ITC SIG of STC Article
Management of international projects

By Carolyn Luttrell

Technical communicators need not work in a foreign country to gain international project experience. Many corporations have in-house teams for international projects, and working on one of these is very much like working in another country. In addition to standard project management considerations, in international projects special issues arise in relation to setting up the project, procedures, and protocols.

The situation

This article and the companion article on cultural and editorial considerations, are based on a project in a major US manufacturing company with over 100 manufacturing sites in 30 countries. Each site and country had to address specific environmental issues, and the corporation needed to know the issues and the associated costs. There was no existing mechanism to obtain this data.

A team was chartered to develop an environmental monitoring and reporting system. As the writer assigned to the team, I worked on this project for about seven months, and played a major role in getting the project organized, keeping it on schedule, and getting it completed.

Our team thought the project would proceed easily because we all had taken cultural training for international business, and were dealing with in-house people. However, there were issues we had not foreseen.

As the issues are universal, I call the country in which the project was done the "host country," and other countries, "non-host."

Setting up the project

In an international project, the team must be positioned properly within the corporate international organization, with sponsorship from key top managers in all affected areas of the world.

It is critical to have the right people on the team, a particular challenge with international projects. The international core team optimally has fewer than 20 people, all based in the host country, both natives and people from non-host countries. Sub-teams are needed in the non-host countries. All team members need skills and knowledge in international business, and may benefit from taking training as part of the start up of the project.

The team leader must be able to work with people in the non-host countries. The team must employ a leadership style that matches the corporate style and accommodates participants in non-host countries.

Procedures and protocols

In establishing operating principles, the team must remember that methods of group decision-making, conflict resolution, and problem solving can vary among cultures. Information must be sought from each site according to a protocol, to ensure local people at each site feel free to volunteer information and understand why it is being gathered. The protocol includes specific questions, using specific wording to facilitate clear communication.

It is important to have a set day of the week and time for meetings, and to stay within the time, especially since differences in time zones mean some people are at the end of the work day. There is a twelve hour time difference between the East coast of the US and the Asia-Pacific region, so when the team meets as a whole, for some members it is 6:00 AM, and for others it is 6:00 PM. If the Asia-Pacific team wants to meet first thing Monday morning, the US team will be meeting at 6:00 PM on Sunday night. Sometimes it is not possible to have meetings of the whole group. Sub-teams may gather information and report to the main group. The facilitator must establish a working relationship with coordinators of meetings in non-host countries, to identify and resolve all such issues.

In spoken communication as well as protocols, it is necessary to use language understood by all. The project-related terminology of the host country may need to be modified. Listening carefully is especially important when speakers are from other countries. Technical terms may be unfamiliar to some participants, depending on the subject, and accented speech can cause further confusion.

At the time of writing, Carolyn Luttrell was manager of the International Technical Communication SIG. Carolyn is a senior technical writer and instructional designer. She may be reached at the_oboist@yahoo.com.