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.

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.  ...

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.

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 perfo ...

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.

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 im ...

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 th ...

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 s ...

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