Projects Without Borders: Gathering Requirements on a Multicultural Project

Computerworld - One of the most difficult tasks project managers and business analysts face is obtaining customer requirements. Even when business customers and business analysts work in the same building, misunderstandings are bound to arise. It's a challenge to ask the right questions, get the right people involved and document unambiguous requirements, regardless of the backgrounds of those participating. When the project includes multicultural stakeholders, and particularly when those stakeholders work in geographically dispersed areas and form a virtual team, the job becomes much harder.

Some of the challenges facing project managers and business analysts aren't unique to multicultural projects. However, personal agendas and conflicts about roles, priorities and availability worsen the situation. In addition, recent studies have shown that almost half of the typical project budget is spent reworking defects in requirements. While there are many underlying reasons for this rework, dealing with a group of multicultural business customers and/or project team members can create significant hurdles.

Challenges

Physical distance of stakeholders

Although many of the challenges exist even when the team and business customers are located on the same floor in the same building, the difficulties in dealing with them increase with physical distance. Time zones make meetings hard to schedule. Business analysts on today's global projects have learned that the standard eight-hour workday doesn't exist. If we are truly customer-focused and interested in building relationships to capture requirements, we schedule meetings at a time convenient to our customers, not to us.

Few meetings on global projects are face-to-face, making the assessment of nonverbal communication nearly impossible. Since most business analysts pay a great deal of attention to nonverbal factors as part of the elicitation process, not being able to see them diminishes the communication and therefore the ability to capture requirements.

Although there are alternatives to face-to-face meetings, neither videoconferencing nor Net meetings are ideal. Videoconferences usually lack some spontaneity, and the audio lag can be distracting. Facilitating large groups over a videoconference is quite challenging, since multiple conversations, the dominance of one group or individual, and other facilitation difficulties abound. With both videoconferencing and Net meetings, there are often equipment issues that hinder the elicitation of requirements.

Roles and responsibilities

Unclear roles and responsibilities can be the bane of project mangers and business analysts everywhere. When they are unclear, tasks invariably fall through the cracks, and finger-pointing ensues. Unfortunately, when stakeholders are removed from one another, it takes longer to find omissions, and the resulting errors are harder to correct. Trouble usually occurs when a business analyst expects the business client to define the requirements, but the business client thinks he has already provided his part. With differing cultural attitudes toward conflict, it can take even longer to perceive that there is a difference of opinion, let alone resolve it.