each other. Tribes make our world work, and always have."

Photography by The Dilli Lama.

Would this be a useful way of looking at projects?

I think so. It's always nice to jump on a hype bandwagon once in a while. And it has such a nice ring: Project Tribes.

The central element of a tribe is the leader and the idea, the goal. You need a leader who can inspire, one that can present Big Audacious Goals that seem to rock the world. Your project needs Al Gore, your project needs goals like "Save The Planet". That's why people join the gang. That's why people want to be part of it.

The goal and the leader.

The leader will set some rules of interaction. The leader will keep efforts aligned. Within this context the teams get self-organized and the Big Hairy Audacious Goal makes sure it's all in the right direction.

So it's not top down, and it's not entirely bottom up.

It's all about tribes.

My column at TechTarget this month is called "Offshore outsourcing projects: Seven things every PM should know"

1. Stereotype!

All Americans carry a gun. All Dutch people are cheapskates. All French waiters…well, don't get me started! We humans love to stereotype. We simply need to. If there is one part in our brain that is "unknown," if there is a spot in our universe we have no clue about, we go mental. We have to fill in some "stub" information if the real information is not available to us. Even when we know that the information we use is not correct. We are more comfortable with false information than with no information.

Photography by Gadongen76.
The other six are:

2. You are wrong!
3. It's different!
4. Communicate!
5. Embrace overhead
6. Baby steps!
7. Be swell!

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One way of getting resilience (the ability to adapt) into your projects, is to be able to scale up your project fast and easy. Adding capacity when you need it without having a large lead time. Sounds like utopia to you? Well friends, plug yourself into the grid we call the Internet and make use of Virtual Testing. Test capacity on demand.

I talked with Bruce Daley of Test Common to get some insight.

Photography by fdcomite.
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Craig Brown writes a blog at BetterProjects.net. Craig and I are regular readers of each other’s sites and now we are having a conversation from site to site.

Dear Craig,

A while ago we were discussing the idea of a project shrink: "A person is engaged by a project manager on a part time basis to help the project manager see above the day to day drams and look at the big picture." Projects are complex, the speed is amazing, the information overwhelming, a project shrink would assist in reflection and guidance. "With a project shrink I was thinking more along the lines of relationship therapy. Without having all details, you can improve a situation by means of having guided counseling."

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