0.7 Project management areas of expertise  (Page 3/4)

Project managers in multicultural projects must appreciate the culture dimensions and try to learn relevant customs, courtesies, and business protocols before taking responsibility for managing an international project. A project manager must take into consideration these various cultural influences and how they may affect the project’s completion, schedule, scope and cost.

Management knowledge&Skills

As the project manager you have to rely on your project management knowledge and your general management skills. In this area we are thinking of items like your ability to plan the project, to execute the project properly and of course to control the project and bring it to a successful conclusion with the ability to guide the project team while achieving project objectives and balancing the project constraints.

There is more to project management than just getting the work done. Inherent to the process of project management are the general management skills that allow the project manager to complete the project with some level of efficiency and control. In some respects, managing a project is similar to running a business: there are risk and rewards, finance and accounting activities, human resource issues, time management, stress management, and a purpose for the project to exist. General management skills are needed in just about every project.

Interpersonal skills

Last but not least you also have to bring the ability onto the project to manage personal relationships as well as dealing with issues as they arise. Here were talking about your interpersonal skills as shown in [link] .

Communication

Project managers spend 90% of their time communicating. Therefore they must be good communicators, promoting clear unambiguous exchange of information. As a project manager, it is your job to keep a number of people well informed. It is essential that your project staff know what is expected of them: what they have to do, when they have to do it, and what budget and time constraints and quality specification they are working towards. If project staff does not know what their tasks are, or how to accomplish them, then the entire project will grind to a halt. If you do not know what the project staff is (or often is not) doing then you will be unable to monitor project progress. Finally, if you are uncertain of what the customer expects of you, then the project will not even get off the ground. Project communication can thus be summed up as who needs what information and when .