Timothy Porter - PM in China

Tools for facilitating project communication in an onshore-offshore engagement model

portert@hundsun.com — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:00:00 GMT

I work for Hundsun Technologies which is a Chinese domestic software company that has in the past few years been building a global services business. With customers in the USA and Europe we have focused a lot of effort in continuously improving our communications processes. We currently have a project underway to integrate a set of tools to support effective communications. On our projects project management, architecture and design is typically performed by onshore Hundsun staff and detailed design, development and testing is typically performed at our offshore development center in Hangzhou, China. There are of course exceptions. In recent times we have been using the SCRUM methodology. We employ a set of tools compatible with our development methodology, the distributed nature of our development team, and a desire to provide secured easy access to the development team, management and the client. Tools are primarily web-based and are hosted on our company website with controlled access.

For project planning and project monitoring we are using XPlanner. This tool is suitable for a SCRUM methodology and is web-based for ease of distributed geographic access.

TRAC is an enhanced wiki and issue tracking system for software development projects. TRAC includes features defect management, source code control, project roadmap management and an integrated Wiki for project documentation. All project related documentation and information is stored on the Wiki. It is also very easy for stakeholders to review. We track not only defects, but also action items, enhancements, CRs and NCRs.

CruiseControl is a framework for a continuous build process. It includes, but is not limited to, plugins for email notification, Ant, and various source control tools. A web interface is provided to view the details of the current and previous builds.

WebEx is used to record each sprint’s demo which is stored on our Wikis. These demos provide stakeholders visibility into our progress; in addition, they can be used as training materials for new staff members or the test team.

Email, telephone, SKYPE and IM are used for routine daily communication amongst team members

If you have any experience and care to share it, I would appreciate suggestions.

Putting yourself in the other guys shoes

portert@hundsun.com — Wed, 21 May 2008 16:00:00 GMT

The past two weeks have been enlightening for me. Two rather obvious events reinforced my own thoughts on a couple of topics. I was in my office on the 12^th floor of an office building in Hangzhou when the earthquake in Sichuan happened. Sitting at my desk I began to feel queasy and considered that I was having a medical problem before I realized that the building was noticeably swaying. Having lived in Southern California for 10 years I wasn’t particularly distressed and quickly concluded what was going on. So did all of my co-workers since earthquakes are not that unusual in China. We evacuated but the swaying continued for a good 10 minutes. Now, we are about 1000 miles from where the earthquake was centered so it was for sure a big one. Since that time I have been amazed but not surprised by the tremendous sadness, concern, and generosity of the Chinese people in responding to the crisis. The stories about sacrifices in support of the people that suffered are legion and they are real. At the same time the government response seems to have received rightful praise – perhaps they went to school, so to speak, on Katrina but I’m not surprised by the government response either.

The second event was the Olympic Torch Relay which came to Hangzhou this past weekend. The absolutely huge turnout just reinforced the sense that I have come to appreciate even more fully of national pride which all Chinese people have in the turnaround that has occurred in this country in the past 25+ years. Many hundreds of thousands of people lined the Westlake to try and catch a glimpse of the Torch. I’m sure that most of them never saw it but this wasn’t really the point after all. It was simply to participate in the national pride it represents.

There’s China the icon and then there’s the real China, and the two are very different.

I recently read an excellent editorial in Forbes by Lee Sands. You should check it out. (http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/05/21/games-china-image-oped-cx_lsa_0521games.html

He says “American and Chinese views of China are radically different--though we often assume that they think just like us." He makes the point that if we, whether as individuals or businesses or as a nation for that matter, are to succeed in our relationship with China then we must work very hard to understand China.

I am constantly reminded of that in daily interactions. “Trying to put yourself in the other guy’s shoes” is essential.

Org Charts

portert@hundsun.com — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 16:00:00 GMT

March 31, 2008

I’ve been out of commission for awhile but happy to be back. I feel like writing about getting medical treatment in China but that’s a different story. Well, we are now pretty much past the annual planning season for Chinese companies which revolves around the Chinese New Year. I’ve been on a two year quest (since I joined the Chinese company that I work for) to transform our organization into a more customer focused, project and program oriented organization. Seems easy enough. When I arrived here the software outsourcing organization was organized around “competency centers” – collections of Java programmers, or test engineers, or .Net programmers, or project managers for that matter. The leaders of these competency centers did the hiring, firing, reviews, etc. Projects were formed and disbanded as they materialized with weak coordination and feedback with the Competency Center leaders. Finding the customer focus in this organization was quite difficult.

