subject: Tips to Improve Offshore Project Management [print this page] There are many challenges that accompany offshore project management. Some challenges many have encountered have been to understand what variables influence offshore success, as to convey it to management in a clear and concise manner.
Throughout the starting point of any project, the aim is to interpret the business ideas and objectives into a project proposal or contract delineating all the specifications required for the project.
Additionally, at this phase, a series of project control techniques are developed to improve the likelihood of producing a premium quality end product inside of your budget and to define tools, methodologies, and scheduling deadlines.
Your goal is to supervise the project activities on a everyday basis by implementing the control procedures and techniques created in the project proposal or covenant. This involves observing and documenting the project progress, dealing with project shift and trouble resolution, documentation of authorized changes, designing for subsequent project stages and guaranteeing the creation of high quality products and programs for your users.
You should formally close the project by finalizing all project records, conducting final knowledge transfer and coaching, establishing the product service structure, and by running debriefing efforts.
1. Technical capacity - meaning competencies, skills, and knowledge. In my position, I'm mostly affected by the disparity in expertise. In other situations, you could possibly be impacted as well by engineering abilities, meaning having the offshore team not being as good as your local engineering contingent.
The disparity in technical capacity can be developed as a percentage of efficiency of your local team.
2. Location - regardless of what you do, you will get some distributed costs tied in to distance: interaction is more challenging when engineers can't just stroll to the next cubicle to discuss an issue or second a resolution.
The most effective technique I've come across to alleviate this is
a. Have the offshore workforce work on their own collection of projects - i.e. mitigate the volume of international communication by enabling the offshore staff to work on similar challenges and handle them internally.
b. Have an member of the in house group committed to the role of supervisor. This aids understanding where they stand, what their challenges are, and connect the two groups
c. To have suitable correspondence alternatives in place such as video conference calls, instant messaging, forums, chats, etc.
d. To have regular meetings with the offshore workforce
While you can drastically cut down the geographic overhead, there will always be some. Follow these steps, and you should be on your way to offshore project management success.
Chris Ray is a offshore call center consultant and project management expert. He has managed hundreds of global offshore projects.
