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.