During year one we took some baby steps and by the end of the year we were ready, with some not insubstantial resistance, to put in place a program and project organization with the programs largely focused on a single customer or a vertical industry. One thing I have discovered is that adopting this kind of focus is hard, never ending work with lots of regressive thinking. Training and indoctrination is an on-going, continuous process. I don’t know why but it’s the case. I’ve been struggling to come up with a “Chinese culture” angle on that one, and it’s an easy response when I complain about it to my Chinese Manager here.

So the new organization at the end of Year One had some holdover components in the form of a test center group that was largely a place to stash people in training or out of coverage and a “greenhouse” for nurturing new projects but likewise was mostly a resource pool of out of coverage software engineers. But I was primed for success when we gathered to agree on the 2008 organization. From my perspective I could see the benefits of the increased focus on the customer, a strengthening of projects in the form or more management attention and increased sensitivity to satisfying contract requirements. One of the things that puzzled me in the beginning was the lack of awareness and focus on deliverables whereas my experience in the USA was a professional life that essentially revolved around deliverables.

Well, the wailing and weeping came back as we prepared for 2008. I heard senior managers complaining that they didn’t know what a Program Manager was. There were seemingly endless sessions of arguing both sides of the same argument by the same people. This is another prevalent characteristic of my daily life that I’m more and more convinced is something Chinese.

But when the dust settled our customer oriented organization was stronger than before with responsibility and authority pushed down to even lower levels. The green houses are nowhere to be seen. I see people at middle management levels agonizing over how they can make commitments and pushing back when pushed from above. So all in all I’m pleased, not happy, but pleased. I also keep looking over my shoulder for the inevitable regression.

In the run up to the Olympics, the importance of which to the Chinese people cannot be overstated, I realized that I first came to China in 2001 and spent the summer in Nanjing studying Chinese. I remember very clearly the pandemonium and sheer joy that erupted at the announcement that China would host the Olympics in 2008 - China's coming out party. I recently went back to Nanjing for the first time since 2001 and was very struck by the dramatic change 6 plus years has brought. I’m going on 5 years in Hangzhou and have worked across the river in a district called Binjiang for the past two years. There are now at least four 4-star hotels within walking distance where two years ago there were none. So why is it so hard to change an org chart?

Happy Chinese New Year!

portert@hundsun.com — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Happy Chinese New Year!

There have been lots of stories recently about the bad weather in China and its impact on people and the economy during the Spring Festival. It’s billed as the biggest mass movement of people in the world in which 100’s of millions of people take to the roads, rails, and airways. It’s the center of the annual cycle for people and businesses. Our company’s all hands annual meeting is the 1^st day after the holiday and culminates with a dinner and live performances. The performances, all planned and performed by the employees, are 1^st class and it’s easy to understate the effort which goes into these events. There are judges and intense competition for the prizes which are usually just a few dollars but with immense prestige at stake. Both the weather and Spring Festival are major project management events.

On the weather I see that a number of officials have admitted that preparations for the heavy snows and freezing temperatures were not adequate. But then, at least in Hangzhou, you can’t really blame them. This was the largest snowfall since they first started recording this data. I suppose in the Risk Management Plan there may have been a contingency plan. In some ways the contingency plan was adequate. The next morning many companies simply sent the entire workforce out into the street with brooms, shovels, sticks with boards attached to the ends, waste baskets and more. The brigades made short work of the snow. A small army of people descended on the No. 1 bridge across the Qiantang River and in 30 minutes had thrown tons of the stuff into the river and traffic was flowing.

So our company motto for 2008 is “Er ling ling ba, Xin de chu fa” (it rhymes) and means “2008- A New Start!” For project management we’re planning to formalize the beta PM course we ran a trial of in the Fall and also hold monthly Project Management Forums. Our topic for the first month is Risk Management.

I’m wondering if anyone else does PM forums and has suggestions to offer that will contribute to success.

Christmas in China

portert@hundsun.com — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 06:00:00 GMT

It’s the holiday season and I’m in the USA for a couple of weeks enjoying a rest. The Western year in China ended with a rush. More than one years effort, at the Chinese software company at which I work, in preparing for an SEI CMMI certification culminated with a one week long formal assessment which ended the day of our Christmas party on December 23rd, and the result of which was presented to the team on the day after on Christmas Eve.

