Introduction

Business progress has always been propelled by projects; New infrastructure, new processes, new products and new vision. This progress requires human teams working in unison, often across different locations, with severe deadlines and a very limited pot of money. To attempt to manage such complex foundations - without having gotten to the real meat on the bones project complexity - is difficult enough.

Human teams are human, from different cultures, with different needs; each possessed of unique motivational and learned / learning levels. How do you deal with (at a minimum) 50 of them? How does an International Project Manager work with the barest set of tools to deliver for example the most complex of projects? How does such an individual cope with deadlines? How can, for example, the pressures for speed be handled? How do you manage the client's expectations without lying? And how do you juggle all that with an in-built demand for effective delivery?

Very little in Project Management is down to luck, accident, or a quirk of fate. The success factors are the positive answers to all of the above questions, and so much more. It is the "so much more" on which this blog concerns itself. Daniel Newman is an International Project Manager. He has worked with large international organisations such as; GlaxoSmithKline, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sainsburys and even older institutions like, The British Council. Those that have worked with, and experienced this clearly effective professional first hand can attest to the success of some of the greatest project management challenges ever faced. Now you have the chance to experience that too, as he tells us here about, the International Project Manager.

M. McLuhan

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