Well, from the general attitude at the Christmas party, you would not have guessed that such an important event was scheduled for the next day. There was no sign of nervousness even though the final result was very much unknown. Christmas in China! Based on the decorations in the malls, hotels and around the city you’d think China was a very Christian place. It has more to do with the shopping and the opportunity for yet another holiday occasion. The character of our Christmas party was very much like parties on other such occasions. A multiple course Chinese dinner followed by what might be called “amateur hour” except in this case it was more like three hours. It was three hours of singing, dancing, skits, comedy acts, prizes, and even a short set by a rock band. And these are for the most part quite good. Just to be clear the performers are all our employees and all amateurs and this is pretty typical. I find that the Chinese have a great appreciation for and involvement in the arts. Going to Christmas parties, New Years parties, Spring Festival parties, wedding parties (you name it) is like going to a variety show. And then there are all the budding Perry Comos. There’s a KTV on every corner and in every home.

So back to the CMMI assessment. In these things you always have strengths and weaknesses. Based on my earlier posts you’d think that project management would be a potential problem area. It’s an area that requires more focus and the inspectors agreed. One of the more interesting questions I got from the assessors during the week was the day after the Christmas party. They could not believe that the project managers singing and dancing at the party were the same project managers they had spoken to during the week. The assessors said that “it was like pulling teeth” to gather information. Surely they could not all be so shy. The issues seem to be language, fear of embarrassment or loss of face, and discomfort with the frank and direct approach employed by the assessors. (This is a problem in a normal workday with communications between expats and Chinese much less a formal assessment by expats.) We had prepared in advance with practice interviews and training sessions but this is a constant challenge in my view - the tension between being open and direct and in maintaining face.

So we continue to focus attention on training project managers. We have two projects in planning. The 1st project is mapping the CMMI to the PMBOK and marrying it with our Quality Management System in the form of a course. The 2nd project is developing more specific guidelines for employing agile methodologies in our development projects.

So now that the Western New Year is almost past, it’s time to start planning for the Chinese New Year. At least the assessment is out of the way for now. The assessment team came away with their own lessons learned about the impact of culture on the conduct of these assessments. The next time they do an assessment in China they want it to be just before the Chinese New Year so that they can learn even more.

About HR in China

portert@hundsun.com — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:00:00 GMT

I recently interviewed a candidate for a Program Manager position and asked him “what was the most important thing about being a Program Manager." He responded with “Communication (a good start!). Communicating to the project managers and team leaders reasonable expectations about career opportunities.” Well this struck a resonant chord with me. Young people coming out of college in China have very high expectations. With 4-5 years of experience most of these young people expect to be in management not in development. On the other hand our customers expect a significant percentage of their development teams to have 4-5 or more years of experience. I long for the days when I worked for that System Integrator in the USA and being a career software engineer was common and a noble profession. So as a result we focus a lot of energy on software engineers with more than 3 years of experience. In general recruiting, training, compensation and benefits, retention, etc. consume a significantly larger effort than was my experience in the USA.

This past weekend I taught the first class of our project management course for non-PMPs. Not surprisingly all 32 of such people turned up for this optional weekend course. It probably helped that the General Manager (me) taught the class. I pointed this out as an example of the symbolic frame in thinking about organizations, but I’m sure that achieving personal goals was the primary motivation.

When it came to explaining the process groups and knowledge areas I shared my view that while they were all important we should not underestimate the importance of HR and Communications. Prospective customers come to us assuming that our engineers are talented and well educated, but almost invariably the two evaluation criteria at the top of their list are HR and Communications. I think Communications is more about language and culture but clearly they have the same concerns we do about HR. So we have a number of important initiatives underway to address this issue.

The other big issue in my weekend class was organization structure. We have implemented a very much project-oriented structure. Maybe it’s the “Quanzi” I referred to earlier in my blog but I’m constantly faced with questions about who reports to whom. Or maybe it’s a matter of understanding but not wanting to believe.

I recommend China CEO: Voices of Experience from 20 International Business Leaders, Juan Antonio Fernandez, Laurie Underwood. Published by John Wiley & Sons, 2006. In particular I relate to some advice about important traits for a manager in China. Everyone has heard that guanxi is important but it is more about building relationships with those around you (internal, external – the stakeholders). Another trait mentioned by the authors as being critical and I agree is being humble in your management approach (influencing and coaching as opposed to authoritarian). Also resonating with me is patience. Realizing that “Rome was not built in a day” is important to remember here.

Adapting to China

portert@hundsun.com — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 16:00:00 GMT

On returning to the USA recently for a business trip a picked up a couple of books in the airport in Shanghai. Finding a decent collection of English language books in the airport is a new experience in itself. I’d been thinking about how to help an expat friend of mine, a new arrival in China, who has been having some issues in adapting to the new surroundings (i.e. work environment.) He was getting frustrated with the relative immaturity of business practices and with the perceived unwillingness of subordinates to follow direction.

So in the airport I found three books that I thought migth help: (1) The China Executive by Wei Wang, (2) China CEO, A Case Guide for Business Leaders in China by Juan Antonio Fernandez and Shengjun Liu, and (3) Red Star Over China by Edgar Snow. Well the last one might seem a bit strange but of course understanding the transitions that have occurred in China in such a relatively short time frame are important. It reminds me of an educational movie I saw in graduate school entitled “What You Are is a Result of Where You Were When.” I’ve never forgotten this movie. The movie itself was pretty simple, just a professor lecturing and scribling on a chalkboard, but the ideas really stuck with me. The central concept of this movie is that everyone establishes his or her core values and attitudes towards life at a very early age – up to about 6 or 7 years old. These stay with us for life and major changes occur only as a result of “significant emotional events” in later years. So the idea is that “what you are now” is a result of “where you were” when your “gut level values” were formed.

Another of my co-workers is a Chinese man who has been a professor at Zhejiang University for many years. He’s in his mid sixties and now serves as a senior adviser at the company where I work. I have another Chinese friend in Beijing who was one of the founders of the computer science department at Qinghua University. He is about 70. I've had some really interesting discussions with him about those times. Well these two men were both born around the time when Red Star Over China was published in 1937. So both of these men formed their “basic gut level values” during the period of the birth of Chinese Communism. And “significant emotional events” might have coincided with periods such as the Cultural Revolution. These men relate to the world through their value prisms.

Well, my expat friend who is now trying to adapt to China has his own value prism. To the best of my knowledge his value prism was formed about 50 years ago when he was born into a prosperous upper-middle class family in the USA. He received a bachelor’s degree and two master’s degrees from Ivy League colleges and has had a successful career at prominent high tech companies.

But our company’s average age is 27, and it is these people that my friend interacts with most of the time. These people were born about the time that Deng Xiaoping opened China and their entire experience has been in a rapidly modernizing and developing China. Many of these young men and women come from one child families. The Chinese have a phrase "Xiao Huangdi” and “Xiao Gongzu” which means little emperors and empresses. There are a number of potential implications of these terms. One is that alot of energy goes into preparing these kids, as only children, for life.

When I teach my IT project management class at Zhejiang University I usually share with the class the story of this movie and the influence it had on me. As PMs our success or failure has a lot to do with how we relate to others. Motivation and discipline mean different things to different people depending on “where you were when.” So this is part of the advice I’d give to my friend. Try to understand “where they were when.”

So what does being a “Xiao Huangdi” have to do with following or not following direction. My point was NOT that these kids are spoiled. It was that these kids have been provided with very good educations and reasoning abilities, and just “following direction” may not work. Many of these kids have been taught from an early age that it’s OK to question if you don’t understand. Others, born in a different time and place, would have different reactions.

The other books also raised some interesting issues related to adapting to China. Next time I'd like to discuss The China Executive and issues it raises with respect to stereotypes. Next time ………

Impact of culture traits on the practice of Project Management in China

portert@hundsun.com — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 16:00:00 GMT

I mentioned before that I was considering cultural traits and their impact on the practice of project management in China. A few thoughts....

Leadership. One example that always comes up is that the Chinese education (and parenting) system has a large component of “Ting Hua” (do what I say) versus a more open approach that encouraging independent thinking. You Chinese speakers will note that I’m being liberal in my translation but you get the idea. You might suppose that this creates a tendency to follow without question directions from superiors. So that if you want a more creative environment in which alternatives are encouraged it’s worth considering approaches to counter this tendency. I understand that there is a program underway to embrace teaching concepts that focus more on creativity but for today’s workforce we need a strategy for dealing with this.

Organization. Recently one of my peers suggested that I needed to have a meeting of all our project managers and program managers to review our organization structure. He told me that there were a few folks who didn’t really understand who they reported to and perhaps who they supervised. We have recently (in the past 6 months) implemented what seemed to me a fairly straightforward structure that formalized the position of the program manager. The program manager reports to a division manager (we have a couple of divisions in our global services department organized along geographic lines), and the program manager supervises some number of project managers. There’s one complication.

As I discussed this problem with my friend, himself a senior manager in another part of the company, he explained his theory that Chinese people have trouble understanding the concept of the organization chart. He explained that in Chinese culture there is the concept of 圈子 (Quanzi), similar to 关系（Guanxi）but not the same. This word translates into personal local contacts or connections, and the concept is some similar to an “inner circle” of friends or associates that wield a disproportionate amount of influence. My friend used the example of the president’s driver being an important contributor to decision making in a company or a major government organization. He’s not just a driver but a trusted confidante. Well this issue of the “inner circle” is not unlike my own experience in the USA and we PMPs all understand the importance of the “political frame” in understanding organizations, but my friend says this runs much deeper in China. It’s a concept, no a cultural characteristic, that is deeply embedded within the psyche of most Chinese and plays a much larger role in the day to day experience than a westerner might expect. For my friend it explains the frequently unclear and apparently conflicting responsibility and accountability paths one sometimes finds in a Chinese organization.

On the more immediate practical concern, it could explain why some people in my organization don’t understand our org chart. A normal supposition might have been that lack of discipline and proper training were to blame. But my friend says this is a purely western way of viewing the problem.

So naturally I started to consider what adaptation was needed to account for this characteristic. But again my friend surprised me by saying that this was the wrong approach and in fact in our company’s drive to become a global player one focus is on moving the company culture in directions that will make it more compatible with our business objectives. We needed a strategy to weed out (his word was closer to “eradicate”) this characteristic. His advice was to explain what an org chart was, what it meant in terms of responsibility, authority and decision making, and that everyone was expected to act accordingly. Well, perhaps somewhere between the evolution of company culture and the “crystal clear” of A Few Good Men there’s an answer for me.

Managing a Software Organization in China

portert@hundsun.com — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Well, now for the other half of my PM self – managing a software development organization for a Chinese software company. At Hundsun our “bread and butter” is enterprise application solutions for the financial services industry within China. But we have some other business areas, mine included. My area of responsibility is outsourced solutions, mostly offshore for European and North America clients but also for some domestic clients that are going or have gone global. We have a couple of near constant challenges and it will only take you one guess to identify one of these. Skilled project managers are a rarity. In recent years there has been much focus in China on mature processes and building essential skills with good progress but the gap from my perspective is wide. As a result of the shortage we put great effort into training and retention, and we actively recruit for “huaqiao” – Chinese who have been working abroad, gathering these essential skills, and now anxious to return to China to participate in the ongoing economic transformation. Once we get them onboard they are equally hard to keep. So we focus a lot of retention energy on this challenge as well.

Training. We offer tuition reimbursement assistance for staff but for PM we have implemented an internal PMI compliant training program. Class teaching assignments are rotated among the 4 PMPs within our outsourcing solutions division of 300 people. And we will offer substantial bonuses for those achieving PMP certification. Course completion will be mandatory for all program and project managers, and all those in the pipeline to become one.

So I’ve been thinking about what cultural traits require special consideration in developing good project managers. This is an interesting question for us and I have some theories about this that relate, for example, to leadership and customer relations.

More to follow.

Teaching PM in China

portert@hundsun.com — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:00:00 GMT

The goal of this blog is to share information about project management in and around China (which is where I have lived for the past 6 years.) I’ll share my experiences and observations and hope that you will also. My experience comes from two perspectives – teacher and business leader. First, I’ve been teaching information technology project management for more than 3 years at Zhejiang University which is the oldest and, at last count, largest university in China. Second, I’m a senior manager at a leading Chinese software vendor with responsibilities for software development and maintenance.

My university is in Hangzhou in the province of Zhejiang about 2 hours by car from Shanghai. To put some perspective on the source of local interest in studying project management, Hangzhou is a city of about 6 million people and has been chosen the past few years as the #1 city in China for business by Forbes. There is great economic vitality and growth everywhere you look. Called the “Silicon Valley of China,” it is home to large R&D centers for such companies as Motorola, Nokia, UTStarcom and several of the top domestic software companies such as Hundsun, Insigma, and Sunyard. There are nearly 400,000 college students attending more than 25 colleges and universities and 55,000 new graduates every year. So there is intense competition for the top talent and great individual drive to distinguish yourself from your peers. There is also a severe lack of skilled project managers. Not surprisingly there has been a significant upsurge in recent years with respect to study in project management. At Zhejiang University we offer a few courses in IT Project Management. Other universities in the area offer similar courses. And one college offers a Masters Degree in Project Management in partnership with a Canadian University. There are also several companies that offer training and which claim status as being registered by the PMI. The Masters Degree program is wait listed far in advance. Once I taught a class in IT PM at a satellite campus and unbeknownst to me registration was opened to local industry (probably to recoup costs.) I arrived the first day to a class of 145 students.

So from my vantage point as a teacher in China there is great interest in project management.